That wouldn't give much useful statistics. It would at best give some measure of popularity, but not at all at usefulness. Some problems: there's no way to count how often the modules are used in programs, as programs are hardly uploaded to CPAN. You'd just count how often other modules use them. Furthermore, it would show a strong bias in favour of modules that don't have alternatives. For instance DBI. There isn't a module that does something similar, so the DBI would get high marks, even if the code itself is shitty.

I wouldn't bother going to a site that ranks CPAN modules based on a popularity vote. After all, Windows isn't ten times better than Unix as an OS, is it? But that would be the outcome if you'd let people vote.

I would value a site that does reviews of modules. Non-anonymous reviews, so a reviewer can establish a name for him/herself. Some monks are already exploring this idea after a similar discussion last week.

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.