Feedback

[katrinabrock]

First of all...really cool project, I look forward to deploying for my org! Here are some things that jumped out at me. Just ideas. Feel free to take or leave them.

General

• It would be nice to have a link to the organization(s) page on github very prominent on every page, especially the landing page. In the navbar? You have links in the text on many pages including the landing page, but would be nice if it were more button/navigation coded. Maybe on the landing page specifically make the org names clickable in "there are XX respositories" box?
• It would be nice to disambiguate "repository" and "package". For example, in my org, most repositories are not R packages. Some of the metrics apply to all repositories, others apply only to packages. It would be nice to be a little more clear which are which and on the front page list how many of the repositories are R packages.
• When I click the github link the the top right, I would expect to get to a repo where the metrics for that/those specific org/orgs are being built (https://github.com/ropensci-review-tools/repometrics-demo not https://github.com/ropensci-review-tools/orgmetrics). Since you have a dropdown, maybe you can put both?

Front page

• Overview looks great!
• sandpaper and varnish are listed, but not part of the mentioned orgs. is this a mistake?
• Under "maintenance priorities", it's not clear what these are meant to represent. Are they manually curated, like has the repo owner declared these as priorities? For example, does having "Number of dependencies" as a priority mean that they are trying to reduce that number? Are these just outliers on these metrics or considered "bad and need to be fixed" by some standard?

Organization

The distinction between what belongs in this page and what belongs in the landing page is a bit unclear to me. I wouldn't know which page to go to for which info. Both seem to have overview type info.

Repositories

• Would be nice to have links to docs, cran (if relevant), and Runiverse right at the top in addition to the github link.
• Under "Maintenance" would be nice to have the date of the last commit, last release, commit frequency over the last few months and release frequency over the last few years.
• Is there a way to add a hex or logo if the package has one? (Maybe use the "social preview" image from github if the repo has one.)
• Radar chart might be a nice way to show models and metrics.
• In "outlier only" view, it would be nice to have the high and low outliers in two different plots with different scales so you can see the values. In my view, the "low" outliers all look like they're at zero and aren't very salient.
• When the purple bar overlaps the black label, it's hard to read.
• Navigation of using a dropdown in alphabetical order for repos (and maintainers) is a bit clunky. Maybe there could be a second nav bar where they're all listed out so it's just one click to jump from one to another. What would be really cool is having a clickable honeycomb with with the package hexes, but that seems probably hard to implement. Or maybe a word-cloud style area with more popular repos larger. Not sure what the best solution is.
• It's a little jarring that jumping to the repo page for the first time just sends me to the first repo alphabetically. Would be nice to be sent to the most popular or even a random one.

[mpadge]

Wow, thanks for much for this extremely detailed consideration @katrinabrock, it'll be very helpful indeed! I was instinctively about the start opening a bunch of separate issues based on your ideas, but then realised it will of course be much better if you do that. Then you'll be always identifiable as the originator of each idea, and you'll also see each one individually develop. And so, could you please open additional individual issues on these points:

General

1. It would be nice to have a link to the organization(s) page on github very prominent on every page, especially the landing page. In the navbar? You have links in the text on many pages including the landing page, but would be nice if it were more button/navigation coded. Maybe on the landing page specifically make the org names clickable in "there are XX respositories" box?

2. It would be nice to disambiguate "repository" and "package". For example, in my org, most repositories are not R packages. Some of the metrics apply to all repositories, others apply only to packages. It would be nice to be a little more clear which are which and on the front page list how many of the repositories are R packages.

Organization

3. The distinction between what belongs in this page and what belongs in the landing page is a bit unclear to me. I wouldn't know which page to go to for which info. Both seem to have overview type info.

Repositories

4. Would be nice to have links to docs, cran (if relevant), and Runiverse right at the top in addition to the github link.

5. Under "Maintenance" would be nice to have the date of the last commit, last release, commit frequency over the last few months and release frequency over the last few years.

6. Is there a way to add a hex or logo if the package has one? (Maybe use the "social preview" image from github if the repo has one.)

7. It's a little jarring that jumping to the repo page for the first time just sends me to the first repo alphabetically. Would be nice to be sent to the most popular or even a random one.

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I'll address the other points you raised later on. Thanks so much!

[katrinabrock]

done