[consulting] Feedback on gold stars for Drupal Contrib modules

[Sami Khan]

Quoting Dries Buytaert <dries.buytaert at gmail.com>:

> Boris' suggestion certainly has merit but it seems to quantify the
> developer -- and in specific, how well the developer's methodologies
> match what is considered to be the current best practice.  The system
> penalizes other (emerging or established) development methodologies
> that produce equally good code.
>
> In other words, it is an interesting idea, but it might not be the
> best system to rate the quality of the result (i.e. the final theme
> or module). A specific methodology does not guarantee a good product,
> and a good product doesn't imply a specific methodology.
>
> Nonetheless, I think this is something that needs to be communicated
> on the project pages.  Not as a 'gold star' but in plain text:

I meant to leave this as a comment on Boris' blog, but essentially
putting more pressure on developers to meet certain expectation or
rules I think will have an effect of increasing abandonment of
projects and result in fewer contrib modules which might be available.
It might produce a few good quality modules, but those would still be
around regardless -- and the respective developers would as well. In
that gold star modules and non-gold star modules are exclusive in
terms of functionality, the net effect would be reducing the number of
modules and functionality available to the general consumers of
Drupal. In essence its the consumer who needs the proper information
about the quality of the goods they're consuming, but no more then
that... It's up to them to make a decision. Obviously, the experts
would be able to get at the code regardless, but for non-expert what
Drupal's fully capable of would be masked under such a system. I think
Dries approach is spot on in terms of providing metrics and adding
guidelines, leave the rest to developers and consumers to judge for
themselves, for their commitments, etc.

Regards,
Sami