[pmwiki-users] RFC: Ratings Redux

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Wed Sep 27 08:49:20 CDT 2006


On Wed, Sep 27, 2006 at 01:31:15PM +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> Ben Wilson schrieb:
> > First, I think a five-point scale is
> > easiest to wrap the mind around (1-dislike, 2-somewhat dislike,
> > 3-neutral, 4-somewhat like, 5-like).
> 
> Good proposal.

I agree, I've found that a 5-point scale works well (this is why
PITS uses a 5-point scale).

> > Popularity may be possible in other ways.
> 
> Another way: count the total number of ratings given - that one would be 
> automatic and reasonably accurate.

This is what PITS does -- it simultaneously shows the number of ratings
given as well as the distribution.  (It doesn't associate ratings with
comments, but that can be done in the text.)

> A third way: have something similar to Debian's popularity contest tool. 
> Installed recipes will report their activity to a central site.
> That would be a very automatic way to get at reasonably reliable 
> deployment data, and help assess which recipes need most attention e.g. 
> when updating PmWiki.

For a variety of both technical and political reasons I'm
fairly leery of having any sort of "phone home reporting" 
features built into PmWiki or the cookbook.  I don't have
qualms if it's happening in response to positive requests
from the administrator, but an automated system seems to
invite problems.

One possibility would be to build a "what recipes are being
used" capability into the SiteAnalyzer tool at pmwiki.org.
This could be used not only to gauge recipe popularity, but
as an administrative tool that lets administrators know
which recipes they have installed that might warrant
updating.

Getting back to the issue of recipe ratings themselves,
I'd really prefer to try to find a way to do things using
wiki markup as the focus of rating input, as opposed to
building it into scripts.  

Pm




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