Will Thompson commented:


I do not think changing the DOAP files to set their homepage to the repo that 
holds the DOAP file is appropriate. Taking 
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/blob/master/gnome-shell.doap as an 
example, it specifies:

```xml
  <homepage rdf:resource="https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell"; />
```

and that's true: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell is the homepage for 
Shell.

But take a look at https://github.com/gnome/gnome-shell – there is nothing 
“above the fold” which indicates that the repo is actually a mirror, and that 
the canonical repo is at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell. (Shell is 
unusual in that it actually does have several prominent links to that page in 
its README.md.)

I searched DuckDuckGo for [gnome shell 
git](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gnome+shell+git&t=ffab&ia=software) and gave up 
looking for gitlab.gnome.org after 5 pages. The GitHub mirror and Endless and 
Pop_OS!'s forks are the top three hits for me, and GitLab even has a helpful 
popout box about the GitHub mirror.

![Screenshot_2019-10-16_gnome_shell_git_at_DuckDuckGo](/uploads/25efb5e878882380b76b2857f1c01119/Screenshot_2019-10-16_gnome_shell_git_at_DuckDuckGo.png)

My hypothesis is just that, if we have a prominent link to the canonical repo 
near the very top of each mirror page, humans will more easily find the GitLab 
repos. Mutter actually does both of the things in the ticket description:

![Screenshot_2019-10-16_GNOME_mutter](/uploads/2e49d877bac78684075be6371e15b963/Screenshot_2019-10-16_GNOME_mutter.png)

My other hypothesis was that search engines are also more likely to rank the 
GitLab pages higher if the GitHub mirror links prominently to them. However, 
for Mutter, its canonical repo still isn't in the first 5 pages of DDG results; 
and on closer inspection, Google actually does get both of these repos right, 
with the GitLab.gnome.org page right at the top.

If you think that the GitHub "homepage" field must match the DOAP `<homepage>`, 
and if it's not possible to add the “mirror” tag + URL to repos like 
https://github.com/gnome/gnome-shell which don't already have it, then I guess 
this is WONTFIX :)

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