joe@lakesys.UUCP (Joe Pantuso) (03/31/88)
In article <1772@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: >I've been staying out of this discussion because I have the same problems >with it as Karl. Who's gonna care about the USOA? (I'm getting tired of saying this) They will care becuase it will reach a LARGE number of people through BBS's and User Group Newsletters. I think that there is a great enough user base just there to justify U-R's existence. >Perhaps Fred Fish can help. He's got an in at Amazing Computing. If AC starts >publishing the USOA ratings for programs that are already out there (who >wants to review TextCraft? :->), then we can start pulling in manufacturers. This is a Good Suggestion. I like Good Suggestions. I have no structure problems, and no objections to things like this. That might be a good way for this to get started. I am still waiting for "official" recognition. >We need someone to write an article setting down the criteria and send it to >AC (or maybe Transactor, even). Then next month we start the reviews. The >published reviews should merely consist of a list of things wrong with the >program, perhaps some scaling, then a final score. Low scores are better. OK, good idea there too. I'm still open to suggestions for the criterea of reviewers/reviews. I'll start to work on such a document and add in anything good I come across from you guys. I will post it on Monday, April 4th. Watch for it and then critique/laud it. We can get away with lengthy reviews in electronic form, but like you say printed articles should be (have to be!) short. We can give a small amount of room for comments and then several areas in which the program is rated. Things like (off the top of my head) Graphics use/Printed output quality/ Speed/Overall ease of use/Compatability(A500, memory expansions, etc)/and much more. Obviously some of these catagories would be applicable only to certain types of software. There are lots of variables to hash out. Why low scores better? There are lots of different rating scales we could use, 5 starts, 1 to 10, -10 to +10, etc. Some areas would be ratings, some would be yes/no. From these an overall rating could be derived but would it do justice? After the criterea are finished we can discuss the possibility of asking magazines if they with to print our reviews. True, reviewing things we already have is a good way to start it out, as I've said. It would appear that there has been some trouble with our net feed, so some of my responses have bunched up. This will be cleared up soon (4-6 months) as we are getting a direct microwave link up to a major net site. This way all mail will be instantly recieved and distributed from my site. (The effective baud rate of this hook up is 300,000+ baud I'm told.) >-- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter -Joe
fnf@fishpond.UUCP (Fred Fish) (04/03/88)
In article <559@lakesys.UUCP> joe@lakesys.UUCP (Joe Pantuso) writes: =>In article <1772@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: =>>Perhaps Fred Fish can help. He's got an in at Amazing Computing. If AC starts =>>publishing the USOA ratings for programs that are already out there (who =>>wants to review TextCraft? :->), then we can start pulling in manufacturers. => =>This is a Good Suggestion. I like Good Suggestions. I have no structure =>problems, and no objections to things like this. That might be a good way for =>this to get started. I am still waiting for "official" recognition. Although I have been following this "Usenet Ratings" discussion with interest, this doesn't really sound like something that I'd be able to get involved in, since my time is pretty tight these days. Amazing Computing would probably be interested in at least seeing some of the results, but I couldn't really say whether or not they would publish such results in any sort of ongoing "ratings table" (I really don't have any special relationship with AC). -Fred ><> -- # Fred Fish hao!noao!mcdsun!fishpond!fnf (602) 921-1113 # Ye Olde Fishpond, 1346 West 10th Place, Tempe, AZ 85281 USA