[Catalog-sig] Package comments

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:32:28 +0100, "M.-A. Lemburg" writes:
<snip>

>So you are suggesting to keep the comments and remove the rating
>system ?
>
>Wouldn't that lead to the usual tail of comments you see on
>blog entries instead of encouraging reviews ?
>
>-- 
>Marc-Andre Lemburg
>eGenix.com

I think that a rating system is a bad idea, period.  I think that
the comments feature _could_ be a good idea, if used well, though I
think that the design should be reworked if what we want to have
is a way to centrally find long reviews of software packages.

The thing is, I now believe that this is not Martin van Löwis goal.
I think that he wants to make things easier for software downloaders
to evaluate software, no matter how unpopular these ideas are with
the package creators.  I think that this is a bad decision; it is
the software creators one should be most concerned with.  I don't
think that a rating system actually serves the downloaders, and to
the extent that it drives away package creators, it actively harms
them.

There are things we could do -- add more tags for 'how easy is this
to install' and 'where do you want discussion of this package to
occur' and 'how well maintained is this package'.  But I think there
is a great need for packages that were written as a one-shot for
somebody who needed to solve some particular problem, aren't being
maintained, and are very much 'I am releasing this in case somebody
else finds it useful'.  I often find stuff like this useful, and I
fear my supply of such things will dry up if people have to face
comments and criticism that they do not want.

Laura