On Wed, Aug 07, 2019 at 04:02:14PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
Michael Stone writes ("Re: duplicate popularity-contest ID"):
I guess the question is what is the point of the popcon statistics.
Insofar as they're used to determine defaults, skewing them toward
custom images (which likely do not care about defaults) is probably a
mistake.
popcon is a really bad way to determine defaults because it is so
heavily skewed by existing defaults.
More useful uses of popcon include: estimating the downside, if some
package is (or may become) broken or removed; and, maybe, estimating
the user preferences between different non-default leaf packages.
For me, if I were doing (say) RC bugfixing and was considering asking
for a removal, even a moderate popcon figure would give me pause.
Conversely, a low popcon figure would encourage me to consult on
removing the package.
I don't think popcon is a good reason to pause if there are valid
concerns suggesting removal is a good thing, for the exact reason that
it's skewed to propagating existing practice. I'm not sure there's any
really good use for popcon, but I'll continue to believe that any value
it does have is more related to how many unique configurations it
reflects rather than how many duplicate instances it can hold.
