title: What are 'base' and 'head' repo in GitHub web UI?
body: <p>GitHub's UI is fairly unintuitive and poorly thought-out, so here's a problem and a question:</p>
  
  <p>What is the "head" repo? What is the "base" repo? I do not know which one is being copied from. The words "base" and "head" mean the same thing. The "head" of a linked list is similar to the "base" of a tree. (GitHub has fork tree and file tree.) "Head" and "base" are synonyms and mean the "start" of a data structure, so these labels are ambiguous.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZedUA.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZedUA.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>Despite the arrow in the diagram, it is not apparent which repo is being copied from and which is copied to. They really should have included a "To" and "From" label to clear this up. The word "compare" does not imply directionality. This is really REALLY stupid wording. The arrow could mean "X into Y", or it could mean "Y into X".</p>