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From: "John D'Errico" <woodchips@rochester.rr.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: FEX: the ML file exchange censored and stifled by the makers of MATLAB (TMW)
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 14:51:01 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: John D'Errico (1-3LEW5R)
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"Lars Barring" <lars.barring@myworkplace.se> wrote in message <grfj1v$ln1$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Dear all, 
> 
> Matthew wrote:
> > We've been paying close attention to all the feedback.  We were surprised 
> > that the contest triggered this reaction, but welcome the chance to discuss 
> > these deeper issues.
> 
> Well, I must say that I am rather surprised that you are surprised.
> 
> No non-technical subject has more consistently recurred here at CSSM 
> (except for those complaining about homework questions) than 
> complaints about the sharply increasing number of poor/incomprehedible/
> irrelevant/substandard (by any reasonable measure) submissions to FEX, 
> and the related abuse of the rating system.
> 
> So, really, what did TMW expect when setting up this competition in the 
> way it was done??
> 
> Note that I have no views or commets on the contest as such, but on how 
> FEX is abused in the eyes of the very community that TMW claims it was 
> set up to serve. 

There are several views of the FEX, and what purposes
it can and should serve.

I think if TMW wishes to make the FEX serve a broader
purpose, then they must first provide better tools to
filter out the trash that is accumulating. At the very least,
they must make it easy to identify an author or subject
tag as one that a user never wishes to see.

I do think that the contest was not truly an egregious
thing to do, but that it simply was the last straw in the
eyes of many people. Many are fed up with the crap
that Marco has dumped on us, of the infinitely many
(and miserably written) gaussian elimination scripts
dumped on the FEX as homework assignments.

The problem with the contest that I've seen is by
using the FEX in a broader sense, TMW is now
setting a precedent, that it is acceptable to use the
FEX as a general repository for files. Is it ok if a
user wishes to place pictures of their family vacation
on the FEX? Are my holiday pictures out of place on
the FEX? Suppose I wore a MATLAB t-shirt in all of
those pictures? Suppose the pictures were of a
MATLAB conference?

I'll argue that this broad view of the FEX is ONLY
acceptable if they first give us the proper tools to
deal with the resulting rapid accumulation of dreck
that will appear.

John