El 27/1/19 a las 2:07, bill-auger escribió: > On Sat, 26 Jan 2019 18:35:15 -0500 bill-auger wrote: >> such rankings could only lead to some projects optimizing >> for the "score" as to snowball it into the "leader" position; > > allow me to elaborate on that a bit - that was not merely a vague > prediction - it already happens - i have experienced it directly and > it is disturbing >
Trustability ranks can be adjusting for not trolling people. Deffining/ ranking software" quality" and user safety are different things. Quality can be very arbitrary. > recently, i was informed that one of my scripts had been added to a > a popular software repo (i do not care to promote it by name) - i looked > at it's entry on the web and noticed that every package is assigned > automated "scores" for quality, maintenance, popularity, and so on - my > script was assigned an extremely low score in all categories, so i > looked into their criteria out of curiosity - here are some of the more > ridiculous example of where my script fails so miserably: > > * if the project does not have at least 4 "badges" in its README file > on github, it loses points for "code quality" > * if the project does not use travis-ci, it loses points for "code > quality" - (IIRC, some points can be earned only by using premium > proprietary web services) > * if the project does not create an official "release" on github at > least once each month, it loses points in the "well maintained" > category > * and IIRC, it actually loses points for not having their specific > packaging metadata file prominently the root of the repo master branch > (precisely named with their corporate brand, of course); where it is > actually just pollution, as packaging metadata serves no purpose in > the release tarballs (aka. the git master branch) > > to put that into context, my script has been full-featured and stable > for probably a longer amount of time than that company has existed > - my script would not benefit from any of those "essential" prescribed > webby adornments; and we should hope that no one would be compelled to > add them, merely to achieve a better score on some gamified > "leader-board" > > it should be obvious that any developer who puts stock in such rankings > is going to spend a disproportionate amount of time catering to the > scoring system rather than getting any real work done; but if people > treat software development like a game, and put popularity as a priority > goal, then that is exactly what will happen, and it is actually > counter-productive to the goal of quality > > that is not to mention how insulting it is to an experienced developer > to be labeled with such badges of shame, when they know damn well that > their software is not poor quality; but that ignorant readers of such a > website which claims to be the authority on the topic are given exactly > that misleading impression > > so i would say that for the sake of being responsible net-izens, it > would actually be preferable not to want your favorite software featured > on such a website at all, and to recommend that no one accepts such > rankings at face value - it certainly does no favor for otherwise > responsible developers, and misleads users into valuing only those > prescribed generic quality criteria - most disturbingly, it rewards > developers for treating their craft as a game, and punishes the ones > who take they work more seriously, and who avoid adding unnecessary > baggage for frivolous "populous" reasons > > _______________________________________________ > libreplanet-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss > -- Julian Daich [email protected] FCL www.freecomputerlabs.org _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
