Better editors choice and recommended applications

TingPing commented 6 years ago

The goal of the home page should be to show the best Flathub has to offer and I am confident that applications like Steam are not that. I think we should set some ground rules for what not to promote. This may be painful since the ones winning the popularity contest don't match my recommendations but I think it is for the best.

Editors choices should not:

Use extra-data. These can fail to install sometimes which is a bad UX.
Use a toolkit other than Gtk3 or Qt5. We want features like portals and themes working.
Be complex applications like an IDE. These are where the friction of the sandbox is most visible and an unexpected UX for developers familiar with existing workflows to say the least.
Be proprietary. This one is up for debate but we can't patch bugs in these.
Not have upstream involvement. Also up for debate but reflects our ideals.

I think the Popular list should also be somewhat filtered and maybe less prominent than editors choice.

barthalion commented 6 years ago

I agree with everything. We can revise proprietary rule if some closed-source upstream expresses interest in shipping their app on Flathub but that's not the case now.

allanday commented 6 years ago

I think our goal should be to promote popular apps when they are popular, since this is what users actually want. If we don't promote what users want, we make the service look less attractive.

If there are bugs with popular apps, we ought to work to resolve to fix them, not hide them away.

TingPing commented 6 years ago

If there are bugs with popular apps, we ought to work to resolve to fix them, not hide them away.

In a perfect world I agree. How do we solve Steam? Do you know the one or two folks working at Valve on their Linux port? Can you get them to dedicate time to fixing obscure bugs in an unsupported downstream package? Can you get them to get in contact with dozens of third party game developers publishing games to fix bugs on an unsupported platform?

It is a bad example of what Flatpak has to offer and cannot be fixed, sorry. We can however not promote it as if it is the best Flathub can offer.

TingPing commented 6 years ago

Just to prove my point: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8aixg0/a_new_version_of_flathub_to_browse_flatpak_apps/

Both Steam and VSCode are the first thing complained about for the reasons I mentioned. These are not solvable problems and we shouldn't shove them in users faces. It makes Flatpak and Flathub look bad.

jgarciao commented 6 years ago

I think is nothing wrong on showing Popular apps in the frontpage or at the top of the apps list. The list is based on (January/February) download stats but it's similar to what I see in Google Analytics.

As Allan said, we'll make Flathub/Flatpak less attractive hiding (or making it less prominent) this information. If you read the Ubuntu Insights blog most of the snap related posts are about popular proprietary software (Spotify, Skype, Slack, ...)

About the editor's picks, I made the lists when I was developing the webapp but it was a quick selection to have something to show. Thanks for opening the issue because it was something I wanted to revisit.

Same as before, I think being too restrictive with the criteria will be against Flathub popularity.

My recommendations for editor's choice:

Requirements:

Works well flatpaked, not adding significant drawbacks versus the packaged format (rpm, deb, ...)
Withing apps with similar purpose, this app is highlighted among the others because of stability, easy to use, features, user interface, ...
Is in active development
In a nutshell, it's a flatpaked app we would recommend to friends that need to do something (listen music, edit a video, write a document, ...) and we don't want them to have a bad experience.

Extra-points (but not requirement):

Is a popular app
Have upstream involvement
Is open source
Use Gtk3, Qt5 or another recent toolkit that supports flatpak portals and themes work properly
Don't use extra-data

I agree that if Steam doesn't work properly it should not be in the editor's pick. Something we could do also is to add some information in the appdata description, like including a link to the Tested Games in the wiki.

Once we agree on the editor's choice criteria, how do create the list of apps? In this issue and asking people to "like" the proposals? With Google Forms?

TingPing commented 6 years ago

If you read the Ubuntu Insights blog most of the snap related posts are about popular proprietary software (Spotify, Skype, Slack, ...)

Spotify, Skype, and Slack have upstream developers supporting those packages. We do not.

I agree with your requirements overall. I want to add an extra note to extra-data though, it has to be an extra-data with a known reliable host. A few packages remove links every few weeks and that is not something we should promote.

Once we agree on the editor's choice criteria, how do create the list of apps? In this issue and asking people to "like" the proposals? With Google Forms?

Not sure honestly. There are only a few people involved in this process but there is also a lot of apps to sift through..

nedrichards commented 6 years ago

This PR doesn't fix the issue, but it should mitigate some of the effects: https://github.com/flathub/linux-store-frontend/pull/133 Specifically I would like to remove two extra-data apps that I help to maintain and replace them with more integrated flatpak apps that are maintained by upstream.

jgarciao commented 6 years ago

With the help of Google Analytic and this script I've created a little report with a list the most downloaded apps (from the website) with extra info like the number of open issues at github.

The report is here.

With this information, I've updated the editor's picks for apps and games. You can see the resuting picks in the dev server.

This is just a temporally list until a better system is found. In the meantime, could you take a look to see the picks?

SISheogorath commented 6 years ago

To be honest when we call it "Editor's choice" it shouldn't be the "Most downloaded" or "Most accessed". It should be an informed decision by a person or a group of people that is regularly working and may maintaining Apps on FlatHub. Otherwise we should rename it since it's not what it appears to be.

And we already have "Popular Apps". Which, from my perspective, should be pretty much what you created with that list.

jgarciao commented 6 years ago

The difference is that I haven't included some apps that are popular but have bugs (like Steam)

But yes, maybe the solution is just to remove the Editor's picks because nobody really wants to maintain it and create a Popular Games list based on downloads (so the Homepage doesn't look so empty)

TingPing commented 6 years ago

New list seems ok :+1:

jgarciao commented 6 years ago

Sorry, you mean the updated editor's lists or the "popular games" proposal?

El dj., 27 de set. 2018, 18:56, TingPing notifications@github.com va escriure:

New list seems ok 👍

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TingPing commented 6 years ago

I meant the new list but that sounds good too. For low maintenance just a Popular apps with a blacklist would be fine.

flathub-infra / linux-store-frontend

Better editors choice and recommended applications #69