Debian has a process called "QA uploads" — if a package is orphaned1, any Debian Developer can upload a new version of the package without adopting it.

When adopting a package/module, the adopter feels compelled to fix all bugs, add more tests, clean up everything, etc (otherwise they wouldn't be doing their job as maintainers). The amount of work discourages people from adopting modules.

With QA Uploads, an interested user can fix that particularily annoying bug without the burden of having to maintain the module.

Thus, I believe that adding QA uploads to PAUSE would increase the average quality of modules. I haven't thought about implementation details, but I think the PAUSE indexer could simply index any upload of an orphaned module.

1 Debian / CPAN equivalence:
DebianCPAN
O: / OrphanedADOPTME has f/m/c
RFA: / Request for AdoptionHANDOFF has c
RFH: / Request for HelpNEEDHELP has c
QA Uploads are only possible for orphaned packages.

In reply to RFC: QA Uploads by mgv

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