Add support for comments on packages

[dandv]

With 900+ packages, there are many cases of packages that do almost but not quite the same thing. For instance, try picking an autocomplete/typeahead package. Note how their description doesn't mention some critical features (search by multiple fields, trigger symbol or not etc.)

How should the new meteor user (not contributor) make an informed choice? Remember that 90%+ of users don't contribute, and won't ever bother to file GitHub issues. This is a rule of thumb that applies to most communities, and something I've personally experience - just look at the atmosphere issues I've opened concerning abandoned or obsoleted package - mine was the only issue notifying the author about the problem, in the many months since they published the package.

Creating issues on the GitHub fails for multiple reasons:

1. The package may no longer exist (example I found just today)
2. The author may no longer have time or interest in maintaining it
3. If a package is no longer maintained, obsoleted by another, and just clutters Atmosphere, it should be removed. Some authors may feel reluctant to remove their packages when they become obsoleted, out of attachment to their work.
4. Until the author gets a chance to update their package, users will continue wasting time with it.

The latter is my case today while trying to pick an autocompletion package. All the information I gathered will NOT be accessible on Atmosphere unless and until the authors take the time to accept my pull requests and republish the packages. And remember, that is a fortunate situation, because I'm one of the <10% who contribute.

Another argument: the best package repository for any language is by far CPAN for Perl. And they support comments, which have been extremely useful in helping users select the right package.

[tmeasday]

I agree!

A couple of points to make:

1. To a large degree this problem will probably be ameliorated by the packaging system that’s built into core. I don’t know if the exact way it works is decided yet, but as far as I know there’ll be a system where the version of Meteor a package is built for is very explicit and it’ll be the responsibility of the package author to keep updating the package to acknowledge that it works with each Meteor release.

   So given that, it's clear that unmaintained packages will quickly drop out of "working" with the current Meteor release, and will therefore it'll be much clearer when the problem you've outlined is happening.

2. In the new version of Atmosphere that is in development, we use a lot of metrics (including github activity) to rank packages. So to some degree that should make your decision on which package to use clearer too.

3. Commenting is definitely a feature we plan to add as well :)

[dcsan]

this thread is from 8 months ago, so let me add

would it be OK to just add discus or faceboom comments to atmosphere pages? that would be very low work involved, at least to get running with. it would mean an extra login but you have to choose something...

this will stop more posts to the mailing list over "which package is best for X"

[dcsan]

see #43 disqus would also mean we don't have to deal with the spam issue..