Whither AppDB? (was: Re: AppDB entries are being delete without contacting maintainer by)

[David Gerard]

2009/3/7 Ben Klein <shacklein(a)gmail.com>:
> A wiki is likely to be highly unsuccessful for AppDB when the focus is
> on test data.

I would have thought the focus would be on being useful to users.
> Regarding the changelog/history, it'd even be possible to use git to
> manage AppDB entries. It's perfectly possible to implement a complete
> history without moving to a wiki, but in my opinion only admins should
> have access to the history.

At present users don't have a reliable go-to place. The present
AppDB's failings have been detailed at length on wine-devel.

I must confess I am entirely unable to see why history data, or any
data in AppDB, should be restricted.


- d.

[Ben Klein]

2009/3/8 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>:
> 2009/3/7 Ben Klein <shacklein(a)gmail.com>:
> > A wiki is likely to be highly unsuccessful for AppDB when the focus is
> > on test data.
>
> I would have thought the focus would be on being useful to users.

The primary content of the AppDB is test data. This is what is useful
to users, together with HOWTOs and Notes on specific applications.
Giving the users license to edit *other people's* test data in
particular is just asking for trouble.

In theory, once test data is submitted, it should not need to be
edited. The data will forever remain pertinent to that version of Wine
with that version of the application on that particular distribution
(and possibly with that users hardware configuration). When any of
those things change, new test data should be submitted; amending the
old test data to reflect the change is improper.

In practice, part of an AppDB administrator's responsibilities is
housekeeping. The information on the AppDB should be easy to find,
easy to interpret, and useful to other users. This is not always the
case, which is ultimately due to the admin or maintainer who approved
the submission. Pobody's nerfect!
> > Regarding the changelog/history, it'd even be possible to use git to
> > manage AppDB entries. It's perfectly possible to implement a complete
> > history without moving to a wiki, but in my opinion only admins should
> > have access to the history.
>
> At present users don't have a reliable go-to place. The present
> AppDB's failings have been detailed at length on wine-devel.
>
> I must confess I am entirely unable to see why history data, or any
> data in AppDB, should be restricted.

As someone who does user support on IRC in #winehq, I certainly
wouldn't want to deal with people who follow instructions that have
been marked for deletion after digging through the history. "It worked
once, but now it's a new version of the app and Wine, and I can't make
it work". It has happened before with outdated test data, which just
means people need to submit test data more often :)