Hi again ;-),
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As an Application database member you enjoy some exclusive benefits like:
* Ability to Vote on Favorite Applications
I am logged in, thus a member, thus I should be able to vote, if there was a way to do so, but I don't see it.
[FIXED] I send a patch that adds a link to voting help from the fron page.
* Access to the Application Rating System. Rate the apps that"Don't Suck"
[FIXED] Removed in the same patch as the rating system (with/without windows) has been removed some time ago.
OK, here we come to the crux of things. Visual FoxPro is the top voted application? Then why is WinZip first on the Gold List?
[NOT FIXED]
As said before the main page has to be rethought. The applications you see are the top-10 most voted gold application and the top-10 most voted silver application. The fact that this list is not so interesting is because:
1) people don't know/knew how to vote or bother to do it 2) the Gold/Silver/Bronze rating system is quite new and maintainers of top voted applications like FoxPro didn't rate their application yet 3) even in a perfect world where user would vote and application maintainers would rate, this list still doesn't make too much sense as an application once Gold has not too much interest to be voted for. We could maybe reset the votes when an application goes gold (I'm not sure about this).
Anyway we might choose to show other applciations (or no applications at all from the front page). Another idea that comes to my mind would be to show a random application each time in a table.
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1.4b) more importantly, I do not know what the responsibilities of a "maintainer" are-- much less a "super maintainer".
[FIXED/NOT FIXED] These informations are shown after clicking on the button. But we discussed the possibility to add a "?" sign near the button that will bring you to the related help page.
Yes, so they are (after you reassured me, I clicked the button). On the whole, I find the information good, but not very detailed or complete.
[FIXED] I sent another patch this morning. Mouse-overing on the button says something like "click here to know more about maintainers". And when arriving on the next page you have less details about being a maintainer but you are provided with a link to the maintainers guidelines help page wher you can know all about the duties of an application maintainer.
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OK, that's a good alternative, but this should be mentioned in the Maintainer's Guidebook (if it isn't, haven't checked yet), since I wouldn't have known to do that if you hadn't just told me, and even had I thought of it, I wouldn't have known it was "OK to do".
[FIXED] This has been added to the maintainers guidelines.
Yes, I saw that in the explanation of maintainer duties and privileges. This doesn't so much reassure the users, though (i.e., they will not know that their comment will be "mentioned" to the maintainer unless they have read the maintainer's information notes. A note to this effect that an "average" non-maintainer user will see as well might be useful.
[FIXED] When you send a comment you should (since some days) see a green message saying "message sent to [LIST OF EMAIL ADDRESSES]" so that you know that the maintainer and other people in the thread received your comment (but you are right, you don't know it beforehand)
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A Wine FAQ at the forefront of the appdb, or even linked to each application's overview page might be nice, too
[FIXED] The Help and documentation link that is always visible on the left menu contains faq and help topics.
Naturally I am. I wouldn't be a very good and responsible member of the FOSS community if I wasn't (and it's important to me to be a good and responsible member of the FOSS community). I haven't started the text yet, though (a bit short on time), and I have a technical problem in that I don't know how to format or submit the text when done (or at least drafted). I keep hearing "submit a patch", but I really don't know how to do that for non-code text or HTML (I don't know how to do it for code either, but I assume that if I could code, I *would* know).
But OK, now that I think of it, a couple of people have submitted documentation updates in the past several weeks; I'll check through my email and see how they did it.
That's fairly easy. 1) First follow the instructions of this page about getting the latest appdb from cvs: http://www.winehq.org/site/cvs (replace cvs -z 0 checkout wine with cvs -z 0 checkout appdb) 2) The modify the files on your local computer (you might want to test it using apache and php on your local computer). For the faqs, the file is /help/appdb_faq.help 3) Create a patch using cvs by following the informations here http://www.winehq.org/site/sending_patches 4) Send the patch in an e-mail with a title like "[AppDB] improving FAQ"
If you need more help, don't hesitate to ask (me).
1.7) Descriptions are really not very useful, for several reasons.
This should be fixed by maintainers.
Fair enough, but what about all the applications that do not have maintainers? They remain in disarray until someone steps up, if someone does? If the appdb needs a "spring cleaning", somebody has to make a start, and if there are no maintainers available to do so, does it then not become the responsibility of the admin (if there is such a beast)?
Yes, me and other fellow administrators are cleaning a lot of entries every day. But that's a huge amout of work. We'd prefer to see a huge amount of maintainer to step out.
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Yes, that's true. But now we're coming to another important issue: Publicity. Who really knows about the appdb (meaning in terms of Wine users)?
You need the user community to step up, and in a (very) big way, participating both as users and maintainers, but how are they to even know that they should do so?
What would really help here is the equivalent of a "Grand Opening" bash, complete with marching band. Maybe I should see if I can submit something to OSNews (they seem to take all kinds of ...stuff... which is often consdidered much less useful, if the user comments after many articles are to be believed), or some similar missive. What I'm thinking of is widely-announced news that these resources are available, and making people aware that they can contribute to them (and should), no
That would be great. However I'm not the one who can say if the appdb is ready for such massive publicity. Maybe someone else will give you more input on this.
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Yes, of course I will do that; although Wine self-destructed on me two days ago, so I have to reinstall everything I did have running, but at least I can document it this time around.
great !
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Thanks,
Jonathan