# The following was supposedly scribed by
# Michael Peppler
# on Wednesday 16 June 2004 06:17 am:
>Personally I think the current rating system should be enough - only not
>enough people use it (for example my modules have only one or two
>ratings, yet they are used by a lot of people, and have been for many
>years).
For one, I've never used the ratings system. Partly that I wasn't really
aware of it until after lots of browsing CPAN, and partly that "nobody told
me to" (TM).
I think a 1-5 star rating system is fine, but maybe it should be displayed
more prominently (e.g. on the search.cpan.org results and in the header of
the online pod.)
To get people to use it, I think there should be:
1. A command-line rating script (no clicking on web-pages.)
2. Some mention of ratings and how to use them in books and perldocs.
Given a command-line script that allows me to rate modules without having to
click through a lot of pages on cpan, I'd rate more of the modules that I use
(and don't use.) But, I'm a module author and a Linux nut, so that's just my
preferred interface.
Speaking of interface, how should the CPAN shell display these ratings?
For new users (I was even one not so long ago), some mention by books, docs,
and cpan of the importance of ratings would be nice (and this importance
should be demonstrated by making them part of the summary and headers on
cpan.)
--Eric
--
"Because understanding simplicity is complicated."
--Eric Raymond
