Thread Subject: Doubt on usefulness of the FEX

Dear all,

A multitude of the more recent submissions, reviews and comments posted on the FEX have nothing to do with matlab or sharing scientific ideas. Yes, I am talking about Marco's trolling behavior evoking equally useless reactions of others.

Like others before me, I am seriously considering moving my files elsewhere. I once proposed to have a FEX implementation in which one could filter out submissions in which you (as a FEX member) are not interested, perhaps using tags. However, such a thing is still impossible.

Just some thoughts after a long day at work...

Best,
Jos

"Jos " <#10584@fileexchange.com> wrote in message <gev97h$pim$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Dear all,
>
> A multitude of the more recent submissions, reviews and comments posted on the FEX have nothing to do with matlab or sharing scientific ideas. Yes, I am talking about Marco's trolling behavior evoking equally useless reactions of others.
>
> Like others before me, I am seriously considering moving my files elsewhere. I once proposed to have a FEX implementation in which one could filter out submissions in which you (as a FEX member) are not interested, perhaps using tags. However, such a thing is still impossible.
>
> Just some thoughts after a long day at work...
>
> Best,
> Jos
>

I'm sorry Jos. My comments on that file did not add any value. Didn't mean to offend you. I will stop reviewing Marco.

"a programmer" <no@spam.com> wrote in message <gevjr0$mfl$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "Jos " <#10584@fileexchange.com> wrote in message <gev97h$pim$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> > Dear all,
> >
> > A multitude of the more recent submissions, reviews and comments posted on the FEX have nothing to do with matlab or sharing scientific ideas. Yes, I am talking about Marco's trolling behavior evoking equally useless reactions of others.
> >
> > Like others before me, I am seriously considering moving my files elsewhere. I once proposed to have a FEX implementation in which one could filter out submissions in which you (as a FEX member) are not interested, perhaps using tags. However, such a thing is still impossible.
> >
> > Just some thoughts after a long day at work...
> >
> > Best,
> > Jos
> >
>
> I'm sorry Jos. My comments on that file did not add any value. Didn't mean to offend you. I will stop reviewing Marco.
>

I have to admit that I also posted nonsense reviews on Marco files, and it took me some time to learn that it is not doing any good. So, it is not primarily your (or even Marco's ) behavior that led to my post.
 
I simply do not like to browse through a lot of non-information before finding something interesting. It should be quite easy to implement some personal filter on the FEX. This could even be applied to excellent submissions. For instance, when searching for functions that do something with random numbers, I do not want to see all the functions I already have downloaded, written myself, or have seen before and find not useful.

Jos

"Jos " <#10584@fileexchange.com> wrote in message <gf16vq$nsn$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "a programmer" <no@spam.com> wrote in message <gevjr0$mfl$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> > "Jos " <#10584@fileexchange.com> wrote in message <gev97h$pim$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > A multitude of the more recent submissions, reviews and comments posted on the FEX have nothing to do with matlab or sharing scientific ideas. Yes, I am talking about Marco's trolling behavior evoking equally useless reactions of others.
> > >
> > > Like others before me, I am seriously considering moving my files elsewhere. I once proposed to have a FEX implementation in which one could filter out submissions in which you (as a FEX member) are not interested, perhaps using tags. However, such a thing is still impossible.
> > >
> > > Just some thoughts after a long day at work...
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Jos
> > >
> >
> > I'm sorry Jos. My comments on that file did not add any value. Didn't mean to offend you. I will stop reviewing Marco.
> >
>
> I have to admit that I also posted nonsense reviews on Marco files, and it took me some time to learn that it is not doing any good. So, it is not primarily your (or even Marco's ) behavior that led to my post.
>
> I simply do not like to browse through a lot of non-information before finding something interesting. It should be quite easy to implement some personal filter on the FEX. This could even be applied to excellent submissions. For instance, when searching for functions that do something with random numbers, I do not want to see all the functions I already have downloaded, written myself, or have seen before and find not useful.
>
> Jos

Yes. I've been disappointed in the FEX mods.
I think a very useful thing would have been
to filter out stuff. If you never want to see
anything by Marco, then this should be trivial
to do. Somehow I understood something like
this was to have been part of the new FEX.
For example:

I'd like to be able to assign some weight to
any individual, say in the range [0,1000].
Anything they say or do on the FEX is applied
this weight. Define all default weights for
every person as 100. So for Marco, I'd reduce
his weight to 0, so that nothing he does will
ever even show up.

If I'm looking at a file, and Marco has made
some ridiculous comment on it, that comment
is itself filtered by the same weighting system.

On the other hand, a person I respect would
be given a higher weight, so that their works,
even their comments, would naturally float to
the top. For some reason, I had been led to
believe that this (or something like it) was to
have been part of the new FEX mods.

John

Dear Jos,

I think it would be a bad idea to have multiple knowledge sharing sites on the same topic. For example there is a matlab forum in german with 10000 times fewer contributions compared to this site. WHY?! It is simply inefficient!

Best,
Mikhail

"John D'Errico" <woodchips@rochester.rr.com> wrote in message <gf1cjp$jfh$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
>
> Yes. I've been disappointed in the FEX mods.
> I think a very useful thing would have been
> to filter out stuff. If you never want to see
> anything by Marco, then this should be trivial
> to do. Somehow I understood something like
> this was to have been part of the new FEX.
> For example:
>
> I'd like to be able to assign some weight to
> any individual, say in the range [0,1000].
> Anything they say or do on the FEX is applied
> this weight. Define all default weights for
> every person as 100. So for Marco, I'd reduce
> his weight to 0, so that nothing he does will
> ever even show up.
>
> If I'm looking at a file, and Marco has made
> some ridiculous comment on it, that comment
> is itself filtered by the same weighting system.
>
> On the other hand, a person I respect would
> be given a higher weight, so that their works,
> even their comments, would naturally float to
> the top. For some reason, I had been led to
> believe that this (or something like it) was to
> have been part of the new FEX mods.
>
> John
.
In addition to personal filtering or ranking, that is only visible to the individual, I would also like to (selfishly) be able to see these rankings from other selected users. For example, if I trust yours & Jos's & other specific individual's rankings, and if you have already done some work evaluating certain submissions and ranked them highly, I would like to know that and use that information to determine which submissions are worthwhile for me to download. So some method of combining rankings only from other selected individuals would be useful to me. Even a simple list of Top 10 favorite downloads, or Top 10 favorite posters, from the experts would be useful.
.
Also, the current weighting system is often not very much help. I would rather see a scoring system of some sort that takes into account the number of high rankings, not just an average. If one person rates a M___ (I can't bring myself to spell it) submission a 5, then it shows up as a 5. And the more crap he submits, the more downloads he gets and that just feeds the troll more.
.
It is almost like we need a subsection of the FEX, and the only way you get into it is by multiple peer review from approved reviewers, or by amassing a minimum number of high ranks from the general population.
.
James Tursa
.

Mikhail <razum@gmx.com> wrote in message <18076530.1226082789677.JavaMail.jakarta@nitrogen.mathforum.org>...
> Dear Jos,
>
> I think it would be a bad idea to have multiple knowledge sharing sites on the same topic. For example there is a matlab forum in german with 10000 times fewer contributions compared to this site. WHY?! It is simply inefficient!
>
> Best,
> Mikhail

Dear Mikhail,

I fully agree with you. TMW is the _place_ to host the contributions of their own users. I just think that the current developments on the File Exchange are not that efficient.

Jos

"James Tursa" <aclassyguywithaknotac@hotmail.com> wrote in message <gf2bng$9dq$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "John D'Errico" <woodchips@rochester.rr.com> wrote in message <gf1cjp$jfh$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> >
> > Yes. I've been disappointed in the FEX mods.
> > I think a very useful thing would have been
> > to filter out stuff. If you never want to see
> > anything by Marco, then this should be trivial
> > to do. Somehow I understood something like
> > this was to have been part of the new FEX.
> > For example:
> >
> > I'd like to be able to assign some weight to
> > any individual, say in the range [0,1000].
> > Anything they say or do on the FEX is applied
> > this weight. Define all default weights for
> > every person as 100. So for Marco, I'd reduce
> > his weight to 0, so that nothing he does will
> > ever even show up.
> >
> > If I'm looking at a file, and Marco has made
> > some ridiculous comment on it, that comment
> > is itself filtered by the same weighting system.
> >
> > On the other hand, a person I respect would
> > be given a higher weight, so that their works,
> > even their comments, would naturally float to
> > the top. For some reason, I had been led to
> > believe that this (or something like it) was to
> > have been part of the new FEX mods.
> >
> > John
> .
> In addition to personal filtering or ranking, that is only visible to the individual, I would also like to (selfishly) be able to see these rankings from other selected users. For example, if I trust yours & Jos's & other specific individual's rankings, and if you have already done some work evaluating certain submissions and ranked them highly, I would like to know that and use that information to determine which submissions are worthwhile for me to download. So some method of combining rankings only from other selected individuals would be useful to me. Even a simple list of Top 10 favorite downloads, or Top 10 favorite posters, from the experts would be useful.
> .
> Also, the current weighting system is often not very much help. I would rather see a scoring system of some sort that takes into account the number of high rankings, not just an average. If one person rates a M___ (I can't bring myself to spell it) submission a 5, then it shows up as a 5. And the more crap he submits, the more downloads he gets and that just feeds the troll more.
> .
> It is almost like we need a subsection of the FEX, and the only way you get into it is by multiple peer review from approved reviewers, or by amassing a minimum number of high ranks from the general population.
> .
> James Tursa
> .

We tried to make some of these ideas work.

For example, we tried selecting an upper
subset, what we were going to call "Select".
It died off due to disagreements in terms of
exactly what qualified as a Select code before
we got it going though. This is filtering in a
sense, by using a team of "trusted" reviewers
to identify a set of really good codes.

Another idea I tried once was to work through
every single submission in one of the old FEX
categories. I downloaded every file, read
through it, then tried to rate it on a list of
standard merits. It was a huge amount of
work though, to do this for a few hundred
files.

John

The FEX moderation system deleted a ssomewhat informative comment of mine because it contained the F word. It was quite a surprise to find that those who wouldn't judge submissions had judged my choice of words.

"James Tursa" <aclassyguywithaknotac@hotmail.com> wrote in message <gf2bng$9dq$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "John D'Errico" <woodchips@rochester.rr.com> wrote in message <gf1cjp$jfh$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> >
> > Yes. I've been disappointed in the FEX mods.
> > I think a very useful thing would have been
> > to filter out stuff. If you never want to see
> > anything by Marco, then this should be trivial
> > to do. Somehow I understood something like
> > this was to have been part of the new FEX.
> > For example:
> >
> > I'd like to be able to assign some weight to
> > any individual, say in the range [0,1000].
> > Anything they say or do on the FEX is applied
> > this weight. Define all default weights for
> > every person as 100. So for Marco, I'd reduce
> > his weight to 0, so that nothing he does will
> > ever even show up.
> >
> > If I'm looking at a file, and Marco has made
> > some ridiculous comment on it, that comment
> > is itself filtered by the same weighting system.
> >
> > On the other hand, a person I respect would
> > be given a higher weight, so that their works,
> > even their comments, would naturally float to
> > the top. For some reason, I had been led to
> > believe that this (or something like it) was to
> > have been part of the new FEX mods.
> >
> > John
> .
> In addition to personal filtering or ranking, that is only visible to the individual, I would also like to (selfishly) be able to see these rankings from other selected users. For example, if I trust yours & Jos's & other specific individual's rankings, and if you have already done some work evaluating certain submissions and ranked them highly, I would like to know that and use that information to determine which submissions are worthwhile for me to download. So some method of combining rankings only from other selected individuals would be useful to me. Even a simple list of Top 10 favorite downloads, or Top 10 favorite posters, from the experts would be useful.
> .
> Also, the current weighting system is often not very much help. I would rather see a scoring system of some sort that takes into account the number of high rankings, not just an average. If one person rates a M___ (I can't bring myself to spell it) submission a 5, then it shows up as a 5. And the more crap he submits, the more downloads he gets and that just feeds the troll more.
> .
> It is almost like we need a subsection of the FEX, and the only way you get into it is by multiple peer review from approved reviewers, or by amassing a minimum number of high ranks from the general population.
> .
> James Tursa
> .

I like some of your concept, particularly that last part. I've given it a little thought myself. My own source of annoyance is the ranking achieved by the author_in_question due in part to some dubious download numbers. What would happen if you had to login to download? Then there could be a "downloads" link on the author page and file page that shows the downloads and who downloaded, without drawing conclusion or making judgement. One could then see the legitimacy or illegitimacy of an authors rank. It seems like a relatively simple patch and would certainly satisfy me and perhaps others. On the other hand TMW owns the website and is entitled to operate it in any way they perceive enhances their business. Nothing wrong with that.

Well, as I see MATLAB Central still don't reviews deeptly the submisions and comments on the FileExchange (money perhaps) but many user are willing to do so, besides Central is willing to improve and make changes on the site, then, in my opinion, Central should include voluntiers-REVIEWERS on it.

For example, following John's idea. From an author:
- number of files on the FileExchange
- rating
- mean files rating (important!)
- number of comments/ratings on other files
- number of tags in other files
- activity in the Newsreader
- besides of invitation from a current "reviewer"
internally (in order to keep this all anonymously) Central may rate all of us and, if somebody gets highly rated, AUTOMATICALLY (!) an invitation e-mail to be a reviewer is sent to him.

If accepted, then AUTOMATICALLY (!!) when he signs-in on MATLAB Central he will be able to see and extra link on its FileExchange page that send him to a spacial site where he will be able to:

A) Rate AUTHORS by its ID as:
1. spam (eliminates all its files, comments, post, and cannot log-in, of course) .
2. approved as MATLAB programmer (just an idea, jeje), which may be seen as a special tag on the FileExchange-authors, not only when an user make a click on its name link.
3. reviewer-candidate (automatically sends invitation with/without some extra annonymous comments from the reviewer)
NOTE: Maybe 2 or 3 reviewer will be needed in this in order to do the task.

B) Rate SUBMITIONS by its ID as:
1. bad (automatically send a warning of delection to the author if not updated "soon" with/without some extra annonymous comments from the reviewer)
2. reviewer's-pick (automatically adds some kind of EXCELENT tag in the file so any user may be able to see it not only once he click on it (as the Pick's of the week), but directly on the FileExchange-Files)
NOTE: Maybe a single reviewer will be needed in this in order to do the task.

C) See all other approved reviewers (which MUST be kept in anonimity to all other homo-sapiens) to share ideas.

If the reviewer do not report activity "for a while" AUTOMATICALLY (!!!) he receives a warning e-mail of a sonner or later expulsion (?) from the big list if he continues so (or maybe he is programming with HE :( ).

Then, leaving behind the web work, I don't think this increase the work for the MATLAB Central employees, but I do think this will improve our interest on the FileExchange and on our MATLAB programming skills which (as I see from MLINT) is a MathWorks goal (By the way, why not include an english dictionary for the comments?, that would be nice ;) ).

NOTE: this is only to clean a bit the FileExchange, not to make a super programer to every one of the authors, thats why, on the B) part should NOT appear a 1-5 star extra reviewer-rating!!! The existing one is enough, and if an user does not updates his (low-rated) but (not-spam and not-pick file), this should NOT be a reason to be deleted.

Well, this only an idea, what do you think?

Carlos Vargas

"Jos " wrote
> It should be quite easy to implement some personal
> filter on the FEX. This could even be applied to
> excellent submissions.

We're glad to see all this discussion about how to make the File Exchange more useful. Even though we're mostly silent, believe me, we read all these comments. And we know that we haven't built the ideal interface yet.

Keep in mind the biggest challenge is coming up with criteria that are objective and simple. Determining which files are "useful" is a problem with very fuzzy edges. Although there are some extreme and obvious outliers, that doesn't simplify the problem of making simple rules that apply to all submissions and that are objective and reasonable to implement. Where judgments are to be made, we want them to be made by the community. We may end up building some sort of point or karma-like system (as many of you have suggested), but for now we'd like to keep things as simple as possible.

We do have some plans for putting an author filter into the interface, but it takes a little while to implement these things.

Thanks for your patience and your thoughts on the topic,

Ned Gulley
The MATLAB Central Team

Thanks Ned, its a great site! I'll be patient :)

Carlos Vargas

"Carlos Adrian Vargas Aguilera" <nubeobscura@hotmail.com> wrote in message <gfc159$lij$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Thanks Ned, its a great site! I'll be patient :)

Unfortunately, the rating system of the FEX only has become more and more useless in the last weeks .... why not remove the stars at all, just leaving the (non-empty) comments.

Jos

"Jos "
> A multitude of the more recent submissions, reviews and comments posted on the FEX have nothing to do with matlab or sharing scientific ideas...

i like the FEX as it is - and would not like to see it changed (after all)...

as any other mature and open (minded) society, it reflects the zeitgeist of its
citizens (whether you and i like its excesses or not), generously allows them to
live in freedom, and - most important - is able to nurture even its utmost
marginalized members - segregation is well known to toll the downfall of a
civilized people...

and yes, i am well aware that already years ago there were great efforts to create
a legislative framework for the FEX community - and we all have experienced how
even its most honorable members could not agree on even the most basic paragraphs...

moreover, history has shown over and over how any legislative framework, once
devised with honorable goals in mind, only too quickly and easily may be abused
and open up torture chambers when times and people change - and they do change...

in that sense i think those responsible for running the FEX have done a splendid
job in not touching its independence and, thus, keeping all of us on the same
market-place; those who sell gold and those who vociferously praise a useless
tincture for the bald...

us

oh, and this i almost forgot: my 13 year old daughter just started with ML; and
her current project is a teddy-bear drawing snippet; and she plans to put on
the FEX (for educational purposes?!)...
HOW DO YOU THINK I AM GOING TO FEEL ABOUT THIS...

"us " <us@neurol.unizh.ch> wrote in message <gi8lbo$l11$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> oh, and this i almost forgot: my 13 year old daughter just started with ML; and
> her current project is a teddy-bear drawing snippet; and she plans to put on
> the FEX (for educational purposes?!)...
> HOW DO YOU THINK I AM GOING TO FEEL ABOUT THIS...

I'm glad to see you inspiring the next generation of ML users at such a young age. I didn't learn ML until I was 19... I would have loved to start earlier!

I doubt you have to worry much about your daughter posting her code to the FEX... I'm sure, under your tutelage, her programming skills are much better than many who are already posting here.

Ken

"Kenneth Eaton" <Kenneth.dot.Eaton@cchmc.dot.org> wrote in message <gi8mhb$ap8$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "us " <us@neurol.unizh.ch> wrote in message <gi8lbo$l11$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> > oh, and this i almost forgot: my 13 year old daughter just started with ML; and
> > her current project is a teddy-bear drawing snippet; and she plans to put on
> > the FEX (for educational purposes?!)...
> > HOW DO YOU THINK I AM GOING TO FEEL ABOUT THIS...
>
> I'm glad to see you inspiring the next generation of ML users at such a young age. I
> didn't learn ML until I was 19... I would have loved to start earlier!

While these words from <us> and Kenneth add a warm and pleasantly mild touch in this otherwise somewhat cold day and age, I still would like to return to the upper (and possibly main) theme of this thread for two reasons:

1. I think that an important issue is discussed,
2. and that it is fading away at (as I write) position 185 on the Recent posts list,
    and going down fast -- while a more recent post asks for a moderated FEX.

So, here you are, my 2 ?re(*) worth of tougths:

As so many times before, <us> gets it right when writing

> i like the FEX as it is - and would not like to see it changed (after all)...
> as any other mature and open (minded) society, it reflects the zeitgeist
> of its citizens (whether you and i like its excesses or not), generously
> allows them to live in freedom, and - most important - is able to nurture
> even its utmost marginalized members - segregation is well known to toll the
> downfall of a civilized people...

I am equally much annoyed as anyone when wading through nonsense FEX contributions and "Do my homework..." posts when searching for something specific. But would I like to see them censored by someone else (than me)?

Absolutely not!

The right level of censorship is what we all as thinking individual can do --
exercise our own right and responsibility to choose what to read and what
not to read.

Besides, when feeling a little bit philosophical, I quite enjoy reading some of the contributions (and comments) from FEX "favourite" contributors (at both ends of the 'professionalism/usefulness dimension') and contemplate the breath .... :-J


best,
Lars

(*) ?re is the 'Swedish cent' and is pronounced much like "Euro",
but unfortunately with few other communalities...

"Lars Barring" <lars.barring@myworkplace.se> wrote in message ...

> I am equally much annoyed as anyone when wading through nonsense FEX contributions and "Do my homework..." posts when searching for something specific. But would I like to see them censored by someone else (than me)?
>
> Absolutely not!
>

I completely agree!

However, as it is right now the FEX offers absolutely no possibility to censor anything for my own personal use. Every time I look at the FEX I have to go through the "same" list again and again. This list includes both rubbish and submissions I am already aware of and no longer interested in (such as my own files ;-) ).

It should be very easy to individually label submissions and exclude (rather than include) them in searches or browses.

Everyone should have the right to post things to an open form, but everybody else should be given the opportunity to ignore them.

Jos

"Ned Gulley" <gulley@mathworks.com> wrote in message <gfafh5$5kb$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "Jos " wrote
> > It should be quite easy to implement some personal
> > filter on the FEX. This could even be applied to
> > excellent submissions.
>
> We're glad to see all this discussion about how to make the File Exchange more useful. Even though we're mostly silent, believe me, we read all these comments. And we know that we haven't built the ideal interface yet.
>
> Keep in mind the biggest challenge is coming up with criteria that are objective and simple. Determining which files are "useful" is a problem with very fuzzy edges. Although there are some extreme and obvious outliers, that doesn't simplify the problem of making simple rules that apply to all submissions and that are objective and reasonable to implement. Where judgments are to be made, we want them to be made by the community. We may end up building some sort of point or karma-like system (as many of you have suggested), but for now we'd like to keep things as simple as possible.
>
> We do have some plans for putting an author filter into the interface, but it takes a little while to implement these things.
>
> Thanks for your patience and your thoughts on the topic,
>
> Ned Gulley
> The MATLAB Central Team

Ned,

Apparently, in the Newsreader, a post is automatically deleted after it has been flagged as spam a certain number of times.

In my opinion, adding the exact same rule to the files in the File Exchange could be a very easy first step that could improve massively the average quality of the files. In addition, as for the "spam" flag in the newsreader, a user would not be influenced by the opinion of others, as it is not possible to see how many people already applied the flag.

Filtering the files depending on their quality is of course much more difficult and would require more evolved criteria, such as the ones John proposed, but at least we could quickly get rid of all the complete nonsense.

Now, there IS a good idea - removal of files 'tagged' as spam. Simple to implement, and it helps keep the FEX tidy.

I largely agree with Urs (us), above... But this sounds to me like a good compromise.

Cheers all for (IMHO) a worthwhile thread :)

Tom Clark



"Gavrilo Bozovic" <gavrilo.bozovic@helbling.ch> wrote in message <gifui8$csp$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "Ned Gulley" <gulley@mathworks.com> wrote in message <gfafh5$5kb$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> > "Jos " wrote
> > > It should be quite easy to implement some personal
> > > filter on the FEX. This could even be applied to
> > > excellent submissions.
> >
> > We're glad to see all this discussion about how to make the File Exchange more useful. Even though we're mostly silent, believe me, we read all these comments. And we know that we haven't built the ideal interface yet.
> >
> > Keep in mind the biggest challenge is coming up with criteria that are objective and simple. Determining which files are "useful" is a problem with very fuzzy edges. Although there are some extreme and obvious outliers, that doesn't simplify the problem of making simple rules that apply to all submissions and that are objective and reasonable to implement. Where judgments are to be made, we want them to be made by the community. We may end up building some sort of point or karma-like system (as many of you have suggested), but for now we'd like to keep things as simple as possible.
> >
> > We do have some plans for putting an author filter into the interface, but it takes a little while to implement these things.
> >
> > Thanks for your patience and your thoughts on the topic,
> >
> > Ned Gulley
> > The MATLAB Central Team
>
> Ned,
>
> Apparently, in the Newsreader, a post is automatically deleted after it has been flagged as spam a certain number of times.
>
> In my opinion, adding the exact same rule to the files in the File Exchange could be a very easy first step that could improve massively the average quality of the files. In addition, as for the "spam" flag in the newsreader, a user would not be influenced by the opinion of others, as it is not possible to see how many people already applied the flag.
>
> Filtering the files depending on their quality is of course much more difficult and would require more evolved criteria, such as the ones John proposed, but at least we could quickly get rid of all the complete nonsense.

"Thomas Clark" <t.clark@remove.spamcantab.net> wrote in message <gig1t2$bk1$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Now, there IS a good idea - removal of files 'tagged' as spam.
> Simple to implement, and it helps keep the FEX tidy.

So, who will be able to tag files as spam to be removed?
- Everyone? - And I predict that quite a few good files will be removed as a revenge...
- A few select? - Is what I would call censorship.

The way to go is that everyone has the opportunity to personalise the ML Central
by adding private tags, as was already suggested before. And an added incentive
for TMW to implement this would possibly be that they get a free user preference
survey of their customer base ;-)

best
Lars

In article <gig9im$jo2$1@fred.mathworks.com>,
 "Lars Barring" <lars.barring@myworkplace.se> wrote:

> "Thomas Clark" <t.clark@remove.spamcantab.net> wrote in message
> <gig1t2$bk1$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> > Now, there IS a good idea - removal of files 'tagged' as spam.
> > Simple to implement, and it helps keep the FEX tidy.
>
> So, who will be able to tag files as spam to be removed?
> - Everyone? - And I predict that quite a few good files will be removed as a
> revenge...
> - A few select? - Is what I would call censorship.
>
> The way to go is that everyone has the opportunity to personalise the ML
> Central
> by adding private tags, as was already suggested before. And an added
> incentive
> for TMW to implement this would possibly be that they get a free user
> preference
> survey of their customer base ;-)
>
> best
> Lars


I absolutely agree with Urs and Lars. Censorship (no matter what you
call it) is a slippery slope. There will always be the problem of where
to draw the line.

The idea of having individual preferences is nice, but I fear it would
require too much of a commitment from TMW. They have to be willing to
manage all those preferences and supply the resources for storage,
whatever extra bandwidth is used, etc. If they want to do it that would
be great, but I still want no censorship no matter what.

--
Doug Schwarz
dmschwarz&ieee,org
Make obvious changes to get real email address.

Although I agree with most of you that we do not need moderation of the FEX, I would love to see the ~ symbol implemented on its search engine. Given the recent eruption (eruptions?) of marcomania, most search and browsing options are now too time consuming.

Oh, I would really like to search for something like "tag:matrix ~authorid:30860" in order to see at least the possibly worthwhile contributions / comments ...

Jos

"Jos " <#10584@fileexchange.com> wrote in message <gndqo7$sfu$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Although I agree with most of you that we do not need moderation of the FEX, I would love to see the ~ symbol implemented on its search engine. Given the recent eruption (eruptions?) of marcomania, most search and browsing options are now too time consuming.
>
> Oh, I would really like to search for something like "tag:matrix ~authorid:30860" in order to see at least the possibly worthwhile contributions / comments ...
>
> Jos

Yes. I would love to have a way to automatically filter
out certain tags. I thought that the new implementation
would allow this.

John

"Jos " <#10584@fileexchange.com> wrote in message <gndqo7$sfu$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Although I agree with most of you that we do not need moderation of the FEX, I would love to see the ~ symbol implemented on its search engine. Given the recent eruption (eruptions?) of marcomania, most search and browsing options are now too time consuming.
>
> Oh, I would really like to search for something like "tag:matrix ~authorid:30860" in order to see at least the possibly worthwhile contributions / comments ...
>
> Jos

Excellent suggestion. I'm noticing that many of my search results contain a very high Marco content and I'm becoming reluctant to send my associates to the FEX to search for examples or inspiration. A filtered search would be very nice.

"Jos " <#10584@fileexchange.com> wrote
> Oh, I would really like to search for something like "tag:matrix ~authorid:30860"
> in order to see at least the possibly worthwhile contributions / comments ...
>
> Jos

That's a good suggestion. We currently have plans to do something very much like this, although it may take a few months before it gets deployed.

Ned
MATLAB Central team

"Ned Gulley" <gulley@mathworks.com> wrote in message <gnl34i$41b$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "Jos " <#10584@fileexchange.com> wrote
> > Oh, I would really like to search for something like "tag:matrix ~authorid:30860"
> > in order to see at least the possibly worthwhile contributions / comments ...
> >
> > Jos
>
> That's a good suggestion. We currently have plans to do something very much like this, although it may take a few months before it gets deployed.
>
> Ned
> MATLAB Central team

I, and probably many others, will surely appreciate this as I think it is timely given the recent outburst of useless comments on the already useless submissions by 30860.

Jos