On Aug 9, 2007, at 5:06 AM, Dries Buytaert wrote:
A lot of these groups, like the contributed-module-ideas group (to some extend), are quick ugly hacks to work around an underlying problem. I'd prefer to see people spend their time on improving the underlying problem (i.e. module findability).
Yes and no. I agree module "findability" (nice word) is currently not ideal on d.o. Yes, I'd love to see other people help with this. However, this isn't the only problem here, which is why I support some kind of way for people say "I've got an idea for a module to do X, what do y'all think?". Many modules in contrib are so powerful and flexible now, that lots of things can be solved by creatively bolting of existing things together. For example, the answer to "I think I need a module for X" might be "no, all you need is to setup a node_queue for that, and use a view that does blah with a filter on node_queue exclusion". I'd have no friggin' clue to search for "node_queue" or even to know about node_queue exclusion views, but that might just be the answer to my problem (this is a real example from a conversation I had with Earl not too long ago). I'm sure I could come up with countless other examples of problems solved by non-obvious combinations of existing powerful contribs, but I think everyone will grant that this is true without more evidence. Therefore, while I'm fully in favor of people spending cycles on making modules easier to find on d.o, I'm not opposed to a more structured place for people to say "I think I need to write a module to allow X, should I do it?" and get informed answers from people more familiar with the existing state of the art. Cheers, -Derek