[maemo-developers] Maemo QA process

[From: Thomas Perl]

2010/7/22 Ville M. Vainio <vivainio at gmail.com>:
> How about a system where developers could convince other developers to
> test drive their application by voting on theirs? I.e. being able to
> give a conditional vote that is "realized" only after the receiver
> votes up/down on your application?

Wouldn't this slow down the whole process even more? Instead of
getting one vote right away, you have to wait for the "return vote" to
be completed, and only then the vote gets counted. A "download
assistant" app (as discussed earlier in this thread) sounds more
useful to me than complicating the QA process. Add some incentive
(i.e. a monthly posting of the "Top 10 Testers" to maemo-community, so
testers get a feeling of their importance) and make the UI of the
testing app really easy to use ("What's new" section, single sign on,
"Latest votes", "Newest uploads", filter out already-tested apps, show
new versions of apps for which the user has voted on at least one
older version before, ...), and I think more users will test apps on
their devices. Right now, it's very diffcult to "browse around" and
find apps to test (well, http://maemo.org/packages/ works kind-of, but
screenshots and better descriptions would help the tester decide
whether or not to spend time downloading and testing the app).

Another idea would be to add a new section to MWKN (mwkn.net) called
"Testing Spotlight" where three apps in Testing are described and
promoted, and readers are asked to at least test these three apps
during the week - this should make it possible to have three apps get
enough votes during one week. Visibility and promotion of the apps are
the problems, I think (searching for apps is tedious, so nobody does
it) - the conditional vote idea sounds like a technical solution
(enforced policy, added restrictions) to a social problem (non-popular
apps don't get enough exposure and consequently testers).

HTH.
Thomas