Real-world appdb

[Jonathan Ernst]

Le lundi 07 février 2005 à 01:16 +0100, Holly Bostick a écrit :


> 1.2) The "Description" area is well-placed and sized, but the 
> information contained therein is generally pointless and should be a 
> "Summary" instead. Most of the descriptions I read told me what the 
> application is and does as if I was making a buying decision. However, I 
> believe that in most cases (certainly my case), users are already 
> familiar with the capabilities of the program itself (since they already 
> have it), thus telling users what a program they already have actually 
> does is a waste of space.

Application description describe the application (general description).
For wine-related description (or summary), you have to browse the
versions of an application. 
Now the problem is that we used to copy the application description in
the version description when submitting an application/version in the
database. This will change with a patch I will submit in some days.

> 
> What I would have found more useful on what is essentially the
> "overview" page is some indication as to whether the problems with the 
> application that I am consulting the app database about are known, and 
> whether they are solveable (so I'd know whether to continue with the 
> appdb or if I need to immediately begin searching elsewhere for 
> solutions). A nice bulletted list (or a couple of them) would do just 
> fine: "Installs: Yes, no, with modification (the last being a link to 
> the comment explaining the needed modifications); "Runs: Yes, no, with 
> modifications (as above); "Known Problems: Bulleted list (with links), 
> none".

This is now very easy to make thanks to the new templates. You can see
example of recently modified descriptions here:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=2626
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=2602

> 
> If such a summary was provided on the main application page, I would not
> mind so much having to go to yet another page (fifth link, now) in order
> to find specific details on possible issues with the particular 
> *version* of the program I'm trying to install/run.

Each version has it's own problems, putting problems in the general
application page doesn't make much sense imho.

> 1.4) The big "Become a super maintainer" link/button is nice, and
> encourages me to become one (via guilt; because I'm attempting to look
> up programs I very commonly install under Wine whenever I install a new
> distribution, I feel I might be familiar enough with the issues 
> surrounding them  that I should contribute something back) but I do not 
> become a maintainer because:
> 
> 1.4a) I couldn't log in via that login button anyway; I had to use the 
> side menu link and then go back to the page I was on. Fortunately the 

Works here.

> "send a new password" link on the login page that the "Log in to become 
> a maintainer" button takes you to didn't seem to work either, so I was 

Works again since ~ Sun, 06 Feb 2005 19:18:03 +0100

> able to look up my original password in a password maintenance progam
> (PCMagazine's 6-year-old Password Prompter) that I run via Wine (which
> is why I hadn't so much bothered to stop what I was doing and look it up
> in the first place) and use my real login in the side menu link instead;
> 
> 1.4b) more importantly, I do not know what the responsibilities of a
> "maintainer" are-- much less a "super maintainer". There is no link on
> that page as to what this means (not even a little question mark with a
> tooltip popup), and no indication as to whether actually clicking the
> button will go to an "intermediate" page which explains what it is, or
> just sets your login as the maintainer for this app (since I have 
> specifically had to log in in order to enable this button in the first 
> place, it's not an unreasonable assumption that that might occur).

When you click on the button the responsabilities are explained.
It is currently broken but I have a patch that'll fix it.

> 
> Since I didn't know what would happen, and didn't know if I wanted to or
> was capable of fulfilling what might be a committment (how much do I
> need to know about the program? How much do I need to know about
> programming? Do I need to have a version of Windows available to know
> how the program runs there, so I can compare it to how it runs under
> Wine?), I did not click the button, so the apps will remain unmaintained 
> for the time being (or they won't be maintained by me, anyway).

You can resign anytime from being a maintainer so you don't take too
much risk when clicking on this button...

> 
> Weirdly enough, going to the version page for the application offers me
> the opportunity to be a "regular" maintainer-- so, what, that means I
> would be a maintainer for that specific version, whereas "super 
> maintainer" means that I'd be maintainer for all versions, like some 
> kind of 'team leader'? I'm not sure that either makes sense to me as a 

Exactly, supermaintainer maintains the application and all versions and
maintainers maintain only one version. (but you can be maintainer of
different versions in the same app or different apps).


> 1.6) I hope that one of the responsibilities of the maintainer or super
> maintainer is to control comments in some way. I completely understand
> that users of the appdb who are having problems with any given app *have
> no other place to state their issue with the specific program in an
> organized and somewhat reliably maintained fashion* (as wine has no
> forums, and certainly no forums linked to the specific app). However,
> comments like
> 
> "hmm... when exporting registry, the reg file is all messed up. It has
> weird symbols in it. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?"

Yes maintainers cand elete comments. If you answer to a comment the
whole thread would be notified of the new comment.

[...]
I'll check back the rest of your comments later ;-)

Thanks for your comments !