[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index]

Re: [school-discuss] Pledge to Review and Rate Schoolforge.net resources. Was: Credibility of OA Texts



For software, I think information on whether it's a portable app or has an installer or is available for a specific distribution should already be part of the project information at the Schoolforge site, not part of each review.  I also feel the dependencies should be listed in that information.  (Does it run via an interpreter like Perl or Ruby?  Does it need Java support?  Does it require certain dependencies to build and run like specific screen libraries?)  I don't think the reviewer should have to go over that again.  That should hopefully make its way into the original entry information for the application.
 
When I choose software, I usually look at several factors and if enough of the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, I consider it.  First issue is how buggy is the program.  If it's too buggy to operate, I'll find something else.  If it has a functionality I really need and it's buggy, I may overlook that and just use it for that one function.  I look to see if a program is cross-platform, because I prefer not to be locked into one operating system.  (Someone else may prefer programs optimized specifically for their machine.)  I check if it's easy to get executables for the platforms or if there are no executables if I can build it myself or not.  I check if the program is interpreted or compiled for performance reasons.  I prefer compiled to interpreted.  I'll check what language it's coded in, because it's easier for me to debug some languages over others.  I think (I hope) most of these issues should be covered in the original software description at Schoolforge.
 
As to reviews, we might want to get a rating of how buggy users think a program is.  We might want to have users list in their reviews what they actually use the program for.  Also, if it's used in conjunction with other programs, what other programs are used with it?  We might want information or ratings on how friendly/active/helpful the community developing and using the software is.  Will they take patches?  Do they have the technical expertise to answer user questions?  Are they polite when asked for help?  We might want to review how well documented software is.  Is there good documentation available to explain how to use the software or is it intuitive and doesn't need much documentation or is it hard to figure out?  It might be interesting to know if a reviewer prefers this as his favorite application in some area or to perform a certain functionality or if the reviewer finds something else more useful.  For instance, if you ask me what text editor I use the most, I'd say SciTE.  If you asked me what text editor I use on a console, I'd say nano or pico.  I have quite a few graphics programs on my machine.  Some I use all the time for certain tasks and some I use only once in a while.  Maybe there could be a way to mention what tasks you use the program for and whether or not it would be your first choice to accomplish certain tasks.  Maybe we could rate the software and using it for a very specific task with something like would always use it for the task, would use it often, would use it sometimes/occasionally, would use it if nothing better was available, would never use it.  A reviewer could then follow that up with why or give details what works better for that task in their case.
 
One problem with rating systems is that each user is going to have their own personal preferences.  Command line versus GUI, all-in-one versus single task functionality, cross-platform versus platform optimized, compiled versus interpreted.  If you don't have a reviewer with similar preferences, the review isn't very relevant for you.  Rating the quality of the reviewer only gives you how popular that reviewer's viewpoint is, not how close their standards and needs are to yours.  Maybe what you're looking for isn't what's the most popular software.
 
Sincerely,
Laura
 
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 11:17 AM, David Bucknell <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Good questions.  Anyone have any pointers?  I think he's on the right track, because people care about:

* installing -- easy? Did it work? Anything special to do?

* configuring -- easy?

* using -- what did you notice that was good?  What did you notice that seems as if it could be improved? 

* Overall -- would you recommend it?  Out of five stars, how many would you give it?

...

----- Message from jimjutte@xxxxxxxxx ---------
In any case, I don't mean to be difficult, but I would like to review software BUT... what are the criteria we are using? I wonder if we can post a few thoughts on this on the wiki... My first thoughts for example are very very rough. For example, Software has an installer... or software must install. Software is complete, or requires additional components such as Apache. Software works, or does not on such and such a machine. What type of support is available for the software... Just to get things going.