HCL not usable
 

Hey Folks,

we have been through a discussion about HCL review times before. This is always a sensitive topic,
as usually people will just assume one wants to bash on the volunteers doing the work here.
This is not the case.

The point is, my entry of 2006-06-13 is still unmoderated today 2006-09-01. The entry is a 5-liner
telling that a specific digital camera works on linux. As the market for digital cameras goes, it might
be off the market before the review is approved.

Repeat, this is no criticism on the HCL people.

But reality must be faced, the current use case does not work. Several modifications to the
HCL software have been suggested before.

• Notify new posters that the entry is awaiting approval! I and others wasted a considerate amount of
  time fiding out why the entry did not appear in the listing (but in the "last post" column!)
• Make unreviewed entries available in listing and search. (Mark as "unreviewed, use at own risk" if
  you wish).
• i.e.: Either hide unreviewed in all cases, (i.e. also in "last post" column), or show in all cases.
• Differentiate between lenghty and complicated matter (motherboards, gfx cards, ...) and quick&easy
  things (camera, USB stick, mobile phone, ...)
• ...probably more ;-) ...

However, all these suggestions have been unanswered.
(A friendly or sensible "would be cool, but cannot do because..." would also be a valid answer...)

Cheers, Tom.

I'd agree that we need some more consistency in certain aspects of the approval process, especially in regard to which products to show. It's on the list. As for the queue, as mentioned previously, the problem is how far behind it was allowed to get. We now have someone actively approving items and the backlog is consistently shrinking. It's possible that we could use additional volunteers to help, so if anyone is interested feel free to contact me (just a qualifier though: since you'll have additional permissions to parts of LQ, you will need to be a long time LQ member in good standing that is willing to dedicated consistent (but not necessarily large amount of) time to the project).

--jeremy

Related to the HCL, I have often spent time looking through the different companies for the best supported product.
It would be a nice feature to show the top (best rated) two or three items at the top so I have a quick choice when looking for linux-supported products.

Just an idea.

Jeremy I'm willing to moderate the HCL if you'll have me. But how much expertise does it require?

We have some additional help working on the HCL now, so I think we should be fine. If we do need any additional help I'll contact the people who volunteered, in order. Thanks for your willingness to participate and help LQ!

--jeremy