On Sep 4, 2008, at 1:33 PM, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:

Maybe what's so frustrating to me, and perhaps to chromatic, and whoever else ignores CPAN Testers but doesn't discuss it, is that we're being fed things that we should be thankful for and goddammit why aren't we appreciative??!?

"Here are the things that we have determined are quality."

"Here are test reports reporting on failures for these things that we care about you caring about."

"Maybe you should add a co-maintainer."

"Your responsibility as an author is to..."

CPAN Testers is entirely based on the concept of *unsolicited advice* in the name of helping the author. From a beautiful article I've reproduced at http://xoa.petdance.com/Unsolicited_advice

== snip ==

Life's little helpers reason that the first step toward improvement is the realization that things need to be improved. That is why they feel justified in approaching you when you are perfectly content in order to point out that everything you do, eat, and love is a dreadful mistake. Because they themselves are so full of good wishes for the rest of humanity, they do not expect their beneficiaries to be petty. They figure that upon being told how you have mismanaged your life, you will be grateful for the offer of assistance and reassured that others are watching out for you. It stands to reason that one who obviously does not know what is best for himself would be relieved to find that others are willing to take on that responsibility.

After all, they don't just stop after telling you that is wrong, but always go on to explain in detail how you can do things the way they do them. In other words, the right way.

== snip ==

And then, when we say "OK, I'm not interested in stopping smoking, losing weight, or checking for Perl version 5.6.1," we're told how full of shit we are.

Why should I release my software on CPAN if part of the price of entry is being spammed and told what I should be doing?

Why is the personal side of this being entirely missed? We are not robots here. We are humans.

xoxo, Andy