My contributed modules so far tend towards filling perceived gaps in developer workflow, functionality that I feel should already be there but isn't. My approach is that instead of filing a feature request for an existing module and hoping that it eventually is accepted and incorporated, I create a new module so that I quickly get the functionality I want, and then we can worry about whether it should be a separate module or merged with another. Menu Rules is an excellent example where the feature request was filed over 3 years ago but no one created the functionality, and in fact it still (as of October 2012) hasn't been incorporated into the Rules module despite large support. So, my attitude is, in short: Functionality first - politics later.