ARB Review

[Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)]

Hi Jono

On 10/04/2012 19:04, Jono Bacon wrote:
>   * Application Prioritization - the board does not have any kind of
> prioritization facility in MyApps that indicates that App A may be of
> more interest/more important/more valuable (or however else we define
> priority) than App B. I think given there are more apps than time,
> some kind of prioritization would be helpful to ensure that the apps
> of most interest to Ubuntu users get to the top of the list. One
> possible idea I had here was making the queue open and allowing the
> community to go in and upvote/downvote and add comments and for the
> ARB to take this content into considerable. Of course it could be
> gamed, but I suspect it would provide at least indications of interest
> and popularity.

That kind of functionality would certainly be useful.

<snip />

>   * Being Stricter With Needs-Information - I have suggested this a
> number of times before, but I still see that applications that are
> waiting upon feedback from a developer languish in the queue. I think
> we should put a strong "if there is no response within a week, it gets
> rejected". This will put the responsibility in the developers hands to
> be timely, which I think is reasonable given that the ARB is a
> community team offering their spare time to provide these reviews.

+1!

>   * Review Assessment Criteria - I think it could be useful for us to
> discuss what kind of criteria the ARB are using to review apps in the
> queue. I suspect there are areas in which the ARB could provide a
> lighter-weight review while still providing the assurances they
> provide around quality and security. As an example, in my (humble)
> opinion, if an application installs, can be removed, and does not pose
> a security risk, it should get through. If the application is terrible
> quality or crashy, the ratings and reviews will tell that story to our
> users.

It /has/ to adhere to the criteria listed on 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppReviewBoard/Review/Guidelines

If it doesn't, I won't +1 it. It *has* to be released under a free 
license, it *has* to comply with the Ubuntu CoC, it *can't* touch any 
system files. Other packaging related problems we can typically work 
around, but the subset of guidelines you're suggesting is completely 
insufficient. If you don't understand it, then I'm sure we can set up 
some time to explain it to you.

-Jonathan