What you propose seems a little more all encompassing than most ideas to modernize the CPAN (and related services) experience. But hey, since you're bouncing ideas around, if you haven't already, you may want to drop by the rethinking-cpan mailinglist Andy created (Update: Check out his related write up, too.). You may receive more focused feedback there and, once you're ready to put your idea into practice, that would probably be the best place to recruit help.

And for more on the pain of the CPAN Ratings system and a mini pro/con debate on "improving" CPAN in general, pick through this conversation from the perl.qa mailinglist.

Thanks for the pointers. I will check all of them out.

Thanks everyone for the replies they are great.

For ideas on where I am coming from:

• Ratings: Netflix does this really well and simply, as do many online retailers
• Starring:: Google reader lets you star, share, tag, and email articles. I find it very useful to star articles so I can find them quickly later. Being able to do that to my favorites modules would save me lots of time getting to the docs I need. I have to use del.icio.us for that right now.

I wrote the post to be a bit provocative, since I wanted responses. Of course choice of modules for a project is a complex decision that takes some research and asking around. CPAN I think should work as a way of shining a bright light on what there is some consensus on as the best tool for the job, if you want it to, but it should never hide anything. Any new features should be of course take it or leave it, and should be easy to use, and just as easy to ignore if you don't find them useful.

There is a rating and reviews system, but most stuff has no rating or reviews
...
What if you could create a user account on a cpan frontend website

I fear the problem here isn't mechanism... it's motivation.

On several occasions I've been motivated to post a review or to vote on a review. In every case, my motivation was unable to survive the roadblocks of the "mechanism". I don't recall what the specific road blocks were. I just recall more than one way that the implementation showed me an interface to invite me to do something and then changed its mind and denied me. Having tried more than once to jump through the hoops to satisfy its login (and perhaps other) requirements, I have yet to succeed.

I don't even recall what the requirements were, but had they actually been "minimal", I'm sure I would have met them (having met registration requirements before). I won't dispute that the requirements are likely "small", but they have certainly been enough to stop me despite multiple attempts.

Perhaps I'm just an abnormally lazy or picky person, or something. Or perhaps the implementation has some room for improvement. I find requiring registration to add a review for a module to be a rather disappointing statement on the implementors' view of their fellow humans. *shrug*

- tye        

We are Perl programmers - we are supposed to be lazy.

I've had exactly the same experience and remember just as much about the roadblocks. *sigh*

---

Perl's payment curve coincides with its learning curve.

"CPAN should be a popularity contest."

No it should not be. In fact, most programmers choose this line of work because they want to get away from such MARKETING ploys. Personally, i think CPAN is just fine the way it is. It is not broken. If you have a hard time finding modules then maybe you need to address that problem within yourself, because i have found that finding modules is not hard. Asking questions at forums like this is not hard. Knowing where to go to find the answers is the margin between a great programmer and one who merely found themselves in this line of work. Increase your education. Don't turn everything into a competition.

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

I was going to comment on that quote too. The example I was going to use, however, was 'Look at PHP'. I learned some time ago that popularity does not equal greatness, usefulness, or anything, really.

And you didn't even know bears could type.