Python packages - quality

[j.crater]

Hello all,

One of more recent topics on this forum (can't recall which one exactly) discussed Python packages. 
It made me wonder, is there any (more or less) agreed upon metric for assessing a Python package quality?
If one requires a new functionality in code (say, working with docx files), it is easy to go to PyPi, search for the term, and get a lot of hits. But surely there are vast differences among packages, in terms of quality, number of features, maintenance...

[Ofnuts]

If the package source is on an open platfrom (GitHub or else) you can see how much maintenance the package receives (and how many maintainers it has). Fairly active maintenance by at least 3 people is usually a good sign. You can of course also find very stable packages that have been written by a single person...

[Kebap]

Maybe ask in a python community of your choice which packages they can recommend for a certain task at hand (say, working with docx files)

[j.crater]

Maybe ask in a python community of your choice which packages they can recommend for a certain task at hand (say, working with docx files)

I did a similar thing today. Just went a step further, wondering whether there was a general enough way to get basic clue on package "worthyness" on my own.

Thanks for the tip @Ofnuts.

[Larz60+]

Hello,

I have a class https://github.com/Larz60p/PyPiInfo which will download
info for all packages.

You can garner information from this module such as (i think) number of
downloads and compare that against other modules of the same type. The
one with the most downloads is (may be?) the winner.

You have to be careful though, just because it's the most popular doesn't mean
it's the best. Case in point Microsoft is more popular than Linux. Best one? You be the judge.

[j.crater]

That's good work Larz, I somehow missed this code in case you have presented it before, so thanks for showing.
I believe I now got the answers I needed, thanks all.

[wavic]

The number of downloads may not be an indication of the quality of the package. If it's written long enough and there were no similar packages for a while the downloads could be a really big number.

[j.crater]

@wavic I have taken this into consideration. There aren't too many metrics by which to estimate a package quality, when knowing nothing about it. Number of downloads is just one of the factors, with a limited weight to it.

[snippsat]

Number of downloads is just one of the factors, with a limited weight to it.

Requests download count 11,000,000 downloads every month give a clue that's it's okay