Re: [eigen] New contributors section

[Jitse Niesen <jitse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 23 Sep 2009, Benoit Jacob wrote:

> As you can see,
> http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Main_Page#Credits
>
> the contributors section is now automatically generated: that will
> prevent the chronic problem that nobody took care to update it.
>
> I would like to know if you think that this is a bad idea (I don't
> want to give the impression that I don't care about contributors, it's
> all the opposite. But I understand that auto-generating this may seem
> a bit cold).

I don't think that auto-generating is a bad idea. But I'm not so fond on 
how you sort the table by "lines changed". I doubt this is a good 
reflection of how much somebody contributes. I prefer the previous order 
(Gael and you first, and then the rest in alphabetical order). You can 
keep the numbers if you wish - it does add a competitive element which may 
be beneficial - but mention some caveat like "The numbers of lines changed 
does not faithfully reflect the importance of somebody's contributions. 
Contributions are sometimes attributed to the wrong person."

You write that the Misc column is only to describe contributions that are 
not well represented by the numbers. However, I would keep the 
descriptions of all contributions (things like "MSVC compatibility fixes, 
aligned_allocator fixes" for Hauke in the previous version). I understand 
that's a bit of work, but it helps to keep the human touch.

Just my two cents.


Jitse