From: David Heinemeier Hansson <david@...>
Date: 2005-04-09T22:55:21+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Instiki 0.10.0 - On The Rails

>>>> So, come on, let's have a popularity pissing context among Ruby
>>>> end-user applications. We may actually learn something useful that
>>>> way. Any takers?
>>> This is the sort of thing Ruby can do without, but happens anyway.
>> Why do you think it is such a bad thing?
>
> Because it confuses popularity with quality.

The confusion would be a personal mistake, then. Alexey merely wrote 
"most popular end-user application in the Ruby world", so he wasn't 
taking part of any qualitative evaluation -- merely drawing a 
reasonable interpretation of number downloads => largest reach => most 
popular. I think that's a generally accepted chain of reasoning.

The record of the week with the most sales is said to be the most 
popular one. That definition doesn't include the intensity of 
popularity (user A buying both X and Y, but _enjoying_ the purchase of 
X much more than Y), but the lack of resolution surely doesn't preclude 
the use of popularity as defined above as a meaningful indicator.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://www.basecamphq.com/   -- Web-based Project Management
http://www.rubyonrails.org/  -- Web-application framework for Ruby
http://www.loudthinking.com/ -- Broadcasting Brain