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#1 2005-07-28 17:46:30

sarah31
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From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
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Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

I told one or several developers/tus or whatever that the voting system was not going to work.  There are lots of different packages with few users or lots of apps that do the same thing that spread the votes out .... if people are even willing to vote. It is much like bug filing, most people don't do it or don't even care until a bug is an issue. If you removed certain package then you might get some more notice from people.

I long ago said I was opposed to a voting for what was and wasn't included in whatever repo because there are all sort of realy good small apps out there that fill a specific need and not many people may have that very same need. For example I would have been bitter if rip had been removed from the repos because until I got my Powerbook I was using rip as my music ripper and I really did not like any of the other numerous apps that arch had for the same purpose at that time. As far as I know I was probably the only one that used it. 

transcode was the same. with respect to transcode it was a good thing I did put it in because it is the groundwork for the more popular apps that people use that act as a frontend to transcode.

fin.


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

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#2 2005-07-28 17:50:14

ozar
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From: USA
Registered: 2005-02-18
Posts: 1,686

Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

I don't remember ever voting but then I haven't used any packages from AUR.  If I should use some in the future, I'll try to remember to place a vote.


oz

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#3 2005-07-28 17:56:31

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

It's worth noting, sarah, that my announcement was to encourage people to REMEMBER to vote - not to strong arm them.  It is possible to use the AUR PKGBUILDs without registering - if you don't register you can't vote.

I see people all the time talking about a pkg in the AUR that no-one has voted for.  Once people get into the habit of voting for pkgs they use I think things will improve a little but not hugely.

I mean, for crying out loud, after I made that annoucement I checked how many votes I had cast.  You know how many? 1.  How pathetic is that?  And I am probably login to the AUR more than anyone else on the forum - how pathetic is that?

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#4 2005-07-28 18:05:20

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

Why is it pathetic? As Sarah says, many of the AUR packages are somewhat niche. Perhaps it is assumed that all Archers *need* the packages currently listed in the AUR, but the truth must be that the majority of users are well served by the main current/extra repos alone, and don't even need to give the AUR a lookin.

I think the AUR serves the package builders rather than the users, and will probably be that way until the AUR is better integrated into the core Arch apps like pacman or makepkg.

If voting can't be relied upon, perhaps the AUR devs can monitor package activity on the site and gauge popular packages by hits counts and the like.

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#5 2005-07-28 18:09:23

dtw
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

I dunno if you have properly read my post there, mate, based on what you have said.  Would it clarify if I said i then went and voted for all the ones i use? 

I agree with pretty much everything you said, and i said most of it in my annoucement.  Hits on downloads is a jolly good idea!

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#6 2005-07-28 18:20:01

phrakture
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Registered: 2003-10-29
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

dibblethewrecker wrote:

I agree with pretty much everything you said, and i said most of it in my annoucement.  Hits on downloads is a jolly good idea!

That's actually be rumored for a bit - but it's too complicated to do accurately - I mean, if I really wanted a package, I could download it a few hundred times (for i in `seq 1 1001; do wget http://aur.archlinux.org/blah; done) and get a bunch of votes on it...

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#7 2005-07-28 18:25:59

mint
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From: /home/mint
Registered: 2005-06-09
Posts: 6

Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

Is the vote count supposed to be indiciative of a certain number of users?

In that case, shouldn't most packages have at least 1 vote?  I make PKGBUILDs for software that I use because it's easier to make a package (in most cases) than to try to manage a ton of software built from source by hand.

Would it be possible to inclued a download count in AUR, so that you would get a roughly too high count to counter the roughly too low count you get with the voting?

[edit] Sorry for the redundancy of opinion.  I didn't read carefully enough before I hopped on the keyboard.

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#8 2005-07-28 18:28:03

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

That's actually be rumored for a bit - but it's too complicated to do accurately - I mean, if I really wanted a package, I could download it a few hundred times (for i in `seq 1 1001; do wget http://aur.archlinux.org/blah; done) and get a bunch of votes on it...

Well then it would probably be very obvious then that there's an unnatural surge in activity. Of course, I never envisiged a system as crude as raw hit counts. But at the end of the day, how ruthless do you think Archers are?

Also, is there any monitoring of the maintained packages already in the repos? It could turn out there are a number of packages that the devs maintain which are in fact never used.

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#9 2005-07-28 18:35:12

dtw
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

arooaroo wrote:

Also, is there any monitoring of the maintained packages already in the repos? It could turn out there are a number of packages that the devs maintain which are in fact never used.

Yuuuuup that's under discussion as well

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#10 2005-07-28 18:46:23

phrakture
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Registered: 2003-10-29
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

arooaroo wrote:

That's actually be rumored for a bit - but it's too complicated to do accurately - I mean, if I really wanted a package, I could download it a few hundred times (for i in `seq 1 1001; do wget http://aur.archlinux.org/blah; done) and get a bunch of votes on it...

Well then it would probably be very obvious then that there's an unnatural surge in activity. Of course, I never envisiged a system as crude as raw hit counts. But at the end of the day, how ruthless do you think Archers are?

Also, is there any monitoring of the maintained packages already in the repos? It could turn out there are a number of packages that the devs maintain which are in fact never used.

I think the idea in the works now is to use archstats to get counts of who's using what package.

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#11 2005-07-28 18:56:15

arooaroo
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

phrakture wrote:

I think the idea in the works now is to use archstats to get counts of who's using what package.

So presumably we can expect another appeal from Dibble telling us that we really ought to be using ArchStats, right?

I'm not saying it's a bad idea. However, I just fear another data sparsity problem.

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#12 2005-07-28 19:03:59

dtw
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

Well, aroo, the obvious answers is that everybody just has to do their bit for the good of the distro.  Its an age old problem.  To be honest AUR submissions are through the roof and wildly beyond my expectations.

Asking people to vote to benefit themselves hardly seems like a big expectation.  All we are discussing here is basically how we can reduce users responsibility for contributing - which sucks!

We, TUs and devs, can't force people to use the systems that have been provided for them, then we cop it when we do things people don't like!  I have yet to do that tho smile

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#13 2005-07-28 19:53:05

Shofs
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From: Central Illinois
Registered: 2004-12-15
Posts: 184

Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

phrakture wrote:
arooaroo wrote:

I think the idea in the works now is to use archstats to get counts of who's using what package.

That seems like the best idea to me. There are over 1000 archstat users, of which I would assume 50% or more update that info regularly.

I have voted for some AUR packages, not many but some. I will vote for a package when I use it. Are there any statistics on how many packages are being used from the AUR? I havn't used it in some time so correct me if I am wrong but you use a PKGBUILD, you simply copy and paste it into vim or whatever.
Maybe if there was download link we could track which packages are being tested even if not used in the long term by the users. Then archstats can track which packages are really being used a lot by the public.

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#14 2005-07-28 20:37:39

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

Not everybody has to vote, of course. It's just nice to know if, say 40% of people that find a package useful actually vote for it, then we have an estimate of how many are using it.

Dusty

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#15 2005-07-28 23:06:10

xerxes2
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From: Malmoe, Sweden
Registered: 2004-04-23
Posts: 1,249
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

this matter will be taken up in the next newsletter,
both as a headline and a faq,

q: why can't i install my favourite packages in aur with pacman?

a: well, in that case you and your friends must vote for it and hopefully some tu will pick it up and move it to [community].


arch + gentoo + initng + python = enlisy

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#16 2005-07-28 23:13:06

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

Dusty wrote:

Not everybody has to vote, of course. It's just nice to know if, say 40% of people that find a package useful actually vote for it, then we have an estimate of how many are using it.

Dusty

But maybe ~40% have voted. It may only be 1 or 2 people out of 3 or 4 total users. I can only assume Dibble is privvy to more information that enables him to conclude that there is a low voter turnout. However, from an outsiders point of view, we have no metrics to gauge how under utilitised the voting system is. Until stats can be gathered for number of unqiue downloaders of PKGBUILD X, number of people who still have X installed and number of those with X installed and voted, then we won't be any nearer than just plucking figures out of the air.

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#17 2005-07-29 20:57:43

Cotton
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From: Cornwall, UK
Registered: 2004-09-17
Posts: 568

Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

Is it possible to vote for an application more than once?

I often look through the AUR and occassionally vote for a package since I can't remember whether I've already voted for it.

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#18 2005-07-29 21:55:52

citral
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Registered: 2005-05-07
Posts: 87

Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

Cotton wrote:

Is it possible to vote for an application more than once?

I often look through the AUR and occasionally vote for a package since I can't remember whether I've already voted for it.

Next to the 'votes' column there should be a column named 'voted'. In this column there should be a 'Yes' next to the packages you voted for. And aside of that, you can only vote for a package once with a single account.

And on-topic:
IMO when you add a package, you should automatically get your own vote on it. Or disable voting on your own packages.

I mean, would you ever add a package, and explicitly not want to vote for it? You can "unvote", if you really want to.
Also when I use an App from AUR that I like, and I see it has 0 votes, I'm like, why should I bother voting for the package if the maintainer himself hasn't even bothered?
Some people are too humble to vote on their own packages, and some are just too lazy.


One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero,
they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.

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#19 2005-07-29 22:02:01

phrakture
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From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

citral wrote:

I mean, would you ever add a package, and explicitly not want to vote for it? You can "unvote", if you really want to.
Also when I use an App from AUR that I like, and I see it has 0 votes, I'm like, why should I bother voting for the package if the maintainer himself hasn't even bothered?
Some people are too humble to vote on their own packages, and some are just too lazy.

What if you make a package for another user...? I've done that numerous times in the past...

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#20 2005-07-29 22:08:07

iBertus
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From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

I wouldn't vote for my own package because I'd already responsable for the package and thus wouldn't need it to be in any repo. I would just be sharing the PKGBUILD for others. I wouldn't consider myself part of the user community for that package.

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#21 2005-07-29 22:19:08

citral
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Registered: 2005-05-07
Posts: 87

Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

phrakture wrote:

What if you make a package for another user...? I've done that numerous times in the past...

You have a point, but you could unvote the package if you really don't like the package.

iBertus wrote:

I wouldn't vote for my own package because I'd already responsable for the package and thus wouldn't need it to be in any repo. I would just be sharing the PKGBUILD for others. I wouldn't consider myself part of the user community for that package.

That's an argument against being able to vote on your own packages in the first place. I'm happy with that also.

But it just doesn't feel right that some packages get voted by their maintainers, while most packages are not (because the maintainer can't be bothered).


One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero,
they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.

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#22 2005-07-29 22:34:49

phrakture
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From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

citral wrote:

But it just doesn't feel right that some packages get voted by their maintainers, while most packages are not (because the maintainer can't be bothered).

Hmm... I'll give you that one.  Can you post this to the AUR bug tracker, so Paul and Neotuli can see if - it should be an easy fix to auto-vote when you submit....

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#23 2005-07-29 22:37:01

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
Posts: 4,439
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

This does seem like a very minor point, we're talking about one vote here!  it'll hardly make or break a decision...I don't vote for my own for the following reasons:

a) my UNSUPPORTED pkgs - if thought they should be in [community] i'd put them straight in there and so I'm not going to vote for them cos I don't think they should be in [community] but i want to share the PKGBUILD

b) the ones in [community] - they're in [community] I don't need to vote for them

big_smile

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#24 2005-08-23 16:40:46

blum
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From: Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-04-05
Posts: 77
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

I was a little curious about voting in AUR, and I decided to vote for something there.. and I couldn't smile maybe I'm too stupid, but I couldn't find the way to vote. Can anybody learn the aborigine?


..,

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#25 2005-08-23 17:16:18

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Why the AUR voting system is not very popular

blum wrote:

I was a little curious about voting in AUR, and I decided to vote for something there.. and I couldn't smile maybe I'm too stupid, but I couldn't find the way to vote. Can anybody learn the aborigine?

You can only vote if you are logged in (to prevent the same person voting on the same package more than once, I guess). If you haven't registered, you need to do so.

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