PopCon (was Re: Drop 'epic' package? (was incorrectly Re: ITA: epic4))

[Rick Younie <younie@debian.org>]

Richard Braakman wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 19, 2001 at 08:05:27PM -0600, Chad C. Walstrom wrote:
>> Results[1] from the Popularity Contest[2] for epic (of 1096 computers
>> that voted):
>> 
>> Package             Vote     Old    Recent  Unknown
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> epic                13       109    7       0
>> 
>> So, it looks like some people actually use it.  Granted, it doesn't
>> look like anyone is beating down the doors to use it. ;-)
> 
> Or it could be that 7 people accidentally used "epic" when they
> were looking for epic4 :-)

I find the popcon results really useful.  There was an ITP for
some anonymizing software posted a short while ago and I wonder
if popcon used this, maybe the people who had privacy concerns
about the popularity-contest package would be more likely to
install it.

This is the chunk of python that parses the results.

    def vote_for(vote, package, entry):
        now = time.time()
        if entry.atime == 0:  # no atime: empty package
            vote.empty_package = vote.empty_package + 1
        elif now - entry.atime > 30 * 24*3600:  # 30 days since last use: old
            vote.old_unused = vote.old_unused + 1
        elif now - entry.ctime < 30 * 24* 3600 \
          and entry.atime - entry.ctime < 24*3600:  # upgraded too recently
            vote.too_recent = vote.too_recent + 1
        else:                   # otherwise, vote for this package
            vote.yes = vote.yes + 1

I make this,

 Old = hasn't been used in 30 days
 Recent = been used in the last 24 hours but was upgraded/installed
          less than 30 days ago
 Vote = was used in the last 24 hours and installed/upgraded > 30 days ago
        or used > 24 hrs ago and installed < 30 days ago

So (Vote + Recent) compared to Old gives a good idea of 'popularity' IMO.

Rick
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