Daniel's proposal to moderate the creation of project nodes is really the only suggestion that I've found compelling in this thread. Having a checkpoint that requires a maintainer to list other similar modules and explain how their module is different from other existing ones would be very helpful. andrew On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Daniel F. Kudwien <news@unleashedmind.com> wrote:
One point of his proposal is valid though: We could do better in preventing duplicated modules and efforts.
We have
- CVS sandboxes for experimental code. (I'd argue that almost no one knows about sandboxes and how to use them)
- Official projects on drupal.org. (With complete release, issue, and versioning systems)
- No "moderation" for new project nodes. (Anyone with a CVS account is able to create anything)
Question:
Would it really hurt the process of evolution and innovation in Drupal when a new project ("request") would go into a "new projects queue" first, where all community members could do a quick review and optionally point to a possible existing project that could benefit from additional man-power, features, and stuff?
Would such a process not even do the opposite - speeding up evolution (by not duplicating efforts)?
I mean, as a developer, I can review a module's code to find out which module is sane to use. Regular Drupal users cannot - they have to blindly choose one of the modules. Whether developer or user, finding out which module to choose is a pain, a "waste of time and effort".
Implementing that process would be fairly easy. So I can only guess that the majority of developers a) either does not know about CVS sandboxes, or b) likes to have duplicate efforts, or that c) I'm on crack.
sun