The meaning of the status field is inconsistent

definitely. consistent - and readable. for the sake of readability, we should really use constants for any similar ... constants.

ie.

node.module:
define('NODE_STATUS_NOT_PUBLISHED', 0);
define('NODE_STATUS_PUBLISHED', 1);

comment.module:
define('COMMENT_STATUS_NOT_PUBLISHED', 0);
define('COMMENT_STATUS_PUBLISHED', 1);
define('COMMENT_STATUS_DELETED', 2);

(see 'Status' field values for nodes and comments)

and you would never need to break your head about what that 1 was again ...

any volunteer? :)

While I think having these constants is a good idea, that still leaves the problem of confusion when you hand-edit your database tables. In the database you still only read 0, 1 and 2 and not any readable names...

Another problem is the upgrading of Drupal installations, which needs to be done properly, or else many sites will have wrong values in their database...

im following this up. for consitency, can these two lines in comment.module:

define('COMMENT_PUBLISHED', 0);
define('COMMENT_NOT_PUBLISHED', 1);

be inter/changed to:

define('COMMENT_PUBLISHED', 1);
define('COMMENT_NOT_PUBLISHED', 0);

and in the upgrade script:

update comments set status=0 where status=1;
update comments set status=1 where status=0;

These changes have gone through :)

-K