Holiday Rate-athon!

The HaikuDepot is full of applications, but finding the really good ones isn’t easy. If we all would rate and/or comment the software we tried out, that could quickly change.
Even better: once the number of ratings go up, the “Featured packages” in HaikuDepot could become more varied and dynamic as it could then reflect the actual users choices, instead of a manually barely maintained list of apps.

What do you say? Let’s use a few minutes of our free time over the holidays to set the HaikuDepot “Show” menu to only show “Installed packages” and rate/comment the stuff we already have. Then move on to install and rate other interesting sounding apps.

A little statistic: at the moment there are only 412 ratings of 237 packages.

7 Likes

I think the rating should be based only on the last release…

For example Weather has almost all 5 stars but there is one star for a missing symbol on an old revision (Probably a change in the Haiku API). Now the app is rated 4 stars.

This is just a practical example, but I see this in other old apps where the user gives one star because there is a crash on start-up… When the bug is fixed the old rating should be ignored.

1 Like

Users can also revise and update their ratings.

Also, currently each rating is strongbecause there are so few of them. This effect will become less visible when there are a lot of ratings.

Finally, we should educate users about how to report bugs, the rating system is not the appropriate place for that, and an app that does not start does not deserve a 1 star rating (an app that destroys all your work repeatedly does, however)

A small step could be to make it impossible to rate (with stars) without leaving a comment. That’s no guarantee for meaningful info, but it may help a bit.

Does the user have to login into HaikuDepotServer?
Or does it work by creating an account in HaikuDepot?
Which login will be accepted?
I am curious because I can login with my Haiku Community login there (HaikuDepotServer)…

True. There have been a few short discussions about which version’s ratings should be considered for an app’s rating on the HDS mailing list, IIRC.
Once there are more ratings, the system to calculate the app’s rating can be adjusted.

I’m not sure how best to inform the user. Maybe a short paragraph at the top of the rating window?

I think that would be rather counter-productive. A rating with no comment is better than nothing. Currently we get more or less nothing, making comments along the rating obligatory may deter the few willing…

1 Like

You can rate after logging into the HDS website at https://depot.haiku-os.org or directly from the HaikuDepot app. The latter is probably more convenient.

It would be fine to do that, but i does not can login into the haikudepot for rating.

Yeah, it may be too forced. Encouraging users to add a comment by pointing out how useful that may be to others/the project is probably better. That can be done by adding a simple short remark that says so somewhere near the rating section.

Did you try to go to HaikuDepotServer and log in there with your Haiku Community user and password?

To be honest… I get confused by all those programs…

Maybe better to introduce the user to famous programs, teach them how to use it and ask them them to rate them after.

Well, everbody should rate the apps they have already installed and use regularly. That shouldn’t be too confusing. And in the future, if people install something they may continue to quickly rate the bugger after giving it a test run.

2 Likes

Ok i have had reset my password and i do some work on rating and description (screenshots, cathegory…)

Great that you could sort this out. Be advised though that we have over 150 apps’ categories, icons and screenshots from this year’s GCI that have yet to be imported. Andrew and Alex are working on that.

So for now, it’s better to concentrate on rating and commenting.

How should anyone able to rate an app if they don’t know the app and how it works and what it actually does?!

That’s why I wrote “…after giving it a test run”.

I’d assume many people look through the list of apps returned by some search term and try out the ones that seem to fit what they were looking for. After some period of testing its features you either keep using the app or uninstall it again. Either way, giving a quick rating and maybe comment would be much appreciated by your fellow Haiku user.

1 Like

just an idea if the user gives 1 or 2 stars show a message like "Please report any bugs to -link of the application-.

for 3 and 4 stars “Please specify what could make the app perfect for your use”
(this can be very useful not only for the users but for the developers of the app).

Or write an etiquette/template(pro/cons) on how to leave a good review.

Disclaimer: I already rated the apps I use, but not those I’m involved in the development.

@humdinger

Who i need to contect to actualize our repository server data on HaikuDepot Web?

We habe now 32bit and 64bit and the list is not up to date.

Who i need to contect to actualize our repository server data on HaikuDepot Web?

Probably it would be most convenient if you could take that over to the HDS mailing list.

Did you try to go to HaikuDepotServer and log in there with your Haiku Community user and password?

You will have to use a separate HDS username / password. Unfortunately there is no common sign-in system although that would be very convenient to get sorted out.

Also, currently each rating is strong because there are so few of them. This effect will become less visible when there are a lot of ratings.

There is a bit of coverage of this here and as mentioned above, there are settings for the algorithm that can be tweaked when more data is available.

the topic certainly existed, but what i would find even more practical than ratings, would be an column like “added” oder “modified”. or should i have overlooked something since years? :slight_smile: