I’ve spent a good chunk of the past few days reviewing the reviews. Ian has blogged several times about our little competition to award Europa reviewers with some Eclipse SWAG and a conference pass (for one lucky winner). I thought that I’d spend a few minutes discussing my selection process before we announce the winners.
First, I’d like to congratulate those among you who figured out that all you needed to do was string a few coherent sentences together to get a shirt. Honestly, I respect this sort of behaviour. While you have my admiration, you shouldn’t count on getting the grand prize (but I’m sure that you expected that).
Second, since there were so many great reviews to choose from, I decided to try select those reviews that captured the essence of Europa. My ideal review is one that discusses how the project teams worked together to bring improved coherency to the various offerings. A couple of reviews came close to this. My lesser ideal review is one that discusses more than one project. There were several more of these.
Finally, as there were so many reviews to choose from, I organized them according to substance. I looked for reviews that conveyed useful information that goes beyond what is captured in “New and Noteworthy” documentation.
Many of the reviews were not in English. It was cool to see reviews in Chinese, German, French, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish. I had these reviews translated as well as electronic tools could manage. Given that translation technology still isn’t quite “there” (Polish to English translation is apparently harder than most other languages), I decided that grammar and spelling should not be a factor, even for those reviews written in English.
One thing about the reviews that bothered me was how many people think that Europa == Eclipse 3.3. The Eclipse project’s version 3.3 is included as part of Europa, but it is just a part of the Europa release.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who submitted their reviews. The short list has been created and has been passed on to a second judge who will decide the order of the finalists. We should (hopefully) be announcing our decision in the next day or so. Stay tuned.
