Implement XML-RPC functionlality for communication between drupal.org and Drupal installations

Rather than track downloads or enable maual ratings, Dries has suggested an automated tracking based on communication between Drupal installations and drupal.org:

rather than using explicit rating where users have to submit a score by hand, I'd prefer to use automatic ratings. I envision some XML-RPC function that posts a list of one's modules to Drupal.org. Drupal.org uses that to update/compile ratings. A key advantage is that: (i) it needs no manual rating/interaction (no interface cruft) (ii) easy to make it temporal so that the ratings automatically adapt over time (iii) better matches the reality.

If we could allow drupal installs to (probably optionally) describe themeselves in quantifiable ways, e.g., number of nodes or number of users, we could refine the ranking, assigning differential weights to classes of sites.

We could also extend this to enable drupal installs to query drupal.org for newer versions of installed modules, recent bugfixes, newly released modules, etc., thus providing significant benefits to the installed base.