[aur-general] pkgstats and unused [community] packages

[Thorsten Töpper]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:29:38 -0700
Aaron Bull Schaefer <aaron at elasticdog.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 7:36 AM, Xyne <xyne at archlinux.ca> wrote:
> > I can see the point of removing orphans but I still think that
> > using pkgstats as a metric is a bad idea for everything else.
> > Casual users, i.e. those who are not actively involved on the forum
> > or IRC won't even be aware of pkgstats. Really, who installs a
> > distro and actively looks for a way to submit user data? And please
> > don't try to tell me that the only users who matter are the ones
> > who form the core community.
> >
> > Then you have the paranoid who won't submit anything, even if
> > they're a small group. Ultimately pkgstats only reflect the usage
> > of a small group of people with possibly skewed interests. (There
> > should be a few statisticians around so it would be interesting to
> > hear their analysis of this... let's face it, most people fail at
> > interpret ting statistical data and ultimately do so with a bias
> > that supports their own agenda... *cough*politicians*cough*.)*
> 
> 
> +57, these are all topics that were brought up during the original
> discussion of using pkgstats as a means to promote packages from
> unsupported to community, and they were never really addressed. Our
> system of 10 votes or 1% usage in pkgstats is completely arbitrary. We
> don't have any statistical means of backing up what those numbers
> actually mean; they were picked pretty much just because they sounded
> good. There was even a long-time Trusted User who resigned due to the
> frustration of arguing over these issues.
> 
> Anyway, my take on it is that as long as the packages aren't orphans
> that have been out of date for a *long* time, then what's the harm in
> keeping them in the repo? If the packages are being maintained anyway,
> it benefits everyone by having them in there, and unless we're running
> dangerously low on resources, the cleanup process isn't that
> necessary. If we _are_ running dangerously low on resources, is it
> better to drop software that may be used by a lot of people, or would
> it be better to campaign to raise some money for additional resources?
> I'm not saying that we never need to prune things up, but at this
> point in time, we don't have any good means of determining what needs
> to go aside from the personal judgement of our TUs, which luckily, is
> pretty reliable.

I did not have the time to actively participate in this discussion so
far but Xyne's and Aaron's opinions are pretty much the same that I
think. Moving orphans after some time is good, as people using those
can take care of them when they're in the AUR, but that's the only good
reason I see in this action. I agree on how the AUR cleanup was
proposed but except for the mentioned one, I don't see any really good
reason for doing this with the repository. 

-- 
Jabber: atsutane at freethoughts.de Blog: http://atsutane.freethoughts.de/
Key: 295AFBF4     FP: 39F8 80E5 0E49 A4D1 1341 E8F9 39E4 F17F 295A FBF4
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 222 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/aur-general/attachments/20101026/f8477173/attachment.bin>