[Debtags-devel] poptags

[Benjamin Mesing]

Hello Herve 
(how will I convince my keyboard to print an é when typing accent,
followed by an 'e'?)

you have a point when saying that popcon rating could lead to a self
fullfilling prophecy. That holds true for the whole internet. Web pages
are ranked by some kind of popularity (link counts and stuff), and on
their content. So even the best site will never storm the top ranks of a
search engine, as long as it is unkown. However sometimes new sites make
it up to the top (because they are good or some commercial power/ hype
is pushing them).
Most times there is a good reason, if most people use a special product.
Often one of them is its popularity itself, what makes it easy to get
help (see Windows, Firefox, Thunderbrid,...). But there are also others
like features, quality or stability. Especially if there is no
commercial power advertising the applications, the latter reasons become
more important.
The search results for package searches should lie in the range of a
maximum of around 50, propably less than 10 for most domains and good
searches. So ranking is only a help for showing the most promising
matches first. You don't have millions of results, where the latter ones
are never looked at. Descriptions are always an essential part for
choosing a program. So even a low ranked program still has a chance to
be choosen - and if good to be recommened. 
Take a look at amarok (popcon vote rank 1403) and xmms (popcon vote rank
2082). I think that XMMS was much more popular once. But amarok rocks
and stormed the ranks.

I for my part, will combine different kinds of scoring (using a fancy
plugin structure :-). Popcon data will be only one stone in the mosaic
of the scores.

Greetings Ben

@Enrico: Hervé last message did not reach debtags-devel, perhaps you
should check the mails awaiting acceptance...