App developer feedback about quality guidelines

Hey everyone, checking back in after a bit over a week of feedback and discussion. Thank you so much to everyone who has chimed in so far! This sort of conversation is enlightening and healthy. :slight_smile:

I want to try to summarize some main, recurring points here that I’ve personally come away with—note that I’m focusing on the sentiment and not necessarily the “validity” and definitely not suggesting solutions at this point:

  • Some developers still didn’t realize these guidelines even existed at all, and there is still confusion around what the guidelines are actually for (e.g. they’re not gatekeeping what’s accepted on Flathub, but are prerequisites for being displayed prominently on the home page)

  • The review process does not provide enough direct feedback in many cases, e.g. how to make an icon better, what specifically could be improved about a screenshot, etc.

  • There’s a difference between an app listing and an app’s identity—and people feel strongly that Flathub should not be dictating app identity

Name & Summary

  • In general, guidelines like “just the app name” seem reasonable and easy to meet

  • “No weird formatting” seems more arbitrary and harder to meet, especially for existing apps

  • Some character-length restriction seems impractically short, and are not enforced for translations anyway

Icon

  • There’s a recurring sentiment of “we’re not going to change the icon we’ve always had just for Flathub”

  • Some people don’t have the skills (and don’t know/feel like they can ask for help) to make an icon that meets the guidelines

  • “In line with contemporary styles” seems subjective and sometimes hard to meet

Screenshots

  • Screenshots using “default settings” and “native decorations” is unclear and contentious in a world of multiple environments and distros with different default settings and window decorations

  • Size guidelines are unclear (some thought the sizing was a hard requirement), and not practical for all apps (doesn’t cater to large, complex apps in addition to small, simpler ones)


I have some thoughts on how we could move forward to both feature more apps and to improve the guidelines, but I think I’ll save that for another post after I think it over a bit.

For now, do you feel like the above summarizes common points raised? Did I miss anything?

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