Fixing AppDB once and for all

[Louis Lenders]

Zachary Goldberg <zgold <at> bluesata.com> writes:

> 
> All,
> 
> So it seems to be almost every other day now when somebody mentions
> how broken the appdb rating system is.  This "broken-ness" has had
> several high level discussions on Wine-Devel.  There have also been
> many, many proposed solutions to this problem.
> 
> I do not wish to discuss these problems or these solutions in this
> thread.  It is time something was done about this.  By done I mean
> agreed upon (probably the harder part) then implemented in code and
> published to the winehq server(s).
> 
> I'de like to arrange an IRC discussion for all those interested in
> finalizing an attack plan, and then assigning the responsibility of
> doing it to somebody who is capable and has the time (perhaps myself).
> 
> Lets (arbitrarily) set a time for the chat at:
> 
> When: 11PM UTC (6PM EST) 2/6/09 (Friday)
> Where: #winehackers
> 


I think this will be a very difficult if not impossible task to accomplish.
If we talk about test results, it's the app maintainer that is responsible
for the correctness of the ratings and test results. What would you want to
do if you think that the ratings for application X are overestimated? 
Remove the maintainer from the application entry in appdb? 
Then you'd have to check yourself for every app, if ratings are correct.

BTW, also the opposite occurs very frequently: applications that are rated 
too low (garbage) whereas they are probably bronze or higher. When users
send in garbage test results, i'm always tempted to try out the app myself
if it has free download. In many cases it appears the application needs 
additional packages like mdac, vbrun or anything. Also many garbage results
come from installing in a busted wineprefix ( just do a winetricks dcom98, 
and you'll get garbage results for apps in many cases), and they run just
 fine in a new ~/.wine

So if someone shouts: "Hey, the app is rated gold, but for me it crashes"
it's not necessarily the "gold-rater" who's wrong.

My conclusion really is, it's very difficult to get the ratings correct, but 
always worth a try of course. What's more important is I think , that the 
appdb is rich source of info on how to get application X or Y running.

Regards


So my conclusion is it will be very difficult to get