Nugetgallery: Emphasise a current popularity metric instead of total downloads

[adamralph]

"Total downloads" seems to be the currently emphasised metric. For example, when I browse to my profile page, the packages are listed in descending order by number of total downloads. The preview tile for each package also shows the number of total downloads.

I propose that number of total downloads is not the most interesting metric, and certainly not the metric which indicates which packages are "hot". The more interesting metric is _average downloads per day_. I'll explain why. The number of total downloads is heavily influenced by the _length of time_ a package has been on the gallery.

For example, https://www.nuget.org/packages/LiteGuard.Source/ only gets 9 downloads a day, but it's been on the gallery since early 2013, so it currently has around 21K total downloads. On the other hand, https://www.nuget.org/packages/MinVer/1.0.0 currently gets 77 downloads day (more than 8 times as many as LiteGuard.Source) but because it's only been on the gallery since late 2018 (6 months) it only has 15K downloads.

Currently, LiteGuard.Source is sorted above MinVer on my profile page, but it's clearly the less popular package. MinVer is more than 8 times as popular, as proven by its downloads per day.

I propose the following (for all relevant pages in the gallery, not necessarily just profile pages):

• Add downloads per day to the package tile and emphasise it. E.g.
• Change the descending sort order to be based on avg downloads per day instead of total downloads.

[joelverhagen]

Great idea! Thanks for the suggestion. As far as I can remember right now, the profile page is the only one that is sorted just by simple total download count. Search (which is being improved right now) takes your search term into account as well as downloads and other factors we are considering.

Another way of getting hot packages to stand out is total download count over the past N days.

One question I have is this: as a package CONSUMER do you use the profile page for discovering new packages that you don't know about yet? Or for finding a package ID you forgot? Or something else?

Above you mentioned your own profile page. As a package AUTHOR how do you use your own profile page? I feel like in this scenario (package author on his own page) we may have to guess the sort order.

Perhaps on profile page we just need a drop-down so you can pick the sort order... Needs more input from users perhaps.

In short, it's not clear to me yet how people use the profile page and the right sort order may vary from use case to use case.

[adamralph]

One question I have is this: as a package CONSUMER do you use the profile page for discovering new packages that you don't know about yet? Or for finding a package ID you forgot? Or something else?

I use it to see what are the most interesting packages produced by that author/organisation. If package net-hotness has 1,000 downloads a day but has only been on the gallery for one month, I want to see that before package old-dinosaur that's been on the gallery for 5 years but only has 20 downloads a day (currently the old-dinosaur would show before new-hotness).

Above you mentioned your own profile page. As a package AUTHOR how do you use your own profile page? I feel like in this scenario (package author on his own page) we may have to guess the sort order.

I _want_ to use it to see which of packages is most interesting to the community, but currently, it's highly skewed to which packages have been on the gallery the longest. It's effectively the same use case, and the same problem, as when I'm browsing as a CONSUMER of someone else's profile page.

Perhaps on profile page we just need a drop-down so you can pick the sort order... Needs more input from users perhaps.

Yes, that could work.

Another way of getting hot packages to stand out is total download count over the past N days.

I think I prefer avg downloads per day. The number of downloads over the last N days can be erratic, and it an even shorter term metric. The avg downloads per day still take into account the historic value of a package, even if it's popularity is tailing off. Just by taking into account length of time on the gallery, it's already a more interesting metric than an absolute number of downloads.

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Perhaps this issue should be split into two?

• Add avg downloads per day to package tiles (in all views)\
• Sort profile pages by avg downloads per day

[joelverhagen]

Perhaps this issue should be split into two?

• Add avg downloads per day to package tiles (in all views)\
• Sort profile pages by avg downloads per day

Maybe keep them as one for now.

@anangaur @karann-msft, thoughts?

[anangaur]

IMO total downloads doesn’t even make sense. It’s a vanity metric for authors 🙂. From consumers, a recent download metric makes sense like weekly or monthly download count. We can do away with other metrics on the details page and put them into stats, if required

[anangaur]

For profile page too we could have monthly/weekly downloads along with total downloads for the packages. And sort them by monthly downloads descending

[adamralph]

To clarify, does "monthly/weekly downloads" mean downloads in the last month/week, or average number of downloads per month/week?

[anangaur]

Last one month/week as it reflects the current popularity

[adamralph]

OK, but in that case I would propose using month as the primary metric. One week could be too erratic.

[anangaur]

OK, but in that case I would propose using month as the primary metric. One week could be too erratic.

Agree 👍

[adamralph]

What is the current status of this?

[skofman1]

@adamralph , we have added this to our backlog. We will prioritize the work based on the other items we got.

[adamralph]

Any movement?

[chgill-MSFT]

Hi @adamralph, we haven't been able to prioritize this work yet, but we still believe that it's important and will likely improve our search relevancy. I will update this issue we get started on this feature 😊