[Catalog-sig] Please turn off ratings

[P.J. Eby]

At 12:44 AM 4/6/2011 +0200, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>Am 05.04.2011 23:51, schrieb John J Lee:
> > On Tue, 5 Apr 2011, "Martin v. Löwis" wrote:
> > [...]
> >> Actually, being one of the two maintainers of the software,
> >> I do get comments in private email also, or in person
> >> (but of course you can't get access to *that*)
> > [...]
> >
> > Do the users you hear from cite other software rating systems that work
> > well?
>
>It's been a while, but I think people referred to other rating systems
>in general, not to software rating.
>
> > Was the PyPI rating system modelled in any way on other rating systems?
>
>Yes, amazon.com (although it doesn't implement many of the amazon review
>system features; I think amazon has also grown new features since I
>implemented PyPI commenting).

One important feature missing is that the Amazon review system has 
*always* had a back-channel for removing unhelpful reviews; in the 
beginning, it was simply the ability for authors and publishers to 
ask Amazon to remove them, and later, the "did you find this 
helpful?" buttons were added.

Another important way that Amazon reviews differ is that they're 
called *reviews*, not comments, and reviewers are rewarded in various 
ways for making reviews -- they are actually scored on the number and 
usefulness of their reviews, which encourages high-quality 
reviews.  Good Amazon reviewers typically give both the pros and cons 
of a product, and describe their use case so others know whether the 
review is applicable to them or not.  This is socially reinforced by 
example and by the rewards machinery.

In contrast, PyPI's comment system much more closely resembles 
YouTube in its physical and social structure for comments...  and 
likewise, the comments it gets more closely resemble YouTube comments 
than they do Amazon reviews.