Re: [directory-discuss] Anti-features going forward

[Ian Kelling]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2017, at 08:06 AM, Donald Robertson wrote:
> Thank you to everyone who has participated in this discussion so far.
> And thank you in particular to David for setting up pages, including the
> draft section for anti-features.
> 
> But I think we should take a step back from working on this project and
> let what we've done so far settle for a bit, so we can look at it from a
> fresh perspective in a few months time.
> 
> The Directory is a resource for hundreds of thousands of people, and we
> want to focus our efforts on providing the best resource possible for
> all those users. While there are over 15,000 entries on the Directory,
> much more free software remains unlisted, and many of those 15,000
> entries are woefully out of date. We should focus on making the
> Directory more comprehensive and up to date before getting too deep on
> features that are more about adding evaluations to the entries that are
> already there. We want to make sure the Directory serves users well, and
> that does  include considering ideas for evaluating programs beyond the
> fact that they meet the Directory's minimum standards. But our current
> priority is pulling in the basic facts about all the programs out there
> that meet those standards.
> 
> So we should refocus on the things that the Directory really needs work
> on right now, such as the unapproved pages backlog
> <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki?title=Special:ApprovedRevs&show=unapproved>
> or the entries that haven't been updated in many years
> <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Free_Software_Directory:Participate/oldies>.
> 
> We also want it to be a quality tool for maintainers of packages.
> They're not going to find it a very useful tool if they are getting
> blind-sided with warning messages on their entries, particularly if they
> are just popping up and disappearing without warning.
> 
> For some projects there are means for resolving the issues we may have
> with them. If a problem is big enough to warn users about, then it is
> worthwhile to try and correct it where we can. In particular, GNU
> project packages all have means for fixing any particular issue that
> might exist in the project, and we should go through those processes to
> correct any problem should it exist. There shouldn't be anything in a
> GNU project package that we would need to warn users about, so if there
> is a problem we must fix it.
> 
> In terms of anti-features going forward, we can keep the discussion
> going here on the mailing list, in IRC, and on talk pages, but let's not
> add any new properties/categories, and remove any that were recently
> added. We can circle back around to updating things once this has had
> time to mature, and we've gotten through some of the backlog of work
> needed on the Directory.
> -- 
> Donald R. Robertson, III, J.D.
> Licensing & Compliance Manager
> Free Software Foundation
> 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
> Boston, MA 02110
> Phone +1-617-542-5942
> Fax +1-617-542-2652 ex. 56


I agree. I've pretty much never wanted to work on antifeatures, but I've
felt compelled to say certain things were incorrect, but after that, if
someone else wants to try to raise awareness on something, you know,
generally, let them do it, even if it's not exactly the way you would do
it. Let's include "linux system" tag under with "remove any that were
recently added." It's better off not in the fsd, it will end up causing
more discussion and be too much of a distraction.