Modern western, especially American, culture is obsessed with choice. For years we have assumed that increased choice brings increased happiness and satisfaction. It turns out, that this may not be true.

Anyone who makes light of the real costs of CPAN confusion, should think again. CPAN is an amazing resource, but it lacks the sorts of filters it needs to make it quick and easy to evaluate competing tools. The various attempts to add annotation and ratings just don't seem to be catching up with the cornucopia CPAN offers.

I'm not sure I have a solution to offer. I am still formulating an understanding of the problem, and I am very glad that others are thinking along the same lines.

Resources like P5EE or POOP were great ideas, but they seem to have stagnated or died. I think we need some kind of module "moderation" system that is easy to use and community driven. POOP and P5EE seem to demonstrate that we can't rely on individuals to do all the work--we need a collective tool. CPAN has a ratings system, but it seems to be mostly unused? Why don't people rate CPAN distros? Can we use Perlmonks to rate modules?

Check out Barry Schwartz's list of publications for more sources on choice and satisfaction. His paper "Maximizing vs. Satisficing: Happiness is a Matter of Choice"(pdf) is a particularly interesting read.

All this being said, I don't think Perl is doomed or dying, I just think CPAN is getting past the point where it scales well--it's too hard to choose what to use. One or more of the many smart people in the community will come up with a solution. I hope these discussions can help move us toward a solution, rather than a decision to hang a bell 'round the cat's neck.