I don't like this idea. It is just too capricious for the treatment of serious work.

Or perhaps a (moderated) mechanism for attaching reviews.

This has more appeal.

Perhaps a few lists created by the exalted placed prominently on CPAN. This is suggesting a cabal or dictatorial editorial board that places what they wish in this review.

First a list of the well used modules: modules that by being in long and wide use prove some level of usefulness . DBI, CGI, and a couple of the Test::* modules would certainly be on this list. For those in the know this would be relatively easy to create.

Second a list of reviewed code deemed to be good. Naturally some CPAN core would extend trust to others' reviews as they see fit. I would expect that if I submitted a review, it would not be seen as publishable unless the subject inspired one of the exalted to vet my work.

Third a list of new items that seem to be heading for the first list.

These things would be real nice on CPAN, would be nice on PM.

For those who'd like to see this kind of stuff, there is the thread Essential Perl Modules

Whilst I agree that simple anonymous voting would be to capricious, I think getting a list of the great and the good whom would be charged with the responsibility of reviewing modules could be equally so. Not to mention that the people on that list would most likely be too busy to devote time to such endevours.

Perhaps a mechanism whereby anyone could attach their experiences of a module to that module, with a consideration mechanism to exclude obvious trolling and an anonymous voting mechanism on reviews posted that would provide peer review of the reviews, with obviously discordant ones (large negatives) disappearing.

Now it starts to look complicated. I guess it's likely to remain "Caveat downloader" for the forceable future.

It seems a shame that there isn't a simple way by which the seeker of the module can gain from the experiences of those that have gone before in their attempts to choose any given module or type of module.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

Perhaps a mechanism whereby anyone could attach their experiences of a module to that module

You can already report bugs via the RT ticketing system on CPAN. search.cpan.org Provides easy hyperlinks for doing this.

I submitted there the full body of this thread's root, so my experiences are now listed as a critical bug.

Too bad many people don't know about this, even though there are links on search.cpan.org. Perhaps its introduction should have been announced to all module authors by e-mail.

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