The OP is hitting at a long lived really difficult problem especially for a place like GitHub - how do you display what people care about? - recommendation engine
Most stars in 24 hours? That gets the same group of 0.1% consistently at the top leading to a stale page.
So Github tried to improve its 'signaling' of what's interesting yet new so you can keep coming back to the trending page?
Is it stars the overall account crossed w/ new? Number of issues opened in 24 hours? Forks?
You’re assuming that Github needs to provide a means for recommendations like a typical social network when I doubt it does.
I return to github repeatedly to interact with repos I’ve already found based on professional need. I neither want Github to recommend content to me, nor do I need it to; I regularly use services outside of GitHub to find content on it that’s relevant to my needs.
Github is a tool, not a social network. I don’t want them to maximize for “engagement”; I want them to fill my professional requirements and charge me a fee for their services.
Most stars in 24 hours? That gets the same group of 0.1% consistently at the top leading to a stale page.
So Github tried to improve its 'signaling' of what's interesting yet new so you can keep coming back to the trending page?
Is it stars the overall account crossed w/ new? Number of issues opened in 24 hours? Forks?