Re: Tags for CPAN modules.

On Jul 8, 2007, at 2:44 PM, Michael G Schwern wrote:

> One of the most common cries I hear from CPAN users is that they  
> have trouble
> finding modules.  A CPAN module is largely found by its  
> distribution name.
> Names have to be unique and short which tends to hurt its  
> descriptiveness.
> Furthermore, a distribution can only have one name while a module  
> could be
> described different ways depending on how you look at it.
>
> CPAN is organized as a simple tree hierarchy.  Hierarchies suck for  
> describing
> the real world.  They allow for only one way to describe a thing  
> and imply a
> hierarchy which may not exist.
>
> Let's un-overload the distribution name by providing another axis  
> by which an
> author can categorize their module.  The single most dominant  
> organizational
> tool of the web:  tags.  For a large, wide, decentralized library  
> its simple
> and the least worst way to organize things.  It provides multiple  
> axis to
> describe the use of a module and frees up the name to be just a  
> short, unique
> descriptor.  Best practices for tags and how to work their  
> strengths and
> weaknesses are well understood.
>
> The implementation is simple, add a "tags" keyword to META.yml.  Have
> search.cpan.org so something interesting with that extra information.
> [snip]

It is indeed a common request.  Note that cpanforum recently got  
basic tagging.  One advantage of dynamic, online tagging rather than  
static, META.yml tagging is that third-parties can tag actual usage  
rather than usage that the author anticipates.  Furthermore, dynamic  
tagging allows the keyword choices to evolve over time without  
necessitating a new upload.

I propose the following (with the caveat that I intend to implement  
none of this!)
   1) go ahead with Schwern's idea to add META.yml tagging
   2) merge those author tags with public tags created by cpanforum  
or the like
   3) if search.cpan.org or Kobes' site adds tag searching, work off  
that merged tag set while weighting the author tags higher if desired.

Chris