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:The task was very popular and gained ten language examples by the time I promoted it with their editors not having much trouble finding a comparable interpretation of the task description. I usually look for at least four, and no unresolved issues in the talk page; but I now realise that there should be (more of) an element of "time-served as a draft" in my loose equation of when to promote from draft.
::'''We don't identify fruit by how many flies it attracts, or by how long it has been left or avoided in the sun'''
:: Neither of your proposals are adequate, or consistent with Rosetta's stated principles and goals.
::* ''"I usually look for at least four"''. Counting the number of flies attracted is no guide to nutritional value or popularity with readers and learners. The bugmenot junk tasks are clearly attracting paid flies from desk jobs somewhere.
::* "''time-served''" has demonstrably provided no protection against junk tasks, whether simply of poor quality, or actually generated by spammers.
::An editor's duty is to:
::# Ensure that proposals meet the 3 Rosetta goals: 1. Relevance to maximum number of languages 2. Maximally conducive to depth of comparative insight 3. Maximally useful to learners
::# Make use of the stated principle of '''Task Focus''' to ensure these goals. Insight into languages comes from tasks that arise '''outside''' them.
::# Coax initially defective formulations or proposals towards better scores on these 3 axes.
::Many flies and long neglect are no proxy whatsoever, and have proved to be no defence at all against junk task spam. Give proposers a simple checklist of the values sought, and of ways of improving an offering.
:: [[User:Hout|Hout]] ([[User talk:Hout|talk]]) 10:40, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
:On your specific language questions, you bring up a point that I think Perl might share, as at least with hashes their is a method of providing a list of keys and creating a hash out of them with all the vales set to undefined. you then have the ability of a key existing in the hash but its value being undefined. Some languages might explicitly allow sparse arrays where possibly non-contiguous ranges of indices are allocated in memory making the concept of number of elements even more complicated.
:'''P.S.''' I have just seen that [[Array_length#J]] does this kind of extra explanation I mentioned. --[[User:Paddy3118|Paddy3118]] ([[User talk:Paddy3118|talk]]) 07:19, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
::'''"The task was very popular"'''
::"Popularity" is a skewed metric. There is very obviously an inverse relationship between how much thought and insight a task requires, and the number of people who instantly respond to it. If a crude count of instant submissions were to replace Rosetta's key principle of task focus, and its central (landing-page) goals of broadest relevance, deepest insight, and most value to learners, then the more facile, notationally focused, and unreflectingly parochial the better – a guaranteed instant 'hit' ... (tho a despoliation of the Rosetta project, and the replacement of Rosetta tasks by a pile of poorly indexed grammar book excerpts).
::I'm afraid that the current user(s) of ersatz www.bugmenot.com credentials spotted this before we did. If you want to get instant responses (perhaps to establish a page in preparation for spamming use ?) two simple steps: 1. Choose the lowest common denominator language (JS), 2. Invite the most facile extracts from language documentation pages.
::In short:
::# Perhaps '''"Popularity"''' needs a little more thought and refinement (and much better integration with Rosetta's editorial goals).
::# There should clearly be a presumption against "grammar-book snippet" entries. They are not Rosetta tasks, not least because they score so poorly on 1. Number of languages to which they are relevant 2. Depth of insight into the underlying problem 3. Value to learners beyond that which can be found in the Mozilla manual.
::PS Doesn't your use of the word '''"popularity"''' confuse supply with demand ? There are lots of instant suppliers for facile grammar-book entries, but do we actually know how many grateful readers found useful insight in such entries ? Things are not ''''popular'''' because there is a ready supply of them – popularity means strong '''demand'''. More supply than demand means glut and falling prices – a very good definition, in fact, of ''surplus to requirements'' and '''"unpopular"'''
::[[User:Hout|Hout]] ([[User talk:Hout|talk]]) 09:47, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
::'''More to the point, the "task" was proposed as a spamming manoeuvre, with bogus credentials'''
::They clearly noticed that we have a structural and persistent blind spot here, and have been all too obviously losing track of task focus and Rosetta editorial principles. If any facile documentation-lookup proposal can get promoted by someone to pseudo-task status as soon as it scores a certain number of instant and facile responses, then not only will the quality of tasks be poor, but vulnerability to this kind of spamming manoeuvre will be very high indeed.
::When, exactly was 'popularity' defined in terms of easy supply instead of high demand and reader interest ?
::And when, precisely, and how, did this curious definition of 'popularity' acquire its priority over Rosetta principles ? [[User:Hout|Hout]] ([[User talk:Hout|talk]]) 00:00, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
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