The problem is that if the service became useful the the server load would become enourmous. Too much, I think, for the Monastery to handle.

Do know it would be to big a load for the monastery? Could we not just throw more hardware at it if it became a problem (assuming a sponsor could be found)?

at what point would we cross into a "go to the LWP list" mode?

excellent point, I meant to include 'links to relevant newsgroups and mailing lists' in my original list - I'll go back and do that now. I was imagining that the main page people came into would be a special node type that allowed for all this structured data.

My initial thought was that we should add a threaded discussion capability to search.cpan.org but then I thought 'wait a minute - that's exactly what Perl Monks is already!'. Hence my suggestion of more closely integrating the two sites.