Re: Call for designers for our ports website

[Craig Treleaven]

> On Jun 13, 2020, at 2:24 PM, Arjun Salyan  wrote:
> 
> Thank you for the mockup and the inputs.
> 
> http://macports.silentfox.tech/port/gnuplot/stats/?days=365 
>  my version of 
> it does not look as good as yours probably due to a larger amount of data.
> 
> Thank you
> 

Thinking about it a little more, I would suggest using an area chart something 
like this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17Ch4dwgNNu7Nv5wGrzFguDV7m5v3prwJ/view?usp=sharing
 


Using areas rather than stacked bars emphasizes the trends in the data 
(presenting it as changing uniformly throughout the month).  In this chart, it 
highlights how the installed base of a port migrates to a new version over time 
(with some holdouts).

Conversely, I would suggest the that “Port installations by month” chart should 
be a bar chart rather than an area chart.  

Note that I wasn’t trying to suggest that we need a table of numeric 
percentages alongside the graphical representation.  I think  the table will be 
redundant with a good chart.

Also, a quibble on the word “users”.  More than a few of our users administer 
several systems that are all reporting statistics*.  We know how many systems 
are submitting stats but we really don’t know the number of individual users 
that represents.

Thanks for ‘sweating the details’ on this project!

Craig

* In fact, if MacPorts is installed in more than one prefix on a system, 
couldn’t each prefix be submitting statistics independently?

Re: Call for designers for our ports website

[Arjun Salyan]

Thank you for the mockup and the inputs.

http://macports.silentfox.tech/port/gnuplot/stats/?days=365 my version of
it does not look as good as yours probably due to a larger amount of data.

Thank you

Re: Call for designers for our ports website

[Ken Cunningham]

sorry —we’re 835 openssl installs. wrong drop-down.

K

> On Jun 13, 2020, at 8:56 AM, Ken Cunningham  
> wrote:
> 
> No doubt it caused some tempest.
> 
> I was wrong, homebrew’s published stats say they have 5 million openssl 
> installs this year  >
> 
> and our analytics say we have 547 
>  >
> 
> And if you think that doesn’t drive everyone’s decision-making extremely 
> powerfully, I would say we are missing the marketing train.
> 
> Here’s their blurb  > about justifying it.
> 
> Again, I know MacPorts is not going to change that (no point now). But from a 
> ‘business’ point of view, it was masterful.
> 
> 
> K
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 13, 2020, at 8:25 AM, Andrew Janke > > wrote:
>> 
>> Hi y'all,
>> 
>> I was a core Homebrew maintainer at the time they added analytics. Just
>> want to say that Saagar is right; there were a *lot* of Homebrew users
>> who did in fact have a problem with it.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Andrwe
>> 
>> 
>> On 6/12/20 9:03 PM, Saagar Jha wrote:
>>> I believe the lack of change there is almost certainly a matter of the 
>>> project’s personal stance rather than “nobody having a problem with it”. In 
>>> fact, after the change was merged in there was a fairly long discussion 
>>> about first disclosing that there were analytics collected at all (which 
>>> did eventually get implemented) and then switching off of Google Analytics 
>>> or making it opt-in, which weren’t. Actually, there were multiple 
>>> discussions but they like the original were generally closed as “WONTFIX” 
>>> and this has been the policy to this day.
>>> 
>>> Personally, I would be fairly disappointed if MacPorts went opt-in as such 
>>> policies suffer from statistical issues in addition to the obvious 
>>> privacy-related ones.
>>> 
>>> Saagar Jha
>>> 
 On Jun 12, 2020, at 16:48, Ken Cunningham >>> > wrote:
 
 Just FYI Homebrew has always been opt-out for stats. Nobody seems to have 
 a problem with that sufficient to make them change that policy.
 
 We'll never know if that is why they seem to have 10 x the users on their 
 stats page.
 
 K
>> 
> 

Re: Call for designers for our ports website

[Ken Cunningham]

No doubt it caused some tempest.

I was wrong, homebrew’s published stats say they have 5 million openssl 
installs this year >

and our analytics say we have 547 
>

And if you think that doesn’t drive everyone’s decision-making extremely 
powerfully, I would say we are missing the marketing train.

Here’s their blurb > about justifying it.

Again, I know MacPorts is not going to change that (no point now). But from a 
‘business’ point of view, it was masterful.


K





> On Jun 13, 2020, at 8:25 AM, Andrew Janke  wrote:
> 
> Hi y'all,
> 
> I was a core Homebrew maintainer at the time they added analytics. Just
> want to say that Saagar is right; there were a *lot* of Homebrew users
> who did in fact have a problem with it.
> 
> Cheers,
> Andrwe
> 
> 
> On 6/12/20 9:03 PM, Saagar Jha wrote:
>> I believe the lack of change there is almost certainly a matter of the 
>> project’s personal stance rather than “nobody having a problem with it”. In 
>> fact, after the change was merged in there was a fairly long discussion 
>> about first disclosing that there were analytics collected at all (which did 
>> eventually get implemented) and then switching off of Google Analytics or 
>> making it opt-in, which weren’t. Actually, there were multiple discussions 
>> but they like the original were generally closed as “WONTFIX” and this has 
>> been the policy to this day.
>> 
>> Personally, I would be fairly disappointed if MacPorts went opt-in as such 
>> policies suffer from statistical issues in addition to the obvious 
>> privacy-related ones.
>> 
>> Saagar Jha
>> 
>>> On Jun 12, 2020, at 16:48, Ken Cunningham  
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Just FYI Homebrew has always been opt-out for stats. Nobody seems to have a 
>>> problem with that sufficient to make them change that policy.
>>> 
>>> We'll never know if that is why they seem to have 10 x the users on their 
>>> stats page.
>>> 
>>> K
> 

Re: Call for designers for our ports website

[Andrew Janke]

Hi y'all,

I was a core Homebrew maintainer at the time they added analytics. Just
want to say that Saagar is right; there were a *lot* of Homebrew users
who did in fact have a problem with it.

Cheers,
Andrwe


On 6/12/20 9:03 PM, Saagar Jha wrote:
> I believe the lack of change there is almost certainly a matter of the 
> project’s personal stance rather than “nobody having a problem with it”. In 
> fact, after the change was merged in there was a fairly long discussion about 
> first disclosing that there were analytics collected at all (which did 
> eventually get implemented) and then switching off of Google Analytics or 
> making it opt-in, which weren’t. Actually, there were multiple discussions 
> but they like the original were generally closed as “WONTFIX” and this has 
> been the policy to this day.
>
> Personally, I would be fairly disappointed if MacPorts went opt-in as such 
> policies suffer from statistical issues in addition to the obvious 
> privacy-related ones.
>
> Saagar Jha
>
>> On Jun 12, 2020, at 16:48, Ken Cunningham  
>> wrote:
>>
>> Just FYI Homebrew has always been opt-out for stats. Nobody seems to have a 
>> problem with that sufficient to make them change that policy.
>>
>> We'll never know if that is why they seem to have 10 x the users on their 
>> stats page.
>>
>> K

Re: Call for designers for our ports website

[Craig Treleaven]

> On Jun 12, 2020, at 10:30 PM, Arjun Salyan  wrote:
> 
> Hi Craig,
> 
> Thank you. You make a valid point regarding the possible distortion due to 
> weekly submissions being bundled to calculate monthly charts. 
> 
> But what we are seeing here is a known issue with the query that calculates 
> this chart.
> https://github.com/macports/macports-webapp/issues/79 
> 
> 
> The current query has a limitation. Let’s say we receive two submissions from 
> a user within one month. One has port version X.1 and the other has upgraded 
> version X.2, then this query counts that user as using both the versions and 
> not just the latest one. This is the cause for the sudden jump in Mar 2020. 
> This problem is only with the "versions vs month" chart and should be fixed 
> soon. Rest all charts, including "installations by month" display accurate 
> information (https://ports.macports.org/port/gnuplot/stats?days=365 
> ).
> 
> Thank you for the percentage suggestion. I am just wondering the right way to 
> display that information graphically.
> 
> I was trying to combine "installations by months" and "versions by month", 
> but it turns out they would be better separate.
> 
> Thank you
> 
> 

The following is a quick mockup of how versions over time might be reported:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1piEDpd_rq5xnSMAgEsvLO5eu9uu70OpV/view?usp=sharing
 


To display percentages, I don’t think we need the ‘count distinct’.  Suppose 
only a single system is reporting that it uses a particular port and that port 
is updated during the month.  Suppose further, that the first two reports in 
the month from that single system say it is using version 1.0 and the last two 
say it is has version 1.1 installed.  Given the way we collect stats, I think 
it would be accurate to report usage as 50% for each of the versions of the 
port for that month.  Over the course of the month, that was what was reported.

Either that or only use the last report for the month and have the date 
displayed as the last day of each month.

Craig