[aur-dev] AUR bad package moderation queue

[Dan McGee]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 9:38 PM, elij <elij.mx at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
>> We now have 29998 packages and counting in the AUR, of which 8122 have
>> never been updated since initial upload, and I would guess another
>> 8000 are also steaming piles of...something.
>>
>> My suggestion is a moderation deletion/cleanup queue that is visible
>> only to Trusted Users to prevent the public from seeing it as a
>> numbers game, and to prevent abuse. It would work as follows:
>>
>> 1. Package pages get a "Flag as Sh*t" (or equivalent) button,
>> available to all logged in users. Perhaps there is a "reason" box.
>> 2. Users start flagging packages. Whether a package has been flagged
>> or not is not visible to anyone except TUs.
>> 3. These flaggings are tracked and a TU moderation page is available
>> for perusal. Heading the list are packages that got the most bad votes
>> in descending order. Next might be those packages that have never been
>> updated.
>> 4. TUs can then review, on their own time, these bad packages. From
>> there, they can do one of three things: a) delete it on the spot, b)
>> comment and suggest improvements and delay the decision, or c) mark
>> the package as non-sh*t, which will prevent the package from being
>> flagged again for a 3-6 month span.
>>
>> Thoughts? The only goal here is to make the AUR more usable and not
>> have to wade through old/outdated/less than well built packages.
>
> From a feature-proposal standpoint though, I sounds very reasonable
> and much needed.
>
> A bit bikesheddy here...but wording like 'report package', and
> functionally like how the bbs has a 'report post' feature, makes a
> good deal of sense. I think 'flag' (the name you used) is a bit of a
> loaded term. The main site uses 'flag' to mean marking packages as out
> of date, and I think users are trained in that regard. I think end
> users being confused and conflating the two (flag out of data and
> report as bad) would be problematic and counterproductive to TUs
> trying to clean things up. As long as the functionality is clearly
> distinct and easy for end users to discern between, it should be very
> useful.

I don't disagree with the "flag" being overloaded- this came up in an
IM conversation and "Flag as shit" was the term used there, so it
carried straight into the email. I think "Report Package", with an
opportunity to give a line or two of feedback, would be the best way
to go about this.

-Dan