general heuristics for ranking package quality

npm-qos-heuristic.md

Health

Has CI

Tests pass

Total number of breaking commits

Number of dependencies

Average age of issue

Frequency of issues fixed

Average response time of issues fixed to bugs filed

Last commit

Frequency of releases

Popularity

Number of dependent modules

Number of total downloads

Frequency of downloads

Frequency of commits

Number of contributors

Quality

Is well documented.

A markdown based README can be parsed to find headers corresponding to the man pages spec or else if there is no pattern match, a set of basic rules.

Number of Major releases

Reaching version 1.0 for node modules represents a significant milestone in stability.

Number of npm stars

When someone runs npm star <module-name> they are making a public statement about their appreciation for it.

Number of github stars

When someone stars a github repo they are making a public statement about their interest in it.

Agreed, any of these metrics aren't valuable alone, but hopefully the list will give a good snapshot into the value of a module.

Any thoughts on implementation?

@SaraJo implementation is easy, making sure we are implementing the right thing is the hard part ;)

It seems like there should be some metric involving age of open pull requests. If the pull requests are not being dealt with in a timely fashion (pulled or denied) then it shows a stale project. Perhaps average number of day age of pull requests?

It frustrates me greatly when there are open pull requests solving critical bugs that are being ignored.

@wshaver +1

+1 this will help a lot

I'd love to see tests / test coverage as part of quality, however best expressed?

@clintandrewhall added

+1 This would be excellent for any package management