I fully agree with you. The strategy was (evidently) perfect for the growth and establishment of CPAN. My point is: I think we HAVE reached the critical mass already - probably long ago.

In fact, I'd like to compare it with some economists view where the only solution to successfull further (market) growth is seen in qualitative growth and not quantitative growth.

One must see that things are changing and adapt to the new situation. Times today are different from when CPAN was built. Perlmonks surely has a few hundred thousand nodes more than it had at the time... There are many experienced perl coders around who can (and I'm sure will) give contributors a helping hand. There's much more guidance in general as both the sw business in general and specifically perl have evolved.

It wouldn't hurt IMHO to have focus on quality for some time. If the perl community starts to grow too old, because not enough "newbies" come to it, expect me being the first who'd again write the node number 1234492734 at perlmonks to propose to lower the standards.

(And probably get beaten by 60-year old tilly: "But long ago you wrote...") :-)

Bye
 PetaMem     All Perl:   MT, NLP, NLU

In reply to But isn't that my point? by PetaMem
in thread The quantity vs. quality lesson by PetaMem

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