Original post on WordPress forum WordPress is really great and plugins are even better. Still, somthing that bothers me is that there is simply to much similar plugins. Beyond a...
Original post on WordPress forum
WordPress is really great and plugins are even better. Still, somthing that bothers me is that there is simply to much similar plugins.
Beyond a given treshold, diversity is not a strength anymore, it is a weakness.
A lot of plugin do the same thing or almost the same thing as others. This is becoming counter-productive and I (and certainly other too) am spending way too much time installing and deinstalling — sometimes leaving behind databases records that accumulated as a pile of junk.
I am calling for a anti-redundancy initiative. I would call it the
« Perfecting the wheel » initiative.
A lenghty a boring process to apply a « similarity index » to plugin and encourage coders to work together, merge their code… I do not believe it would kill up innovation, since there will always be developpers willing to reinvent the wheel their way (sometime for good reason). But tools to make people aware of similar project would already be a blessing. See how Ubuntu model is about avoiding redundancy.
Certainly, my idea itself is a reinvention and several people in the past have had the same idea. So, could you please point me toward such initiative?
Thank you and long live WordPress!
So, what should such an initiative encompass?
- list all plugins (automatic)
- tag them (computer-aided thanks to the description field)
- group them by similarity (automatic)
- buzz about the initiative for raising crowdsourcing potential (manual)
- highlight differences (crowdsourcing)
- add a « similar plugin » field on the plugin page at wordpress.org to highlight the similarity (automatic)
- refine similarity by detailling differences and similarity (crowdsourcing)
- contact authors or similar plugins, present differences and propose a merger (manual or crowdsourcing)
Any other idea?