This thread is about the QA of the maemo.org repository (formerly known as "maemo extras"). Here we can discuss how the QA should be made better and more secure.

I think, that it is really difficult for an average user to find where he can vote for a program. Maybe he read anywhere how to enable extras testing but did not read further. So he does not know, that an application need votings to get into maemo.org repository.

A better solution would be a voting system directly tied into the application manager, where you can give a "thumb up" or a "thumb down" directly in a overview of installed applications from extras testing. Applications installed from maemo.org should have the "five star system".

I think tying things into the existing application manager would be tricky, but (completely off the top of my head) it seems that it should be possible to work out from the package database on the machine which installed packages are visible in the -testing repo, and not in the main -extras one. That would generate a list of candidate packages to give feedback on, and from there it's 'just' a matter of having the app log in to the QA and do the thumbs up/down operation.

Does anyone know whether there's a good API interface for doing that?

The Extras Assistant installer Daniel Wilms is building does exactly that, allowing you to browse, install and rate apps from the same UI.

Please see the QA group proposal at MeeGo.com: http://wiki.meego.com/Proposal_for_a..._working_group