Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 6:14 AM, Jim Lemon <j...@bitwrit.com.au> wrote:
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.
I was referring to motivating authors, not users, so that CRAN improves.
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
These are nothing but the usual FUD against quality improvement, i.e. the
quality metrics are not measuring what you want but the fact is that
quality metrics can work and have had huge successes. Also I think
objective measures would be more accepted by authors than ratings.
No one is going to be put off that their package has no vignette when
obviously it doesn't and the authors are free to add one and instantly
improve their package's rating.
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.
I was arguing for objective metrics rather than ratings. Downloading is not
a rating but is objective although there are measurement problems as has
been pointed out. Also, the worst feature is that it does not react to changes
in quality very quickly making it anti-motivating.
Gabor I think your approach will have more payoff in the long run. I
would suggest one other metric: the number of lines of code in the
'examples' section of all the package's help files.
Frank
--
Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine
Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University
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