[Haskell-cafe] idea: ratings (or maybe comments) for packages in hackage

[Ben Gamari]

Charlie Paul <charlieap at gmail.com> writes:

> This has been proposed many times before, and each time everyone agrees
> that something like this is a good idea. However, like many good proposals,
> no one has put up code.
>
I also think that many Hackage improvements like this one were blocked on
Hackage 2. Now since this is finally in the wild it should be a bit
easier for people to pick up this sort of project.

> Also in this particular case, the devil is in the details. How do ratings
> transfer between versions? How do you account for the effects of bitrot?
>
Certainly there are tricky details to work out but I think a lot of the
work will be simply getting to the point where we can collect ratings
and stuff them into a database. After this there would need to be some
experimentation to work out the finer points you mention.

In my mind a rating would consist of some numeric rating (1-5, for instance,
perhaps along multiple dimensions, e.g.: quality of documentation, type-safety
of interface, performance) for a particular package. The user, date, and
current version number should also be recorded.

A zeroth-order approach for accounting for bit-rot might be to use a
simple temporally-weighted average. This would be simple to implement
and might even produce marginally useful results. Even if not, it's a
place to start.

Cheers,

- Ben
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