Remove labs, add recommendations

[passy]

We seem to agree that labs in their current form don't make too much sense. We should instead have some recommendations of production-ready, mature, well-maintained frameworks that have a solid community around them.

• Discuss removal of frameworks currently in labs not meeting our standards
• Remove ^
• Move everything out of labs
• Discuss recommendations
• Add ^

How does that sound?

/ref #805

[sindresorhus]

👍 👍 👍 👍

[addyosmani]

I strongly agree with the sentiment here. I do think that we need to define clear guidelines for how we decide something is mature and production ready (in terms of a 'recommended' badge) before totally getting rid of labs however.

This is particularly important for us to maintain our impartiality. As both @passy and I work at companies with frameworks in the collection, care also needs to be taken in saying we recommend something that falls into that bucket.

So big +1, but let's flesh this idea out. I realize it isn't vastly different to labs but am guessing there won't be a 1:1 transition.

[ColinEberhardt]

+1 to all of these ideas. As I have mentioned before, the subtle maroon shading, and [R] for routing on the todomvc website is quite confusing. I agree, ditch the labs, and remove any implementations that do not meet the specification from the website.

I'd also be inclined to do the same for routing, the vast majority now support routing (ahem, albeit incorrectly #790). Any that do not support routing should be removed.

'recommended' badge

I think that any form of rating, or badge of distinction is a likely to cause issues. To do this properly we will need a good set of guidelines, however, there will always been edge-cases and room for complaint / appeal from framework authors.

I think a better approach is to add a few sentences about each framework - a form of curation from the todomvc team. I am sure the members of this team are seen as being experienced, knowledgeable and having integrity.

The curated text could look something like this:

"The AwesomeJS MVC framework is a relative newcomer, with the the stated aims of being lightweight and simple. Currently the documentation is lightweight and there appear to be relatively few users. However, the core development team are making frequent release, and we feel this is one to watch for the future".

"The OldSchoolJavaStyle MVC framework is a tried and tested framework that has been around for a number of years. However, its approach and practices feel dated and as a result it is losing traction and is not something we would recommend for new projects."

I think this should solve any issues that @addyosmani and @passy might have with their relationship to companies that have created these frameworks. The curated text is 'soft' and advisory as opposed to providing a rating or label.

[addyosmani]

Not in any way saying we should consider this, but just thought of the idea: enable our users to rate frameworks based on their experience, leave reviews and use that data to surface popular frameworks to the top rather than manual curation. To the best of my knowledge, nothing else enables this type of centralized ratings mechanism.

[ColinEberhardt]

That's not a bad idea @addyosmani - I've seen it work in similar contexts, for example CocoaControls allows you to rate and discuss iOS controls:

https://www.cocoacontrols.com/controls/vctransitionslibrary

(I wonder who created that one ;-)

I am sure todomvc has many users and we would see a significant number of comments and ratings.

For ratings I would recommend a filtered approach that discounts ratings that deviate significantly from the mean, This means that if a framework has a mean rating of 4.5 / 5.0, a single malicious vote of 1.0 does not count.

I have seen that employed successfully on CodeProject:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/66043/Code-Project-Rating-and-Reputation-FAQ#calculate

Reviews could simply be powered by Disqus.

Not in any way saying we should consider this

I am saying that we should ;-)