First, this wouldn't be possible at all, as there is no central all-controling CPAN site. There are many mirrors, and not all mirrors are known. Furthermore, people put CPAN on CDROMs, and distribute them.

Second, download figures don't mean anything. I may download two modules, ditch one of them because it doesn't even want to build, and just use the second. But I still have downloaded both modules the same amount of times.

Third, it would actually "favour" buggy, unstable, modules. They (hopefully) get new releases, and hence, new downloads, because people hope the bugs get fixed. Stable modules don't get updated often, so there's less need for an upgrade (and even if there's a new release, there's often no need to bother with an upgrade). So, they would get downloaded less often.

Abigail

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.