2) This is a "doocracy" (man do I hate that word!). If there is a problem, here's what you should do about it, in descending order of attractiveness:
a) Fix it yourself
b) Pay someone else to fix it
c) Motivate or politely encourage others to fix it, providing moral support, etc.
The key point is: you haven't paid any of us for this, and you have nothing even close to some sort of support contract. I perceive a sense of entitlement on your part that people owe you no-cost coding. That's just not how the community works. Whether or not you really have that sense, I don't know, but your messages convey it nonetheless.
I understand why this and have accepted it. That being said the lack of certain well documented high quality and widely written about libraries are probably the biggest challenge to Haskell adoption after the IO Monad. As a beginner I really have struggled to understand what the right libraries to use are for common problems (specifically databases). However other problems like the lack of a high resolution, well documented date time library were also a source of friction. The reason I am using haskell is to solve specific types of difficult problems in machine learning and it is very good at that. Gluing a fully working stack together has been challenging. I agree that people need to be proactive about solving their own problems but whenever I here any open source community (yeah...everyone not just haskell) tell beginners to contribute a package I always scratch my head with a little bit of wonder. Would you really want a package that someone like me who is still trying to figure out how to utilize haskell's features would build? Do you want my outrageous non-use of the Monads that haskell offers? Haskell adoption is a frequently discussed topic and I personally believe that haskell will and should remain a niche language for solving certain types of problems. However if others in the community take the position that success is determined by adoption then Haskell needs to have a solid and well documented story about all the problems that developers that write regular applications face including database communication, ORMs, XML, Web Services, web pages (I know there is Yesod just making the point),model view controllers (hits self in head), etc... If "regular" developers are the target then they want to be told what to do and what to use (with something like MSDN or some of the big java toolkits), not discover it for themselves. I say this with superior confidence after spending 2 years in a large (2000+) developer organization. I believe as a relative newcomer that haskell is best utilized when solving complex and difficult to reason about problems that involve small teams of highly skilled developers. Most software does not meet this criteria. There are a wide variety of inferior technologies ;-) (ahem java) that can be used to build most applications in the world. Haskell should not try to compete because it can't (marketing problem), and there are many things that it enables to be done better. Not intending to flame (or otherwise ignite the fires of passion) at all. Steve