Top Extensions

This may been touched on previously under another thread.

The Top Extensions banner is likely to remain pretty static since it only shows the top extensions, presumably ranked by number of downloads. Which then makes me wonder if it is really all that useful in its current state.

  • it’s going to be rather static with a high probability of little / no change in this order
  • most popular extensions can already be found using a dropdown on the search facility
  • how do we judge top extensions, number of downloads or actual usefulness (then how do judge how useful an extension may be)?
  • no exposure to other extensions, which may peak users’ interest (or find useful)

Would this not serve the user community better if it were renamed “Extension Showcase” (or something else / similar / along those lines) which then had a slot or three for the newest extensions and the rest for randomly selected extensions?

It’s what is called positive feedback or autocatalysis.

Top extensions get more views, and all first-time users will see them first and likely install. It should be removed or some kind of dynamics added (drawing randomly k out of n top extensions, or limiting the ranking on a recent period of time, rising extensions).

Also there is little bias to finding useful extensions form a user’s perspective. The sidebar shows top extensions, top authors or extensions by the same author (on a details page). That is a showcase of how great EWH is (from Extension Warehouse’s perspective). But I guess users are less interested in the same author than in similar extensions that are useful for the same tasks.

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“Top Extensions” was changed a few years ago (I believe) to be much more random, and mostly show new extensions, presumably for the exact reasons you list. The old name stuck though, even though it doesn’t represent what the list actually is.

Except for about the last week (to my recollection) the list has been static.

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I take back what I just said!

It appears the actual top extension list has been brought back again. Just a few weeks ago though it showed recent extensions instead. Just a day or two prior to the Basecamp I updated 5 or so of my extensions to fix the same bug in them, and thought it was silly how that made them take up half the list.