[Python-Dev] eggs now mandatory for pypi?

[Jesse Noller]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 1:54 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 10:38 AM, Jesse Noller <jnoller at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Georg Brandl <g.brandl at gmx.net> wrote:
>>> Jesse Noller schrieb:
>>>> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 4:43 AM, Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:
>>>>> it's revews like this that makes me wonder if releasing open source is
>>>>> a good idea:
>>>>>
>>>>>   no egg - worst seen ever, remove it from pypi or provide an egg
>>>>> (jensens, 2009-10-05, 0 points)
>>>>>
>>>>> </F>
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately; we're now staring down the barrel of having
>>>> youtube-style comments on Python packages on the index.
>>>
>>> Yes, unfortunately. I originally thought that restricting the commenters
>>> to those with a PyPI account would make them useful, but seeing this one
>>> (even if it was not intended) and the comment on hgsvn that belongs into
>>> a bug tracker instead, I'm not so sure anymore.
>>>
>>> Georg
>>
>> There would need to be a fair amount of work to make the system useful
>> and almost self-policing. Not to mention people can make plenty of
>> fake pypi accounts for pure astroturfing reasons.
>
> It seems like a worthy cause though. User ratings and comments are the
> future for "app store" style sites such as PyPI, and spam
> unfortunately comes with the terrain. There are plenty of things we
> can learn about fighting spam and other forms of vandalism from other
> areas of the social web, including our very own wiki, and other wikis
> (WikiPedia survives despite spam).
>

I agree that feedback, commentary/etc is a Good Thing; but doing it
right is not an easy thing, and typically implementing it poorly leads
to spam, people filing bugs in comments, astroturfing, etc. Just on
first glance, I could see immediate improvements around:

* Moderation
* Allowing authors to respond
* Flagging as spam
* Upvoting/downvoting
* Nested conversations

And so on. Sites like stackoverflow/reddit/hackernews/etc have spent a
lot of time "doing it right".

I know, I know - patches welcome. The problem here is that I would
make an argument that in the case of PyPI nothing is better than what
we have currently.

jesse