Classes user ratings and programming contests - PHP Classes blog

By Manuel Lemos
manuellemos.net
<email contact>

Hello,

As some users are already aware, I finally made available a system that lets the users rate each class in several aspects.

This is meant mostly to provide some moral compensation to the authors that contribute with good classes, and also to serve as encouragement to improve to get better acceptance and contribute with more and better classes.

Only the users that have previously downloaded a given package may rate it. This obviously excludes the user that originally contributed the package. The package rating page lists all the packages that you may rate so far.

http://www.phpclasses.org/rate.html

To rate a specific package there is a link in the respective page to go directly to the ratings form page.

The classes may be rated in the following aspects: utility, consistency, documentation, examples and tests. Only the classes that provide files of respective roles can be rated in the last three aspects. This means that packages that do not provide documentation files, examples or test scripts may not be rated in these aspects.

Since the information on the role of each file was not available since the beginning of the site, some packages may not yet be rated in aspects for which they provide the respective files.

There may also be a problem with packages with files set by the original contributor with roles that are not correct. For instance, a file can be set to the role of documentation and not be exactly a documentation file.

Since the number of package files is very large now, I did not had the time to fix all the inaccuracies. In either case I would appreciate that if you find any of these situations to contact me so I can fix the file roles. That will help me to make this rating system fair and prevent any fraud attempts.

The ratings will be used to compute ranking charts that will be updated daily. Soon I will also announce a programming contest that is being organized in cooperation with another well known PHP site.

The contest will provide the authors a chance to be compensated with nice prizes and the additional recognition that the contest eventually will provide.

The site will use the user ratings rankings as base of the contest. Only the authors that voluntarily express interest in participating in programming contests will be able to enter in this contest.

If you are a present or future contributor and you are willing to participate, just log in the user options page and check the option that states that you want to participate in programming contests. Authors that do not express that want to participate in the contests will still be ranked in this site.

http://www.phpclasses.org/user_options.html

Before anybody asks, I am intentionally not participating in any contests because I am not seeking self-promotion at the expense of this site.

However, I would like to encourage all users to rate every package that you download. That is a way for you to provide valuable feedback to the authors and hints to the other users about which packages are more interesting.

Regards,
Manuel Lemos