Account Verification - process is awful, I can't recommend GitHub anymore

[mseryn]

Hi everyone,

The new process for verifying an education account is horrible.

First, a disclaimer. I recognize forum moderators and support persons don't make platform decisions. I know the GitHub person(s) responding to this forum likely didn't decide to change how GitHub for Education works. I'm writing this in the hopes that even just a little feedback can be passed up to the ears of someone who makes said platform decisions. Because this is...bad.

So, to the decision-makers:

Unless I'm missing something, which is always possible, it's awful to use the new system. I dug around all over for different options to verify my education account, and I found no solutions to the awfulness. If there is a way to use the verification system better, please improve the site documentation. I don't have time to fight with GitHub for hours just to get my account to work, not when there are competing platforms that make it beyond-easy to get an education account.

Observations:

• The automated system only takes camera images (not file uploads?). Am I supposed to print my enrollment verification and shove it in front of my camera? Open it in a browser and photograph my screen with my phone? This is idiotic and inefficient, especially given this is a technology platform.
• You can't contact support for GitHub for Education - it tells you "we no longer use humans to verify accounts". Trying to go through standard GitHub support gets you a "closing ticket, please reach out to GitHub for Education". So if I have an issue verifying my account, there's no recourse. None.
• Having to post to a discussion platform to fix personal account issues is a weird, nonstandard, and privacy-ignorant mechanism.
• All over this discussion platform, I'm seeing issues about account verification. This is not just me. Seriously, guys, you need to either fix these issues or better-document the ways to use the verification system better.
• I keep seeing "issue was fixed when I used the site on my phone", which is at least something, except... this is GitHub. Many of us are programmers. We use computers - and phones, of course, but come on - fix your site in the browser.

I get it. Verifying accounts is hard. Putting in (paid) human effort for (unpaid) student accounts is also costly. But it's not a secret that students take familiar platforms with them into the professional world. If GitHub isn't convenient to use (for free) during their education, they'll just use another platform, and they'll take that with them into professional and personal projects. This isn't a trade secret or anything, it's well-known.

I'm just one person, and I know that - but I'm almost definitely not alone. So here's the loud opinion from this one person who is sad to see her GitHub days at a close: this system has decayed, and I won't use or recommend GitHub for Education anymore. I'm about to defend and am planning to go directly into research and professorship. I'm one person, but I do educate and used to push dozens to hundreds of students per year to use GitHub for Education (and beyond). I'm also going to write a simple PSA for others - labmates, other instructors, my advisors, other researchers, and anyone else relevant - and recommend that they go through this new process to see how bad it is, just so they can come to their own mind about if they should subject their students or labmates to this. Because I absolutely will not.

You guys need to fix this system. It's really, really bad, and people in tech do not have patience for a rotting platform when others readily exist.

And to anyone who does not make decisions about platform mechanisms, thanks for your time, and I hope you don't get as many headaches dealing with this system as I did trying to use it.

[pmcgeebcit]

Thank you for posting this. That has been my experience as well. I submitted a ticket on Jue 23 about this issue and still I have not heard back one month later. All I have requested in my ticket is to complete the academic account verification process (it is actually a renewal). Hopefully GitHub can fix this soon since GitHub for Education has some excellent services.

[xdlai]

The shitty verification process only pushes people to use other platforms. I can not image who brings up such a stupid idea.

[kshannon]

100% my experience as well. Wasted time and effort.

[huongtr]

100% they even didn't test it before deploying. shitty

[AtifAhmadSiddiqui]

Who came up with this verification process? 15 Dice answers to create an account in Guthub. Sheer waste of time.

[smileservices]

I know, gives me headache. It's easier to spin up your own gitlab machine on a cloud vm.

[Aary23S]

I am unable to set my location to correct the options always showing me the wrong choice of location of my university. Please help

[zhangzhize]

Same, today. Can't Believe it.

[danielj23]

This is insanity and when it breaks, you are forced to start over and do 20 more?

Crazy and terrible. I can't even complete it so... I guess I just give up?

Who made this?

[himanish-k]

We're supposed to do 20 of these? And if it's wrong, you start over. That's crazy. I guess it's for protection against automated account creation by bots but this is horrible UX for actual users.

Comically, you can't comment on this thread unless you already have an account.

[ivanjrt]

is a massive discouragement on creating an account, 20 tricky "only they know the answer" screenshots on the other option, you have to respond audio then is even worse.

I get it if it was just 5 attempts

here's an example of this failure:

see how confusing can this be, who did this?, chatGpt 😆

[minhnhat2807]

Crazy github

[flampoo]

Clearly I'm not the only one who had a problem with this, but wanted to comment as well to show how absurd this process is.

Had to go through the verification process 4 separate times. Each time I had a choice similar to @ivanjrt. 2-3 options identical to the naked eye. One such example included below.

I'm guessing this is training an AI or something, but, Christ, maybe it should be training us at this point if it can distinguish between those three things.

[khaduykha]

Yes, I totally agree, this is a stupid idea.

[aftabmj]

I wanted to create an online repo for my new startup. I have been using github for 7+ years. After being unable to solve the visual and audio steps for 30+ minutes, I am switching to some other provider. Seriously who comes up with these ideas ..how does it get approved ??

[AnushaPatelHS]

This is really annoying way of verification. Please find other way were it can be human friendly if you want to verify if its human.
Other than this everything is just perfect :) Please check on this verification process as this is time consuming and sometimes its just not possible to have so much of time like during workshop.

[vxgu86]

i have to say some in here, I have tried verified the student profit for so many time that I cannot remember
is there really someone pass the verification?
We need a little more proof to verify your academic status. even I post everything on it.

[vxgu86]

so so so annoying

[nmaddp1995]

Oh my god, After 10 years of using GitHub, I'm trying to create another account to test things.
And Surprisingly I cannot pass the damn sh!t account verification process.
I'm not sure if there is an actual person who can create an account after all these sh!t things
Please GitHub owner, do something to save your product

[jakbin]

Yes github signup really sucks.

[danielj23]

Can't believe I am still receiving notifications that people have this issue. Microsoft at their best.

[Shifath472533]

This is very true. Absolutely rubbish system. The system is dumb.