[aur-general] Proposed rules for packages entering [community]

[Drew Frank]

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 8:10 AM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 5:52 AM, bardo <ilbardo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 9:54 AM, Kristoffer Fossgård <kfs1 at online.no> wrote:
>>> Your all missing my point. I never said counting packages by
>>> downloadrate is a perfect solution but that IT IS GOOD ENOUGH _and_
>>> BETTER THAN THE VOTE SYSTEM.
>>
>> That's what I thought. Even monitoring a single download mirror could
>> be enough, if it's not an obscure and unpopular one. At least gathered
>> data would be statistically *relevant*, even though not accurate. We
>> can think of a single mirror as a good approximation of the whole
>> community, excluding i18n/l10n packages, which are highly dependendt
>> on the physical location of the mirror itself.
>
> Guys. I have to point out a flaw in this reasoning. We are talking
> about packages _entering_ community. [...]

This is a good point.  However, some people have mentioned that it
would be nice to prune [community] of unused packages, too, if we had
a reliable way of detecting them.  Thus, I think it makes sense to
consider tracking [community] package usage as well if a new usage
tracking system is developed.

> Again, just downloading a package does not mean I like it or use it.
> As someone previously stated: if you tell me you've never installed a
> packaged, tried it, and removed it because you didn't like it, you're
> probably lying.

I do this all the time as well.  One possible solution: if an "I use
this!" message were sent to the stat-tracking server automatically
from pacman upon installing a package, it would not be much of an
extension to send a "Oops, not anymore" message when it is
uninstalled.  Thoughts?