Hi, On 28 May 2013, at 10:14 PM, Stephen Rasku <macpo...@srasku.net> wrote:
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Chris Jones <jon...@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> On 28 May 2013, at 08:12 PM, Jean-François Caron <jfca...@phas.ubc.ca> wrote: >> >>> While download statistics might not be a good system, I do concur that >>> MacPorts very much would benefit from having a "discovery" mechanism by >>> which users find out about useful ports. Searching is nice, but it's not >>> discovery. Some kind of "top ports" list (however implemented) would be >>> useful, imho. >> >> Personally, I fail to see how a 'top ports' list would tell me much. The >> ports i find essential are likely very different from others, so i don't see >> how using some sort of a list showing the most used ports would help me in >> any way in choosing new ones to install. Some ports likely have a low user >> base, but never less are critical to those that need them, such as more >> esoteric ports from the science section. >> >> Maybe such a list might be of some limited interest to developers, so we >> know which ports are most used, and perhaps more usefully those without >> users, but beyond that i doubt such a list would tell us much or help users. >> What would help users i think would be to have a much better search/browsing >> interface, to allow them to browse available ports. >> >> Chris > > I think the discovery mechanism argument is valid. The search mechanism only > works if I know what I'm looking for. I don't know what I don't know but if > 90% of MacPorts users install a specific port I would check it out even if I > wasn't searching for it in particular. A better search interface would be an > improvement too but I usually just install what I know I want. I can see how for something that has a massive user base, such as the Apple 'App Store', a user based popularity poll would help to tell me something. I still maintain though that in general just because a lot of other users install something, does not mean i need to do the same, but if the statistics are large enough so you can start to discriminate within a specific category, it might be useful. This works for places like the App store, that has the massive user base needed, but i suspect MacPorts is no where near that so it really doesn't help. I still think a better documentation system would help more, so given a few keywords a user can search macports to find what ports are available and provide what they need, is more useful to MacPorts than some popularity based polling system. Chris > > ...Stephen >
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