Path: news.mathworks.com!not-for-mail
From: "John D'Errico" <woodchips@rochester.rr.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: ML spring 09 contest is bothersome and offensive
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 16:29:01 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: John D'Errico (1-3LEW5R)
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"Steven Lord" <slord@mathworks.com> wrote in message <grfsit$84f$1@fred.mathworks.com>...

> As I said above, I'm not happy that an at-bat like this caused so much anger 
> and frustration among some of the newsgroup regulars that I consider friends 
> (even though I've never met most of you in person.)  I hope we can find some 
> way to make the File Exchange, the contest, and all of MATLAB Central be 
> what you want it to be as well as what we at The MathWorks want it to be (or 
> some combination of the two.)

Steve,

I really feel this was the straw that broke the camel's
back. What you see is an outflow of frustration
against spammers like Marco, against volumes of crap
appearing on the FEX, that we cannot rate downwards
without incurring the wrath of a person who does not
care about his own reputation. 

It is an unwillingness to see potentially many new
files placed there that have no real value, and a fear
that this establishes a new precedent, accelerating
the influx of files to sort through. A problem with the
tagged FEX as it has been built, is all files are placed
in one large bin. We can use a tag to select some
subset of those files, but that tagged selection is not
terribly accurate. It typically returns many files where
we will have no interest. Often, any search contains
at least a few files by Marco.

There needed to be better tools in place to deal with
the spam and the homework assignments, in place
before this experiment began.

Surely you had to see something like this coming?
There are at least a couple of notable authors who
had already removed their work from the FEX as a
sign of their frustration with the direction the FEX
has taken in the last year.

I'm very much hoping that we can resolve this before
others choose to follow that path.

John