[maemo-developers] Maemo QA process

[From: Craig Woodward]

I bet if you developed an app like that, you'd get a lot of positive votes from developers that are frustrated that they can't get their packages voted on. :)

Necessity is the mother of invention, no?

---- Felipe Crochik <felipe at crochik.com> wrote: 

=============
Risking saying the obvious: I think if the voting happened on the device
(and not on the web site after you have to find the package, login and
figure out where to vote) we would get many more people voting. 

Also, I think it would be really beneficial to make easier for users to
decide to download and install an application from testing and I can't think
of a better way than having something like the "download assistant". Having
a tool to browse the available applications, see comments and average rate
would be a huge incentive for me to download an application... and if it was
easy enough to just go back to the same application and vote I sure would. 

I added a message to the "download assistant" thread but never received a
reply. http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=717824&postcount=17

Maybe someone knows the maintainer or what is behind the scenes and can find
out if it is a viable solution or not.

I would suggest the exact same application but working with extras-testing.
If is so easy that we can wish for more I would like to see a "tab" with my
"recent downloaded/installed" applications so I could easy find and vote on
them after testing.

Felipe

-----Original Message-----
From: maemo-developers-bounces at maemo.org
[mailto:maemo-developers-bounces at maemo.org] On Behalf Of Attila Csipa
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 5:56 PM
To: maemo-developers at maemo.org
Subject: Re: Maemo QA process

On Wednesday 21 July 2010 22:53:43 Roman Morawek wrote:
>P.S.: You are welcome to evaluate and vote on my package:

Indeed, the best strategy for developers is to lobby a bit for their 
application. Open a thread on talk.maemo.org . Blog about it. Write to the 
list. I hope the fellow devs won't take this the wrong way, but... this
aspect 
is actually a feature, not a bug, as it encourages discussion and 
interaction/community building, not the fully disconnected 'dump in extras' 
and 'download moar apps' approach. Obviously being delayed for months is
very 
bad, so we're constantly exploring ways to improve the process, but...

> Maybe an automatic promotion after 4 weeks would make sense, given its
> actual package karma is positive?

...the problem with automatic promotion is that then we don't really have
any 
guarantee that what gets to stable has actually been tested - and the
testing 
should be at least as much about protecting users from obvious faults as 
providing feedback to developers. If we enable automatic promotion, that 
actually might discourage testing due to the 'why bother, its going to get
to 
Extras anyway' factor. 

Note that since not long ago we also have super-testers, people with proven 
track records, it's enough to get three of their votes if your package is 
stuck and you're good to go.

>I personally see my program as very useful - well, otherwise I wouldn't
>have spent the time for development. I assume that just nobody is aware
>of it, since everybody just looks at the available programs in extras.

Even now the problem is not that people are not finding the app, the
download 
number tells apps in testing have thousands of downloads - it's the feedback

that is missing, IMO for two reasons: one, users not accustomed to give 
feedback, and two, the unavailability to give feedback EASILY. This is being

worked on, but progress is slow, sadly. Ideas (but preferably hands) are 
welcome on improving the process.

PS. And the part I dont understand: we have 25+ apps that are unlocked and
not 
being promoted by their respective authors. Orphans ?
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