Lib.rs has previously been editorializing the crates within the search algorithm on their site based on their own personal preference. However, they recently have taken it a step too far in labeling the bitcoin repo as unmaintained despite active development taking place for the past several years. Several others have also taken similar actions.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] kornel@lemmyrs.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

lib.rs author here.

The visible deprecation label was unintentional. I agree that labelling an actively maintained crate as unmaintained is wrong, regardless of what the crate is for. If I wanted to mess with the bitcoin page, there are plenty of true negative things that I could have said about bitcoin, and you know I wouldn't be shy about it.

I do think that use of bitcoin during a climate crisis and an energy crisis is immoral. Bitcoin is like a button that gives you $1000 now, but kills someone else in the future. This is not something that deserves polite acceptance. Seriously, I beg you at least switch to proof-of-stake schemes if you must.

However, in this particular case I did not mean to label it as unmaintained, since that's plainly incorrect. You're right to be upset, and right to be suspicious about the incorrect label given my reputation as cryptocurrency hater. However, I'm still disappointed that the community reaction was immediate pitchforks and burn-the-site-down pile-on, followed by even more scrutiny and viewing my smallest actions in the worst possible light. Couldn't you first ask if it was meant like this and wait for my response?

I've meant to downrank all crates using the bitcoin crate. Downranking of them is IMHO a fair game, since bitcoin-dependent crates are not relevant to my intended target audience.

Apart from that, I've also got some feedback that it's not acceptable to change or augment any crate metadata at all. The site does change crate data en masse, but when it works right this is a feature. For example, it guesses categories when they're missing or are likely invalid (everyone gets the "parsing" category wrong). The site has a ranking algorithm, which IMHO makes its search really helpful, noticeably better than crates.io's. But by necessity it includes many ranking signals, which are imperfect, and the choice of the signals is inherently subjective (e.g. just sorting by downloads would be more transparent, but it's still just a different subjective choice, and has its own downsides).

I'm open to feedback how to make it clearer that the site is unofficial, opinionated, and a mashup of data sources and heuristics. I don't think there's a point of running lib.rs without the data cleanups or ranking. This would reduce it to only mere redundant duplicate of crates.io. I want to make something clearly better, beyond what pure crates.io can do.

But there are 120K crates and growing, so this is a hard task. If I'm going to get a load crap for every buggy boolean, I don't want to run the site. It exists for the community, and if the community thinks I'm a villain, then why should I bother.

[–] Vorpal@lemmyrs.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Disclaimer: I love the lib.rs search and general UI. I don't like crypto currencies.

I think the way to avoid drama is to be very clear and transparent in communication. In this case I think a way to do this would be to label data that lib.rs synthesised. Maybe a asterix next to corrected categories that on mouse over (long press on phones) says something like "inferred by lib.rs due to missing data"? Exact wording could certainly be improved, and might differ on context. Perhaps the synthesised data could be a different colour as well to stand out.

Having a list of packages that were filtered out might also help. Here I'm thinking a simple text file (set to not be indexed in robots.txt) with all the package names that have filtered along with the reason listed (e.g. "auto detected name squat"). Anyone interested could download the file and take a look, as well as contact you for corrections.

Ranking algorithms is harder to be transparent about (and it is not my field of expertise), so I can't offer any advise here. Perhaps nothing is needed?