GitHub's Search is struggling at the moment so all Search requests are being heavily restricted making it almost impossible to count the number of unique :user/:repo combinations via the likes of Harvester or the API.

Search is in the process of being rewritten with the Tech Preview available at https://cs.github.com/ (please tinker with it and send GitHub feedback) however it isn't accessible via the API yet and doesn't quite yet meet our needs to determine our current usage requirements so for the foreseeable future I'll be using my judgment to determine popularity until the new Search gains the functionality we need and/or the restrictions are lifted (or we can come up with other qualifying criteria).

I know this is subjective and open to debate so the loose rules I'll be using are along the lines of:

• at least 2000 files per extension indexed in the last year (the number you see at the top of the search results), unless the extension is expected to only occur once per repo, then 200 files.
• with a reasonable distribution across unique :user/:repo combinations assessed by manually and randomly clicking through the results.

If particular users are showing a high proportion of the results, I'll manually filter out those users using -user:<username> to reduce their impact on my assessment.

I know this isn't ideal, but I think it's the best option for the moment. I'm open to suggestions too. On the plus side, it does mean a lot more PRs are likely to be merged 😁.

I'll be going back through older PRs in the next week or two and will re-assess based on these notes and merging any that satisfy them.