Cpan Ratings (Was: Future of the Module List)

2004-07-15 Thread Smylers 
Randy W. Sims writes:

 Not long ago I was exploring the cpanratings site and discovered the
 unhelpful rampage by one particular reviewer
 http://cpanratings.perl.org/a/181.

Why do you think Randal's comments are unhelpful?  Personally whenever
I'm (considering) downloading a module I haven't used before I read any
reviews it has.  It would never've occurred to me that an author
would've have put default phone-home behaviour into a distribution's
installer, but on reading Randal's review of a module I'd then be aware
of it in advance.

That's certainly useful information to have.  Admittedly when you look
at the page giving all Randal's reviews there is a fair amount of
repetition going on, but the information he gives is pertinent to every
one of those modules, so it's the only way of ensuring the message
reaches potential users of all of the modules.

Actually I'm much more concerned by the opposite problem, that people
give 5 stars to modules they use lots and don't bother reviewing other
modules, or ones they tried a bit but gave up on -- partly, I suspect,
cos if you never quite got into a module properly then you feel it'd be
unfair to review it.  Look at one of the modules that Randal reviews,
CGI::Builder:

  http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/CGI-Builder

That's a flurry of 5-star reviews in a very short space of time.  I
suspect that isn't a co-incidence -- perhaps there's a CGI::Builder
mailing list somewhere that had a recent post encouraging users to
review the module?  There isn't anything wrong with that[*0], but it
could distort the value of reviews over all.

Cpan Ratings is still young.  Let's give it some more time to pan out; I
think it's one of the better ideas out there.

There's also some degree of a chicken-and-egg situation going on, but
once the site has more reviews in it there'll be more reason for people
to consult it and for places to link to it more prominently.

  [*0]  Well, there are ways in which such a mail could be phrased that
  would be wrong; but simply soliciting genuine reviews from genuine
  users can hardly be faulted.

Smylers

Re: New module: Regexp::Trie

2004-07-15 Thread Paul Johnson 
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 11:08:20PM +, Smylers wrote:

 The docs that come with Perl seem to use regexp in the most
 official-looking places (section heading in perlop) and the warning
 classification is also spelt that way.
 
  There are 688 modules with Regex in their name, and 582 with Regexp,
  so I don't think a clear consensus has emerged.  :)

 Restricting the search just to module names gives the much more
 plausible numbers of 128 for Regex and 81 for Regexp.  Given that
 the former necessarily include the latter, that's actually a ratio of
 81:46 in favour of Regex, for what it's worth.
 
 More to the point, a good reason to use Regexp is that it turns up in
 search results for either spelling, so by choosing the longer version
 you aren't relying on others to remember whether it's got that p in it
 or not.

$ perl -le 'print ref qr//'
Regexp

-- 
Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.pjcj.net

Re: New Module: Time::Seconds::GroupedBy

2004-07-15 Thread Sean M. Burke 
At 06:00 AM 2004-07-14, Bruno Negrão wrote:
Hi Sean,  i coudn't get what you mean (it is too colloquial for my poor 
english understanding...) What do you mean? Should i keep on this project 
or give it up?
Oops, sorry.  I think you should go ahead with your project.
--
Sean M. Burkehttp://search.cpan.org/~sburke/