Most here are probably familiar with the gitpan repos: https://github.com/gitpan. My question is this: What is the best way to make this project meaningful?

It seems like a lot of work went into pulling all of the modules in the Gitpan project into public repos. But the work was done a couple of years ago, and the repos are aging; I don't think that newer and updated modules are finding their way in (contrary to what's mentioned in the Gitpan README), and existing modules are more current either on CPAN or in authors' own public repositories. Many authors have their own preferences that don't include git. And even those who use it mostly ignore the gitpan project. It seems to me that the current situation is at least undesirable if for no other reason than it contributing to confusion as to what repo an interested party ought to be looking at.

There must be a way of making this monumental effort worthwhile. One thought was that authors or maintainers with their own repos could issue a pull request against the gitpan repo whenever it makes sense. But this requires two things: (1) Authors/maintainers will have to know to do it, care to do it, and remember to do it. (all three are probably unlikely) (2) Pull requests aren't even enabled for the gitpan modules, from what I can determine. That feature would need to be enabled.

So are these repos destined to grow increasingly outdated and increasingly irrelevant? Is there something we can and should be doing to make them a useful resource?