Quoting Neil Drumm <drumm@delocalizedham.com>:
On 8/8/07, Dries Buytaert <dries.buytaert@gmail.com> wrote:
Personally, I don't think duplicated modules are that big of a problem and it is certainly something we should _not_ punish people for. I'm a firm believer of the fact that "deliberate duplication" is a good. "Unfortunate duplication", i.e. duplication as the result of the fact that the author didn't know an almost identical module already existed, is something we have to reduce though.
Is the problem not looking, or looking and not finding? I doubt we can make a lot of progress telling people to look if they are not motivated to do it. Improving module findability would be a bigger help. The module creators who are motivated would have an easier job. And the much larger group of module users would be able to find modules easier.
I think it is more looking and not finding that is the issue. The Modules, Themes and Translations pages are clearly highlighted at d.o. but only those that are published. New works and redesigns need some attention. I'm inclined to say that the default view of the modules page should be by name rather than category but then there are hundreds of modules so this probably isn't feasible. I see more categories being added recently probably in hopes of modules being more easily found but now we're approaching category duplication with different names; e.g. "Commerce/Advertising" vs "e-Commerce module" or "Content" vs "Content display". IMO, we need a sub categorization to give further depth or meaning to what someone might be looking for to allow the user to drill down to few modules. 210 modules in one category is asking a lot for someone to review when that someone is probably clueless anyway. I might as well review by name and use the browser find function to maybe find one. Earnie