Thanks for the pointers. I will check all of them out.

Thanks everyone for the replies they are great.

For ideas on where I am coming from:

• Ratings: Netflix does this really well and simply, as do many online retailers
• Starring:: Google reader lets you star, share, tag, and email articles. I find it very useful to star articles so I can find them quickly later. Being able to do that to my favorites modules would save me lots of time getting to the docs I need. I have to use del.icio.us for that right now.

I wrote the post to be a bit provocative, since I wanted responses. Of course choice of modules for a project is a complex decision that takes some research and asking around. CPAN I think should work as a way of shining a bright light on what there is some consensus on as the best tool for the job, if you want it to, but it should never hide anything. Any new features should be of course take it or leave it, and should be easy to use, and just as easy to ignore if you don't find them useful.