Making the modules page more user-friendly

I've been following the developer's list when I can and fairly often there is a call to remove functionality from Drupal core in order to keep the default install nice and tight, and move any extra stuff to conrtibuted modules. In general, I agree with this approach.

The biggest downfall though is that there is no way to determine from http://drupal.org/project/Modules directly what is:

a) A totally awesome, useful module that no site should be without
b) An old crusty piece of garbage that hasn't been updated in eons
c) A module that doesn't even function at all

So the more functionality that gets stripped from the base install of Drupal, the less appealing it starts to look for newcomers because realistically they're not going to go through 80 kabillion modules in the downloads section trying them all on for size to see what works and what doesn't.

Here's a list of things that I think would add immense value to this page, and consequently to Drupal itself:

• Some kind of rating system (1-5 'druplicons' or what have you), where users can rate a module based on its usefulness to them. This rating would be visible right on the list of modules so people could see 'at a glance' what's received good feedback and what hasn't, as a means of discerning module quality.
• A tally of how many downloads a module has received, also viewable from the module list. Another means of determining quality, this time based on how many other people used this module to get the job done.
• Coupled with "numeric" ratings, adding the ability for members to comment on module descriptions would also be hugely valuable. These would be viewable from the "Find out more" link, and would allow users to expand upon their numeric rating, offer each other hints on installing/configuration that are not covered in the docs (if they even exist), and so on. This is probably the single most important addition that could be made.
• A series of blocks, listing the top N downloaded modules, the top N rated modules, etc. These stats could either be cumulative or reset themselves once a month or however often.
• A means of sorting the list by rating or by # of downloads.

Not only would this make it easier for users to find what they're looking for, but it would also be great for the Drupal maintainers. We'd be able to discover modules that are lagging behind in support or that lack user interest and should be dropped, and now would have a centralized place to receive feedback (unrelated to bugs/features/support requests) on each module.

Anyway, there goes my $0.02 for the month. :)