Forking a gist is the most efficient way to create a public gist based on another user's gist while maintaining the history of the original gist. When you fork a gist, you create a new gist in your own account that retains a link to the original, allowing you to track changes and contribute back if desired.

Forking a Gist:

Option A is correct because forking is a straightforward way to create your own copy of another user's gist while preserving the history and making it easy to track updates.

Incorrect Options:

Option B is incorrect because creating a new gist and copying the content would not preserve the history or link back to the original gist.

Option C is incorrect because cloning is typically associated with repositories, not gists, and is more complex than forking for this purpose.

Option D is incorrect because requesting to be added to the existing gist is not a standard GitHub feature.