Forums : Suggestions for Ohloh 2.0

Hi!

Knowing how active a project is a major factor to compare at: https://www.ohloh.net/p/compare

For various reasons (ex.: the repository moved, etc.), the source code activity tracking can break. This can make an otherwise popular and active project look bad.

We can't check all the projects, but we can check for the most popular ones (using stacks).

What I'd like is a top-50 projects on Ohloh (in order of stacks) that have seen a steep decline in their commits. Thus, users could periodically review this list and make sure enlistments are OK.

Even better would be if contributors to that project would receive a warning email.

If a project has really had a steep decline in activity, then, people should be aware. They can decide if it's because the project has become very stable or if it's just become inactive.

Best regards,

M ;-)

Marc Laporte over 14 years ago

Hey Marc,

Good to hear from you! Looks like you actually have quite a number of interesting ideas here, so I’m going to review each one by one.

>> Knowing how active a project is a major factor to compare at: https://www.ohloh.net/p/compare

Agreed. Project activity is definitely a major factor when comparing open source projects. In fact, I believe there are many kinds of activity that are worth noting and calling out. For example, I would consider the following types of activities important factors in comparing projects: # of fixed bugs versus open bugs ratio, # of forum posts (answered versus unanswered ratio if able to get it), number of downloads across project lifetime, and so forth. Currently Ohloh has only “number of commits” as the measure of activity, but I believe we should at some point take this a step further and incorporate some of these community aspects as well.

>> For various reasons (ex.: the repository moved, etc.), the source code activity tracking can break. This can make an otherwise popular and active project look bad.

First and foremost, I absolutely do not want Ohloh to make a popular and active project look bad because of bugs or issues with the site. This is why my top priority is to improve the quality of Ohloh’s data on the site.

Having said that, there’s always the possibility for bugs to exist in production. I think what’s key here for users, and especially project owners, is to be able to stay informed of stat changes in their projects, and be able to quickly identify when the data isn’t quite right. One of the features I think would be very useful is getting updates for changes to project’s stats. For example, imagine a scenario where a project owner is notified whenever there are significant changes to their stats. Maybe their project gets /.’ed, so they get notified of the spike in traffic alongside other interesting stats related to the event. Same feature could work to alert users, if something should happen to break. Being able to quickly identify and response to such issues will ensure that active projects continue to appear active as they should.

>> We can't check all the projects, but we can check for the most popular ones (using stacks). What I'd like is a top-50 projects on Ohloh (in order of stacks) that have seen a steep decline in their commits. Thus, users could periodically review this list and make sure enlistments are OK.

Yes, your suggestion is spot on. I was a QA for nearly 5 years, and this was definitely one of the first ideas that came to mind to establish a baseline for quality assurance.

>> Even better would be if contributors to that project would receive a warning email. If a project has really had a steep decline in activity, then, people should be aware. They can decide if it's because the project has become very stable or if it's just become inactive.

Agreed. As I mention above, I think having a general feature that allows users to subscribe to certain project activity would be extremely valuable.

Thanks again for taking the time to write up these great suggestions and ideas! Please keep them coming.

Sara Ford over 14 years ago