Robert Kern a écrit :
While I do have a couple of packages on PyPI, I use PyPI as a consumer of packages much more frequently, every day in fact.
Another "consumer" opinion: when investigating a new package, I usually look for the following things, in that order:
1) the "big picture" description: is there a coherent design? does it fit my needs? On PyPI, the description field should provide that.
2) the changelog: is the project still alive? are bugs fixed, or just features added? is the code rewritten from scratch for each release? Well, every project on PyPI should have a public changelog, so a link to that fits my need.
3) documentation: I don't necessarily care for the number of lines, but more whether it is understandable and goes into sufficient detail to not leave me guessing. Again, a link to the docs fits my needs. A single number (number of documentation lines,...) does not.
4) a mailing list archive (or newsgroup, or web forum), where I'm looking for signs of a healthy community. I usually go for the -devel list, but a -user list will do as well if the committers keep an eye on it.
If a healthy community exists around a project, I will completely disregard comments, if present: time invested in the community speaks louder than the opinion of random bystanders. Only for small projects with no real community will I look at the comments (+ answers from the author) in order to make an opinion on the developpement process. I always disregard ratings.
So as a conclusion about comments, they can have their use for projects without a publicly archived mailing list, but can otherwise be *replaced* by a direct link to a list archive. This could be a reasonable default for PyPI: disable comments when a link to a list archive is provided.
While my experience may not be that of a typical user, I believe users will ultimately make use of all information they are provided. So it is important to provide the most relevant information, and not just what naive users ask for.
Cheers, B. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
