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CPAN Ratings: the social failings of a useful system 6 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • how do we get people to direct comments (even if we knew where those should go) and bug reports to their respective, correct venues?

    How about some review guidelines just above the "Review" box? Such as:

    "Do not use this to report bugs, it is likely the author will never see it and it won't get fixed. Please report bugs via [link to the distribution's rt queue]."

    Ironically, use.perl is not the bug report forum for cpanratings. :) I'll mention this thread to Ask so he sees it.

    While I'm at it:

    "Think be

    • Hey, thanks for the comments. I am aware that this is not the bugreport forum for cpanratings :) (though I’m not sure what is), but I wasn’t reporting bugs so much as hoping to kick off a bit of discussion. (Maybe I should post to Perlmonks as well.)

      Some explanatory text would certainly help. It won’t suffice, I think, but it sure would be an improvement over the current situation. Having ratings mailed to authors is a good suggestion, but I’m not sure how it relates to my points;

      • I am aware that this is not the bugreport forum for cpanratings :) (though I’m not sure what is)

        About [perl.org] says to email ask@perl.org.

        (Maybe I should post to Perlmonks as well.)

        Speaking of places where bugs are reported which never get back to the author.

        Having ratings mailed to authors is a good suggestion, but I’m not sure how it relates to my points; was it supposed to, did I miss something?

        I was just sort of on a roll at that point. If nothing else it means the authors might actually read the ratings and consider them. It also means that should someone report a bug via CPAN ratings the author will see it.

        As for the ratings: basically, to me, 1 means...

        Which is the whole point. Rating numbers mean different things to different people. One needs to assign a standard meaning to each number. Or better yet, eliminate the discrete numbers entirely and just use a slider with descriptions of what each range on the slider means.

        Do you have any suggestions on the general “talking back” issue? I think that is the most important to address, and it won’t easily be helped by a bit of explanatory text or such either.

        Email still works. :) Just about every author has an user@cpan.org address. Its best way to guarantee the author, any author, will get your message.

        rt.cpan.org works for bugs as it emails the author.

        The rest don't push content back to the author so they're unreliable. Maybe the author reads it, maybe they don't. This includes cpanratings and the new CPAN Forum [cpanforum.com]. CPAN Forum has some support for message push but you can't say "push me content about all my modules" you have to sign up for each one individually and I'm not about to bother for 50+ modules. Its also opt-in and most module authors don't even know it exists.

        So the problem common to most existing ways to bitch about modules is that the people who can do something about it, the author, likely never sees it. I don't read Perlmonks. Every once in a while I sweep it for people reporting bugs about my modules and throw up another "talk to the author, damnit!" rant but that's work. If any feedback system is going to work it has to:

        • A: Push content back to the author.
        • B: Be opt-out, not opt-in.
        • C: Carefully manage the volume so as not to annoy the author.

        rt.cpan.org and user@cpan.org succeeded in this despite many authors howling that they didn't want it imposed on them and never wanted to hear about it. An opt-out option for rt.cpan.org was proposed for those who objected the loudest but I don't think it was ever implmented as, in the end, it turned out to be a great thing for all.

        • Speaking of places where bugs are reported which never get back to the author.

          Uh, I did say that the intent was to get some discussion going to exchange ideas maybe, not to report a bug. The issues I brought up are no bugs; see also the title I chose.

          Just about every author has an user@cpan.org address. Its best way to guarantee the author, any author, will get your message.

          I agree, but that isn’t the direction I was talking about. I was wondering how the author (or someone else) could respo

          •     Speaking of places where bugs are reported which never get back to the author.

            Uh, I did say that the intent was to get some discussion going to exchange ideas maybe, not to report a bug. The issues I brought up are no bugs; see also the title I chose.

            Just a general hate flung in the direction of Perlmonks. You just happened to be in the path.

            I agree, but that isn’t the direction I was talking about. I was wondering how the author (or someone else) could respond to a review(e

            • Ah! Of course. Noone but the author really needs to respond to a review. Good thinking. I’ll add one minor point: an author should not be able to post “self-reviews.”

              I think together with the stuff I wrote in reply to Ask that makes a cohesive set of proposed changes to mitigate the problems we currently see. I’ll summarize these in an email to him and see if I can lend a hand with the implementation.

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