[Popcon-developers] Bug#418891: The number of etch installations is rocketing...

[Bill Allombert]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 03:06:04PM +0000, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> Package: popularity-contest
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> On to, 2007-04-12 at 13:49 +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> > [Lars Wirzenius]
> > > However, changing the popcon debconf question to something like the
> > > following might be an acceptable compromise:
> > >
> > >         Would you like to participate in the Debian package popularity
> > >         contest meter? Blah blah blah. You may also choose to only
> > >         report once that you have installed this release of Debian on a
> > >         new machine. In that case no other information from you or your
> > >         machine gets recorded.
> > >         
> > >         [ ] No, I do not want to participate at all.
> > >         [ ] I want to report once that I have installed Debian.
> > >         [ ] I want to participate in the package popularity contest.
> > 
> > Interesting idea.  Perhaps it deserve a wishlist request in BTS?

I am not sure report-once is workable. Periodic report provide us with 
basic data integrity checks that are necessary for the data to be 
meaningful. This favors short-lived installations (someone resinstalling
every three months) over long-lived installations (someone installing
woody and upgrading all the way to lenny).

Also I am afraid this will reduce popcon participation by leading users to
choose the 'middle-ground' option.

Generally, collecting data is easy. What is hard is to provide
meaningful interpretation of them.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe at debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.