Every so often, an idea's like Shlomi's comes up, where we talk about
adding reviews to CPAN, or reorganizing the categories, or any number
of relatively easy-to-implement tasks. It's a good idea, but it's
focused too tightly. What we're really trying to do is not provide
reviews, but help with the selection process.
** We want to help the user find and select the best tool for the job.
**
It might involve showing the user the bug queue; or a list of reviews;
or an average star rating. But ultimately, the goal is to let any
person with a given problem find and select a solution.
"I want to parse XML, what should I use?" XML::Parser? XML::Simple?
XML::Twig? If "parse XML" really means "find a single tag out of a
big order file my boss gave me", the answer might well be a regex, no?
In my day job, I work for Follett Library Resources and Book
Wholesalers, Inc. We are basically the Amazon.com for the school &
public library markets, respectively. The key feature to the website
is not ordering, but in helping librarians decide what books they
should buy for their libraries. Imagine you have an elementary school
library, and $10,000 in book budget for the year. What books do you
buy? Our website is geared to making that happen.
Part of this is technical solutions. We have effective keyword
searching, so you can search for "horses" and get books about horses.
Part of it is filtering, like "I want books for this grade level, and
that have been positively reviewed in at least two journals," in
addition to plain ol' keyword searching. Part of it is showing book
covers, and reprinting reviews from journals. (If anyone's interested
in specifics, let me know and I can probably get you some screenshots
and/or guest access.)
BWI takes it even farther. There's an entire department called
Collection Development where librarians select books, CDs & DVDs to
recommend to the librarians. The recommendations could be based on
choices made by the CollDev staff directly. They could be compiled
from awards lists (Caldecott, Newbery) or state lists (the Texas
Bluebonnet Awards, for example). Whatever the source, they help solve
the customer's problem of "I need to buy some books, what's good?"
This is no small part of the business. The websites for the two
companies are key differentiators in the marketplace. Specifically,
they raise the company's level of service from simply providing an
item to purchase to actually helping the customer do her/his job.
Ultimately, I think this is where all "how do we make CPAN easier to
use" discussions are leading. The focus needs to change from the
tactical ("Let's have reviews") to the strategic ("How do we get the
proper modules/solutions in the hands of the users that want them.")
--
Andy Lester => [EMAIL PROTECTED] => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance
