This is a web application for ranking and evaluating web application projects at SourceForge. If you make a simple search at SourceForge you will find hundreds of web application projects: hundreds of frameworks, hundreds of template systems, hundreds of content management systems, document management systems, groupwares, wikis, etc. Somebody that would like to get and use an existing web application project will have a difficult time in choosing which one, and often will not be able to make the best choice. This application will attempt to make an evaluation and ranking of these web applications, thus helping to identify the best projects and helping the users to choose the best ones.
The evaluation will be done by the developers of these web applications themselves and by other developers that are registered with SourceForge. For the time being, no other people can participate in the evaluation due to technical reasons (because I want to keep simple the identification process, without registration, passwords etc.; I can ensure this for people who have a SourceForge username, but I cannot ensure it for the others). However, I think that this is not a shortcoming, because web application developers can evaluate projects that are similar to their own better than anyone else. After all I want this to be an evaluation in terms of quality rather than in terms of popularity (votes from the many users indicate popularity).
If everybody makes an effort and tries to evaluate at least 10 other projects (taking it easy, for example a project in two weeks or a project in a month), then, hopefully, after some time we would have identified together the best projects.
Every SourceForge developer can identify 10 web application projects that he likes most and he can rank them according to his preference. The project in the first place will get 10 points, the project in the second place will get 9 points, and so on. He can enlist less than 10 projects and add others latter, as he evaluates them with time. Or, he can add in his list more than 10 projects with the aim of evaluating and ranking them later (the projects after the 10-th position will receive 0 points). Of course, he will be able to delete the projects in his list at any time, and able to change their ranking at any time. This ensures that the evaluation is dynamic and it can change during the time (e.g. if a new application project that is very good comes out, then it is perfectly possible for it to achieve the highest rankings and to be enlisted as one of the best projects). This also means that the evaluation process is meant to take a long time and to be continuous, rather than to provide instant results that are valid just for the time being.
This evaluation process is an open one, in the sense that everybody can see what is the list of the preferred projects of a certain developer, and who are the developers that have voted for a certain project (and how many points each of them has given to it).
The developer cannot enlist his own project (or a project in which he participates) in this list, because naturally everybody is biased toward his own project and he would give it the highest scores possible. Instead, his project will receive a bonus point for each project that he evaluates (up to 10 points). If he participates in more than one projects, then all his projects will receive these bonus points (each of them will receive 10 points). So, provided that everybody participates in the evaluation, no project will have less than 10 points; if a project has 0 points this means that its developers have not evaluated any other projects and that nobody else has given any point to this project.
The project 'phpwebapp' is excluded from evaluation, in order to eliminate any possibility of being unfair, since I am affiliated with this project and this evaluation application is affiliated with it. Anyway, I think that it will receive publicity as a bonus (many people will know about its existence), and this would be as good as a high ranking.
This application offers also the possibility for adding evaluation comments to each project, which can be read by anybody. The developers are encouraged to add comments to their own projects as well, in order to compare it to other similar projects. The comments do not count in the evaluation process, but they can help the others to evaluate a certain project.
In my opinion, the reasons that so many web application projects exist, are some of these:
Another aim of this application (besides evaluation) is to make aware the developers about the existence of other projects similar to theirs, and to increase the mutual knowledge between them. They can improve their projects by exchanging ideas and code with other similar projects. It would be even better if some of the projects unite in a single one by taking the best features from each project and by joining their development efforts.
There is also a mailing list for discussing issues related to web application development in general.
If you have any ideas or suggestions, please contact me: dashohoxha@users.sourceforge.net
Copyright 2003 Dashamir Hoxha, dashohoxha@users.sourceforge.net
Top10 is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Top10 is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Top10; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA