On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 12:06 -0500, Shai Gluskin wrote:
1. Issue queue, issue queue, issue queue. The issue queue is the window into a module. By studying the issue queue for less than 5 minutes (sometimes 20 seconds) you can determine the quality of maintenance and the level of current activity in terms of new features and future development. We need to be more explicit in our docs about teaching new people just how to study the issue queue to make these evaluations. 2. Advertise the module feed: We need to better advertise the module feed (http://drupal.org/taxonomy/term/14/0/feed). Why isn't it on the module pages at d.o.? Getting more people to subscribe will help nip problems early if there is clear overlap. It also helps people get people interested in modules and can help develop collaborations etc. 3. Move dev list to g.d.o. The dev list is important. And people should be encouraged, but not required, to run ideas by this list. But I've got problems with this list. Why hasn't this list been replaced by a group at groups.drupal.org? Try doing a Google search and limiting your results to: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/. It's pathetic. I don't know what the problem is. But I don't think it is worth fixing other than migrating to g.d.o. I don't think this list should be a requirement for anything. We aren't eating our own dog food on this list. 4. More stats: The relatively new usage stats at d.o. are awesome. They provide a nice resource for people evaluating modules. Lets develop some other stats as well. Here is one that I've thought about: Output a percent which is the number of posts and commits in a queue by maintainers divided by the total number of posts on the queue within the last year. It could give a quick sense to folks about the level of participation of the maintainer(s). A stat like that couldn't be used alone to make an evaluation, but in conjunction with other information, it could help. I think there is a lot of data that is sitting on d.o. that we are not leveraging. I'm in favor of developing more stats, which maintain themselves, rather than having some "core group" make evaluations.
Totally agree with points 1, 2 and 4. Pierre.