Re: Distribution statistics for ELPA and EMMS

[Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net>]

> Currently we have two developers who have voiced that they would 
> likethis feature in ELPA. Perhaps if others chime in then it should
> be considered.

Obviously, I think every developer would like to see the download counts 
of their packages.  I check mine on MELPA now and then to get a sense of 
how popular they are, at least relative to each other.  If nothing else 
it gives me an idea about how I may need to better document or publicize 
them (the ones that seem under-utilized, that is).  And, of course, it 
can be a nice ego boost.  :)

So, yes, it would be nice if ELPA offered something similar.  Nothing 
fancy, just a download counter, would be good.  Even better would be a 
page showing downloads per month, or something like that, for historical 
purposes.

However, another factor to keep in mind is that some packages may be 
downloaded regularly for continuous integration testing, which may 
inflate the download count.  One might think that this would only be a 
small number, and I guess for most packages it is, but I have seen on 
some of mine, which seem to be included in some distros with regular CI, 
that the Git repo is cloned hundreds or thousands of times per week, 
numbers far beyond the users of the package.  Maybe that pattern is 
confined to cloning the Git repo rather than downloading from ELPA, but 
I can't say.

As far as uniqueness, I would, of course, suggest that IP addresses 
should be protected.  Maybe some simple aggregation in the sense of 
collating multiple downloads from one address in a short period of time 
could be useful, but anything beyond that would seem bogus.

My two cents.  :)