Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
R-Forge already has this but I don't think its used much. R-Forge
does allow authors to opt out which seems sensible lest it deter
potential authors from submitting packages.
I think objective quality metrics are better than ratings, e.g. does package
have a vignette, has package had a release within the last year,
does package have free software license, etc. That would have
the advantage that authors might react to increase their package's
quality assessment resulting in an overall improvement in quality on CRAN
that would result in more of a pro-active cycle whereas ratings are reactive
and don't really encourage improvement.
I beg to offer an alternative assessment of quality. Do users download
the package and find it useful? If so, they are likely to download it
again when it is updated. Much as I appreciate the convenience of
vignettes, regular updates and the absolute latest GPL license, a
perfectly dud package can have all of these things. If a package is
downloaded upon first release and not much thereafter, the maintainer
might be motivated to attend to its shortcomings of utility rather than
incrementing the version number every month or so. Downloads, as many
have pointed out, are not a direct assessment of quality, but if I saw a
package that just kept getting downloaded, version after version, I
would be much more likely to check it out myself and perhaps even write
a review for Hadley's neat site. Which I will try to do tonight.
Jim
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