[pmwiki-users] want opinions on a new cookbook recipe format

Neil Herber nospam at eton.ca
Thu Mar 9 22:44:50 CST 2006


At 2006-03-09  06:41 PM -0700, H. Fox is rumored to have said:
>On 3/9/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think too many rating scales just makes things more complicated.
> > I'd rather do one or none at all.
>
>FWIW, I'd like to see separate votes for "relevance" and
>"effectiveness" (or something resembling those two), otherwise no
>voting at all.

Unless there are plans to produce some kind of "top ten recipes" 
list, I can't see any point in votes - and the idea of a top ten list 
makes me wince.

When I look at a recipe description, I want to know:
1) What does it do?
2) How many other things do I have to load up to make it work?
3) Does it work with my version of PmWiki?
4) Do I have to be a Unix geek to install it?

I think all of this information is already presented by most recipes. 
The fact that someone voted for it based on whatever criteria they 
though the vote represented is so close to meaningless that it is 
useless. Just think about how useful the Freshmeat rating of PmWiki is ...

I find that reading the comments and questions that appear at the 
bottom of many recipes gives me a very good idea of whether people 
use the recipe, whether it has problems, how interested the recipe 
author is in updating it, and so on.

Just in case I sound bitter and twisted, these opinions may just be a 
manifestation of my hatred for "ten-best" lists or the AFI's 100 best 
movies list. I have no objection to things like top ten best sellers 
or top ten box-office draws (which may be fact-based), or a list of 
the ten closest galaxies, or David Letterman's Top Ten  listings.



Neil

Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/
Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668 





More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list