[Catalog-sig] Please turn off ratings

[Ben Finney]

"P.J. Eby" <pje at telecommunity.com> writes:

> At 12:44 AM 4/6/2011 +0200, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> >Am 05.04.2011 23:51, schrieb John J Lee:
> > > 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.

Yet another important difference: Amazon reviews are associated with a
product that *won't change* for the lifetime of that review.

PyPI comments and ratings, on the other hand, stick around while the
package continues to accrue new versions – so there's little way of
knowing whether the comments and ratings are still relevant to the
latest version of the package.

Now, one possible response to that is to make the comments and rating
system more complicated to account for the fact that software packages
are much more dynamic than Amazon products. I hope that's not the
response that is chosen.

-- 
 \       “… whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to |
  `\             his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.” —Robert G. |
_o__)           Ingersoll, _The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child_, 1877 |
Ben Finney