Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org? How useful is it really to know that Extension:ConfirmEdit scored "3" on some external website, especially without knowing that that "3" comes from a grand total of 1 person?
Relevant: http://xkcd.com/1098/
-Chad
Also: http://xkcd.com/937/
-- Legoktm
Is it really necessary for people to openly mock the work of a volunteer developer on the list? No wonder we have so few volunteer developers.
I do think that they are legitimate complaints, though I also agree that there might have been a better way to point them out. While doing a bit of research for something else I came across a rating display that might help solve some of these problems at least.
http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/831/6188233746.png Source: Spiceworks (product page) (when hovering over a number of stars it says how many people gave it that rating)
I think that this sort of display solves at least the problem shown in XKCD 1098 along with the complaint of not knowing how many people actually scored something someway and whether or not it's a significant percentage. The visual display of the information can solve the issue in 1098 if we tweak the colours a bit to show some of the lower ratings as more greenish.
The use of a rotating display of top rated comments allows problems like those highlighted in XKCD 937 to be solved. Hopefully we can find some way to allow the more helpful ratings to be shown to users. Amazon does a pretty good job with this as well.
Does Wikiapiary collect data on how many wikis make use of any given extension? Exposing that data may also help someone make an informed decision about whether or not to use an extension.
Thank you, Derric Atzrott