Repeat after me. "CPANTS is _not_ a game. CPANTS is _not_ a game".

So I spent a few evenings tidying up all of my CPAN distributions. They now all have the highest kwalitee that I can give them. The only points missing are the ones for your module being used as a pre-requisite by someone else.

As a result, I leapt quite a long way up the CPANTS leaderboard. Which made me very happy.

But now, of course, every new module I release can only have a maximum kwalitee of 17 (as a new module won't be a prereq for another module). So releasing new modules can only bring my average kwalitee down. Any increases in my score are in the hands of other people.

All of which could possibly act as a disincentive for releasing new modules. And that's why I now have to keep reminding myself that "CPANTS is _not_ a game..."

--
<http://dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: CPANTS is Not a Game
by domm (Chaplain) on Jun 26, 2006 at 09:20 UTC
    As I said on use.perl:

    I'm looking for a solution to this problem, but haven't found one yet. Simply adding the number of dists to the rating would distort the stats in favour of people with many dists. So I/we need to come up with a way so that adding a new dist doesn't lower ones rating. Ideas welcome!

    (I'm currently suffering from a big lumbago-relapse (sitting is big pain, standing is a pain, only lying on my back is comfortable. But getting from lying to standing is the worst pain and takes aprox 3 minutes...) Anyway, thanks to this I probably won't comment on this thread today/tomorrow. But if somebody comes up with a nice algorithm to solve the problem, I'd happily accept it to be added to CPANTS 

    --
#!/usr/bin/perl
for(ref bless{},just'another'perl'hacker){s-:+-$"-g&&print$_.$/}

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      I'm looking for a solution to this problem, but haven't found one yet. Simply adding the number of dists to the rating would distort the stats in favour of people with many dists. So I/we need to come up with a way so that adding a new dist doesn't lower ones rating. Ideas welcome!

      How about just... y'know... ignoring the whole issue? It's not like you get prizes :-)

[reply]

      Don't average the is_prereq criteria: Make the author score the average of its module kwalitee (without is_prereq), then simply add the number of modules that have is_prereq (divided by a constant factor, say 10, to decrease its impact on the score).

      This way davorgs's score qould be 17 (average of his module scores) + 6 (nb of is_prereq) / 10: 17.6. Which incidentally would tie him with CEESHEEK for second I believe, with TMTM comfortably on top of the heap.

      Does it make sense?

[reply]

        Exactly my thoughts. I think that makes a lot of sense.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
Re: CPANTS is Not a Game
by Tanktalus (Canon) on Jun 27, 2006 at 20:42 UTC

    Actually... it kinda does sound like a game. Kinda. Just as much as XP is here or karma on slashdot. Or any other of a miriad of cutesy social-engineering metrics that encourage positive behaviour and discourage negative behaviour.

    By highlighting what the originator (whether an individual, a cabal, or any other source) believes is good and bad, and giving points to the good, and subtracting points for the bad, the provide users with a challenge to maximise their points.

    In your case, it sounds like it worked. ;-)

    There's nothing wrong with that. Someone chooses attributes they wish to highlight. Others wish to be highlighted. Sounds reasonable to me. Those wishing to be highlighted gain a sense of accomplishment or mastery by achieving the positive points and eliminating the negative points (if any). All in all, sounds like it's taking advantage of human nature to improve perl. Where's the downside?

    Update: For example, this makes me think about not only fixing my existing modules (1 at 13, 2 at 15, 1 at 17), but also trying to come up with another module so I can get into the 5+ group... isn't that what was intended by whoever wrote this thing? ;->

[reply]
Re: CPANTS is Not a Game
by cees (Curate) on Jun 27, 2006 at 06:41 UTC

    I think it is fine just the way it is ;-)

[reply]

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