This post is an attempt to clarify and focus my earlier post: CPAN reference counter?.

I would like to know how many time a module gets used by other modules. There seems to be a few projects which attempt to figure out what modules a module depends upon, which is almost but not exactly the opposite.

The reason I want to know this is to have a kind of popularity/usefulness metric. I'm interested in helping people who are trying to decide what module among many to use when confronted by an array of choices. It would also provide an easy top-ten list for newbies looking to familiarize themselves with perl.

In academia, a lot of scientists count the success of a given article by the number of other articles that reference that article, and I think the same thing could apply here.

Now, here's the real question (and why I'm posting again...): Does this have to be exact? I don't think it does. If it's used by humans trying to whittle down a list of possible solutions, it can be a little out of date and miss a few references without ruining anyones day. In that light, it's like kwalitee: useful but not the end of your problems.

Am I crazy? Does this sound like a good idea?

Thanks!

--Pileofrogs