I would think the definition of abandoned would have to be that either the author is not longer contactable (after all available methods have been exhausted), or if the author themself declares it abandonded.

Ideally though abandoned modules would not be removed but instead put up for adoption.

-stvn

This defininition of abandoned doesn't normally have relevance for a search result unless people have gone in and marked the module as explicitly abandoned beforehand.

I am not sure I would advocate the reaping of dead/broken/abandoned unregistered modules. Instead, I would instead suggest that the cpan search be improved to weight more recent modules higher than older seemingly abandoned modules.

You can always help them out (assuming your company allows that kind of stuff).

Off-company time is at a premium, and on-company time is a no. So unfortunately I just get to throw ideas out there. Maybe someday :)

Very little actually gets registered....

Yes, I am going through all this right now. I am trying to register one of my modules (Tree::Simple), the discussion seems slow and not many people seem interested in talking about it. I have recieved some comments that the name is not so good (which I agree with, but plain old "Tree" is already taken), but that is about all.

Why then should one volunteer's work be slaughtered at some future date because another volunteer never got around to sanctifying it?

I am not sure what you mean here? My problem is with the registered modules which seem to be either abandoned or just never got updated past 0.01. The best example of this I can find right now is Date::Time. It has not been updated from version 0.01, which was uploaded on March 2, 2000. The description itself says this:

This is just some suggestions, as nothing is implemented yet. I'm open to critisism. Anyway I don't know if the original name will fit this module with all my plans....

A code example then follows, but when I look at the source about all it does is declare two packages; Date::Time::UnixTime - which is totally empty, and Date::Time - which only had a 'new' method which does nothing but bless an empty hash. See for yourself here.

It actually seems as if this author has moved on completely, leaving approx. 3 registered and partially finished modules.

• Date::Time (described above)
• DBIx::CGITables - which the author had this to say about in his POD

  This module is under development - and this version is not tested very well. The documentation might not be completely in sync with the latest changes, and the documentation is not optimized for easy understanding at the moment. Sorry.

• DBIx::Copy - which says this in the BUGS section of the POD

  Except for all the "buts" and "ifs" and missing features above - none yet - but this module is very poorly tested!

Now clearly these are exceptions, but they are clearly serving no use but to pollute the CPAN. It is these modules I think should be reaped (assuming the author either cannot be contacted or has agreed and declared then abandoned).
-stvn