Excuse me, but installing and running hotplug should be up to the user. I, for one, don't want it installed "by default". As a matter of fact, I purposely leave it out of the base install. Most users here know what modules to load, and how to configure modprobe.conf. Thanks!

I know too, but I shouldn't HAVE to.
If you DO know how to enable it, then you do know how to DISABLE it. The default should be whatever is easier for the user, not whatever is best for the geek/advanced user.

I understand your point, I really do, but while I can't speak for Judd, I can tell you that this distro is aimed at and used by us "geeks/advanced users" who enjoy configuring everything by hand. Yes, sometimes at the expense of "ease of use". There are plenty of distros that are aimed at that.
Perhaps a good solution is to just update the install docs and say that if you want hotplug to run, just add it to the line in /etc/rc.conf ?
Or, have it there by default in the install script commented out, like this: (!hotplug). Seems like that would satisfy both our requests?

I'm going to leave hotplug disabled by default. It's functionality is still somewhat hit-and-miss, and the users who want it will know how to activate it. If they don't, they shouldn't be running Arch Linux.

There have been many similar arguments for more "convenient" defaults, such as that pesky DENY ALL line in hosts.deny and the lack of user-level audio ownership in devfsd.conf.

The point is that this distribution is not designed for the average desktop user who may not even know what hotplug or devfsd is. It doesn't mean that these users cannot use (and benefit from) Arch Linux, it just means that they have to do their homework first. It's not fair to expect us to be like Mandrake or Xandros. Our target audience is somewhat different, and so is the nature of our distribution. The trade-off for this is that the people who DO know what they are doing can do it very quicky and efficiently, and ones who DO actually do their homework often come back and thank us for making a distro that truly did help them learn the fundamentals of linux.

There are over 200 distributions on distrowatch. This one does not have hotplug enabled by default. It may in the future, but not right now.