Ubuntu applications database

[Allan Day]

Hey Dougie,
>>  * https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecommendedApplications - good
>> when
>> wanting to find out about cool but obscure apps
>>     
>
> We should be careful that these sort of lists are descriptive, for example
> the first entry: "Qalculate - The ultimate desktop calculator". That's
> pretty subjective, if a user tries that and dislikes it then they may not
> read any further. If the entry were such as "a popular desktop calculator
> application, supporting both KDE and Gnome environments. Offering
> customizable functions, units, arbitrary precision, matrices and plotting it
> also offers a powerful RPN system."like that
I set the RecommendedApplications page up as a place to move some 
content which was previously in Applications. The text that I originally 
seeded the page with was low on detail. I agree - in the future, it 
would be great to expand the entries in the list.

On the issue of subjectivity, I had intended RecommendedApplications as 
somewhere very much to collect the subjective opinions of Ubuntu users; 
hence, the first line reads: '/This page is a list of software 
recommendations made other Ubuntu users.' /I'm sure I could do more to 
emphasise the subjective nature of the entries on that page. That aside, 
is it wrong to have subjective opinions on the wiki? I thought that it 
was quite a nice idea to give people the chance to express themselves.
>>  * https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Software - useful as an index to
>> other pages in the wiki
>>     
>
> I have no problem with this site but am inclined to think that sites such as
> Gnomefiles [1] are probably more useful. The Wiki is a great format for
> community information but lacks the functionality for a specific application
> distribution and description system.
>   
I'm not sure whether we're understanding each other on this one. I 
should probably have been a bit clearer! ;) Let me elaborate. The page I 
was referring to [1] can be seen to serve two functions:

Function 1: An indication of the applications which are available for 
Ubuntu.
Function 2: An index to pages on the wiki which concern specific 
applications.

I think we are probably in agreement in saying that the page probably 
isn't well suited to function 1. What I was saying in my last email, 
however, was that I think the page is useful in terms of function 2, but 
that (in supporting that function) it would be nice if it could be 
automated in some way.

Best,

Allan

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Software

--
Launchpad: https://edge.launchpad.net/people/allanday