Re: Tags for CPAN modules.

On 7/8/07, Michael G Schwern <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.

While I think it would be good and module author could then give some
authoritative tags to their modules it would still be the job of the module
author.

Many modules, especially the some old ones that are not maintained will
lack the keywords even if otherwise they are perfect modules.


Anyway I have just a few days ago added a tagging system to
http://www.cpanforum.org/ to tag the modules.
In a few weeks I'll provide some way to download the collected data
and then it could be integrated in any search engine.

Some tags that were already added:
http://www.cpanforum.org/tags/

Using such an external tagging system will get the load off the module authors.

Still,one of the my plans is to connect the tags to the PAUSE ids as well
so tags added by the maintainer of a module can be evaluated
differently than those of other module authors or just regular mortals.

Even if in the tags will be added to META.yml this system can be used
to learn about tagging preferences in the CPAN namespace.

Gabor