Misleading summary of mirror status

[Tod Hagan]

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors presents for each mirror a summarized status of the mirror's currency for each release. Because of this, users can be misled into unknowingly selecting a severely out-of-date or inactive mirror.

Specifically, as of 2010-09-09, lucid-updates on mirrors.ccs.neu.edu is two months out of date, yet mirrors.ccs.neu.edu is reported as current, based on the mirror's status for Intrepid Ibex, a release which is no longer supported!

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors reports:

Northeastern University College of Computer Science http ftp 1 Gbps Up to date

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+mirror/mirrors.ccs.neu.edu-archive shows:

Version Architecture Status
The Maverick Meerkat amd64 Last update unknown
The Maverick Meerkat i386 Last update unknown
The Lucid Lynx i386 Last update unknown
The Lucid Lynx amd64 Last update unknown
The Karmic Koala amd64 Last update unknown
The Karmic Koala i386 Last update unknown
The Jaunty Jackalope amd64 Last update unknown
The Jaunty Jackalope i386 Last update unknown
The Intrepid Ibex amd64 Up to date
The Intrepid Ibex i386 Up to date
The Hardy Heron amd64 Last update unknown
The Hardy Heron i386 Last update unknown
The Dapper Drake amd64 Last update unknown
The Dapper Drake i386 Last update unknown
The Dapper Drake powerpc Last update unknown
The Dapper Drake sparc Last update unknown

> curl -sl mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/ubuntu/dists/lucid-updates/main/binary-amd64/ | html2text
****** Index of /ubuntu/dists/lucid-updates/main/binary-amd64/ ******
===============================================================================
../
Packages.bz2 08-Jul-2010 14:15
252090
Packages.gz 08-Jul-2010 14:15
309691
Release 08-Jul-2010 14:38
103
===============================================================================

This misleading summarization of status is a design flaw (it's not a bug, see https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad-registry/+question/124754). But because it's not reliable, the status summary should either be removed or replaced.

Suggestions:

1. Remove from the list of mirrors any site for which none of the current releases are reasonably current (i.e., remove a mirror where all of the current releases have components that are "Last update unknown").

2. Change the presentation of the status summary.

First, don't consider non-current releases when calculating the summary.

When calculating the summary for a mirror, first summarize each release by using the worst status among the architectures and sources, then summarize the mirror by using the worst status among the current releases. Thus the green status texts (Up to date, One hour behind, Six hours behind) will reliably indicate a good mirror.

To each of the non-green status texts (days or weeks out of date, or unknown) append an asterisk (*) and link the status text to the detail page for that mirror. This affordance will encourage the viewer to check the detail page for the mirror.

While there is utility to subdividing the status column into separate sub-columns presenting a summary status for each release on the mirror, this might make the page too visually noisy, and be harder to use by people with accessibility issues.