On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Jesse Noller <jnol...@gmail.com> wrote: ... > Frankly, I agree with him. As implemented, I *and others* think this > is broken. I've taken the stance of not publishing things to PyPi > until A> I find the time to contribute to make it better or B> It > changes.
Ditto, but maybe for different reasons. Personally, I'm interested in feedback - good and bad. That's the reason I choose odd names for projects, since it means I can create a google alert to find out random comments in bizarre locations (hence why when you wrote a blog entry, I responded). However, the reason I released anything onto PyPI (and relunctantly at that) was due to a random complaint that a user couldn't go "easy_install <foo>" and have it pick up code from PyPI. Going along with comments made elsewhere (by Guido I think) saying "but user's like reviews and rating when someone publishes a book", probably using Amazon, B&N & similar as examples, I agree they do. The closest equivalent here though IMO is somewhere like lulu.com - where people self-publish. Like PyPI that has a ratings system and comments, so you could say if it "works" there it should work for PyPI. The problem though is that software is much more mutable that a book. Taking the example listed - a comment added here: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/spypam/1.0 There's a note: "Inadequate docstrings give no clue about function arguments. Dumps core when I call it after reading the source to figure out the API. Cannot recommend." That's useful from a user perspective. Or is it? It's useful from a user perspective, until that issue is fixed. Then what? Is it still useful? Can the commenter remove it? Can they get notified it's changed? Can the maintainer say "this is fixed/changed?" I never look at the PyPI pages for stuff I create. Which means if someone is using it for support, they're wasting their time. (Why would I look at it? I know what the project is for and where to get it! :) (and also PyPI isn't the prime download for it either - so the download stats are irrelevant to me) I doubt I'm alone, so how many people's time are wasted asking questions there ? *shrug* I suppose, personally, I'm dubious about the idea of having unchanging comments and ratings associated with projects which are changing and improving - that feels like a mismatch. (Unlike a book, which generally is unchanging or has a separate edition and separate set of ratings and reviews) Incidentally, and perhaps probably more relevant to the discussion than my random opinion - some time back I created the twitter id http://twitter.com/pypi - using twitterfeed - since I wanted an easier way of following additions to pypi. There's currently 774 people following that. If there's interest, and if there's a survey to be done, I could forward a link to a survey through that twitterfeed - which I suspect is a mix of users of PyPI and uploaders to PyPI. (On a secondary note, if there's someone else who thinks they should own it, please let me know - it was a random convenience that people seem to find useful :-) Michael. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
