Curate apps for each category

[sarahpandabeara]

This will be a joint effort with our community. We have the categories but we want to include the community in the decisions of what applications should go within each category.

[cassidyjames]

The homepage stuff was tracked and closed elsewhere. But we still have work for categories.

• We could rely on subcategories upstream instead of explicitly picking per-category apps https://github.com/elementary/appcenter/issues/478 or https://github.com/elementary/appcenter/issues/540

• We could add category-specific endpoints to Houston/Deckard, then update the client to hit those endpoints as well. This is probably more work, and I don't think it will be handled upstream since elementary already has a concept of curated and non-curated apps.

• We could do the first option mentioned above, but also update the client to know which apps we consider curated and not. That would make it easier to get high-quality apps featured on the categories, plus would mean some of this work would be relevant to upstream as well.

[qrkourier]

Categories are alright, I guess; but more importantly there are a number of common app store semantics that are notably absent in Pop Shop e.g.

• recommended for you (sorted "scientifically" i.e. similar apps to your installed apps, installed by others that installed the same apps),
• highest rated,
• most installed (and not immediately uninstalled),
• promoted,
• staff picks.

Less common for a content repository, and an idea I personally like, are community and staff sourced "bundles" e.g. Java developer, security research, machine learning, or edutainment/kids games.

Sorting and filtering mechanisms like this would save the user from wading through miles of obscure apps.

[btkostner]

recommended for you - Requires some server side component where Pop!_Shop would have to send back a list of installed packages (user tracking)

highest rated - Requires some server side component to store people's ratings. Also requires some sort of authentication or rate limiting so people can't abuse it. (user tracking)

most installed - Same as #1, just less if statements.

promoted - Requires someone to change this list pretty regularly otherwise it gets stale. (manual work)

staff picks - Requires someone to make the initial list. Does not need to be updated that often, but still might get stale. Same as #4.

[cassidyjames]

To be fair, “Promoted” and “Staff Picks” are already present in Pop!_Shop as “Pop!_Picks”.

[qrkourier]

I do see "Pop!_Picks", and it presents in Pop Shop's front page as a row of tiles for what appear to be comparatively-handy apps. Cool. Is there a longer list of picks somewhere? I haven't noticed anything like "promoted" yet.

Now that you mention it, I too wouldn't support a presumed acceptance of "user tracking" i.e. sharing an anonymized list of installed apps with the service automatically; but opting-in to enable features like this would be acceptable to me. Still, what about "most downloaded"? No, wait, that would require Pop Shop to use only metered mirrors, which would be relatively expensive.

FWIW: in addition to sorting by ratings, review count is meaningful i.e. "most reviewed".

[btkostner]

This goes hand in hand with elementary AppCenter, as we also want to allow reviews. We just need to do some work to figure out a nice way of doing this anonymously and taking user privacy into account.