Project quality indicator: rating system

downloads and usage info is all discussed in http://drupal.org/node/66015 and http://drupal.org/node/66013. however, in spite of the fact there's been *lots* of discussion about a rating system for project, i don't think anyone ever got around to submitting an issue about it. ;) so, i'm changing the title to focus the scope of this, but otherwise, leaving it open for discussions, patches, etc.

FYI, this is much lower priority for me than the new system for releasing Drupal contributions, so don't expect much to happen with this issue until all that plumbing is in place. once it's done, i think it'll be much easier to do the sorts of things you're talking about, anyway.

1 quick thought: should the projects themselves be rated, or individual branches of each project? a given project's DRUPAL-4-6 branch might be in pretty bad shape, but major clean-up was done in the port to DRUPAL-4-7 and now, the 4.7 version is much better, safer, etc, than the 4.6. i think a per-project rating system might be too limiting. however, of course it's a pain in the neck to have to duplicate your votes across different branches, if you think all branches are either good/bad in the same way. i don't know the answer to this, i'm just raising it for others to consider. as i said, i've got my hands/mind full thinking about the new release system... ;)

one way to deal with this is to allow a user to choose which version they're logging a review against, and display that in the review. For example,

"OMG THIS IS THE WORST MODULE EVER!!!"

(This review refers to the 4.3 version of Foo module)

As a non-programmer, a user rating system and comment system for drupal.org would be a great feature, It would allow me to receive the benefit of other people's experience and feedback (comments) with a particular module.

In respect to the user feedback & rating I suggest SIMPLE is best. Rate/comment on each branch!

I don't think this may be such a good idea. Developers are to be encourage to make their modules as good as possible.

However when you are looking for a module to provide a certain need, you as the site developer should install it and give it a try, before you decide it covers your sites needs. And this is all a different need I most cases I believe. Rating will only make site admins overlook modules that they may need, and by that never contribute any patch or queue any issues that will have it improved.

My last point would be that modules are being improved and some are being totally rewritten from time too time. This will also make existing votes irrelevant.

Good description, relevant tagging/module browsing AND live demostration provided from the module maintainer is the way to go. And we already have that.

subscribing ... (yeah, there should be a way to do this without emailing everyone)

For me, the lack of rating system for Drupal modules is one of the strongest weakness of this wonderful CMS. It makes difficult to choose modules (and Drupal does not even includes basic modules ie WYSIWYG)

Please have a look on Typo 3 module classifications : http://typo3.org/extensions/repository/popular/

Should this issue be against project module or against drupal.org?

Is there any reason that this needs to be integrated with project, except for the correlation with active branches? Could the different taxonomy terms on d.o corresponding to API versions suffice instead?

I've downloaded and installed too many really bad modules to think that providing critical feedback to developers is a bad idea -- it's the opposite of bad. Kudos to someone who writes a module as good as Drupal core; razzberries to someone who can't code but uploaded some POS that corrupted my database and caused me to lose ten hours. It doesn't need to be complicated; in fact, it shouldn't be complicated. There should be a place on the project screen for people who have downloaded and installed a module to vote on a five point scale whether or not they were satisfied. Coding a good module should be a source of pride; uploading a POS should be shameful, and the community can judge.

FYI: http://groups.drupal.org/node/3314

at long last, someone's going to dedicate a few months of serious effort on the whole question of project quality metrics, and it's going to be fantastic.

It's not just a matter of good or bad. A good module may not be what I need, and the more user comments the more chance I can find that out without having to download and test. I would *ALSO* like to know when it is a dog.

The number of contribs is now enormous and the need for this growing.

I have been thinking about this ever since I starting looking at Drupal 12 weeks ago...I have no idea how to implement it, but I think we need some sort of rating system/comment system on the modules...It would also help to know which modules are going to be resource intensive without installing and using the devel module to see...I would love to see something along these lines move forward...

This was proposed as a SoC project, though I don't know if it's going forward: http://groups.drupal.org/node/3335

@pwolanin -- did you not read my comment #12 above?

@dww - obviously not ;-) In any case, I'm excited by the prospects even if I'm not doing well on my reading comprehension.

Just came across this. I did end up getting the SoC project. I'm not sure that ratings will happen but the framework I'm building could easily integrate the rating data into the metrics.

Subscribing.

Very interesting project!

a part of this would be issue rating, you find it here.

http://drupal.org/node/42232

Drat, just realized this is duplicate: http://drupal.org/node/50605
Let's move discussion there.

The funny thing is I have a module I created for a client which does exactly this. It rates nodes, using a rating system like Fivestar and using 'review' nodes as comments. It doesn't use the Voting API (because of my ignorance of it) but it works okay otherwise. It even allows for voting on specific categories, and provides some choices on how to tabulate the votes.

I'll code review it and submit it as a project so people can test it out. Not sure if it is really production ready or not, but it is pretty simple.

Dave

Hi Dave,

Can you tell us the link to your module please?
Thanks in advance!

greetings,
Martijn

I've just migrated from Joomla (used it over 2 years) to Drupal. While I'm very happy about the core, I'm a bit lost when it comes to the modules or themes. I've some knowledge about coding but I'm not a developer, so it's kind of hard to decide which module is good (funcionality, usability, quality of code) and which one isn't. I could do it on a trial and error basis, but honestly I've whether the time nor feel like it. So a rating solution would be great. Maybe more than just one global rating, maybe a rating for the usability, for the functionality and for the (code) quality, because a developer sets the focus sometimes totally different then a user and vice versa...

Sorry, that I jump just into this thread...maybe this was already posted, but here too, I'm a bit lost right now...need more time to browse trough Drupal.. ;)

Squirrel

Update: Just saw the status of this topic...sorry about that!

Went to the above referenced #50605: Add user ratings for projects issue instead and marked that for the upgrade.