This only helps if everyone uses the same convention. Which means that it needs to be implemented in one important place. Such as within Test::More itself. For instance you can have an environment variable which, if it is set, will run the first 30 tests and then only tests thereafter which are specifically marked as truly being important.

If Schwern objects, tell him that testing is fine and dandy, but you have to walk a practical line between the benefit of running tests, and people's willingness to go through it. Right now a lot of modules are going way over...