It's a big change, but it might be the right one. Thinking of the top of my head, some concerns are...

You might not get the same breadth and variety of entries this way. I've always felt that community applications have always been very 'System and Utilities' category oriented, but I don't feel there is the same amount of games or other applications coming through. By removing the categories you'd be removing an incentive for developers to work on these types of applications, imo.

I also think that by having categories you can help stretch the skill set in the community by encouraging and rewarding developers in areas they normally wouldn't enter unless there's a shiny new device to be won If it's going to be one big pot of entries all judged together then I, as a developer, am going to stick to my comfort zone in order to make the best quality app i can rather than push the envelope or try something new. For example, I see Cocos2d-x is the featured Qt project of the week (Nokia Developer Team twitter feed). It would be awesome if somebody was to use it to create new games for the competition and bring those skills into the community.

Another concern is presenting the entries for judging. Picking a random number in my head.. 50.. if there are 50 entries in the competition, are people really going to comb through 50 application descriptions to compare and judge them? Having categories breaks it up into 5 or 6 apps which are similar that can be more easily compared. Also, if I am only interested in media or location based applications I know where to go to find them, I don't need to search through a long list to see if there are any.

Hmm.. that's all the possible concerns I can think of at the moment. What does everyone else think?

I think that the brightest ideas are most probably the simplest ones, and yet it's so hard to come up with them. I agree with the big pot idea. I will try to address some of kojackers concerns.

Presenting the entries can still be done in categories. After all even the repositories need a category for submission so this imo is a non-issue.

The incentive for developing something apart from System/Utilities is that it is going to get more votes exactly because most utilities are already covered.

The other concern (about incentive to try something new) is legit, but it does not seem to be affected by the existence of categories, as not every developers comfort zone is the same. However we could come up with an incentive for the new. For example award 10 more points to apps from the missing list, or apps with no competitor (no other app with similar functionality).

Hello,

I like the idea of having only one 'category', but on the other hand as I see is that having (e.g.) an office app challenging with a game it's not so fair. Moreover, as kojacker says, it's hard to go through all the app and make a fair vote.

I have one more idea, trying to unite previous two.

What if we keep categories and voting by categories, but do it slightly different way.

Application must take some minimal appreciation (score system or so) to pretend for winning. By default, each category is granted with X prizes. If there's not enough appreciated applications in some category (X-Y), then Y prizes are redistributed to the category overflowing with good apps.

It can as involve developers in exploring something new, as stop them from making crappy pieces of code.

Edit: rearranged my thoughts in more readable way.

It's good to hear new ideas, keep them coming in! We've had the same categories (basically) for a couple of years so perhaps it's time to freshen it up

You can probably find issues with fairness whichever way you run a competition, and I can see pros and cons with both approaches (categories and no categories).

Sometimes i think we do run too many categories, but I also think having some is helpful. It's all a balancing act i guess

Hmm... I see what you're saying beresk_let and it's a good idea too But i'm thinking who is going to judge if an app is crappy or not? I don't think we could have a poll for the community to judge how good each of the entries are or we'd be all fed up with voting all the time! So that raises the idea of a selected panel who would test and judge the quality of each app? It would kinda suck for newbies and indeed suck a lot more for experienced developers to have an app ranked as poor when they worked so hard on it, it might be demoralising rather than encouraging, so we'd have to find a nice way to tell people they suck more than others at developing apps But i can see that your idea could work with some thought behind it

One way the big pot idea could work is to have a trusted maemo.org panel of reviewers/testers who would work through the entries and provide a final list for the community to judge and rank in the final order. So if there were 50 entries, the panel could narrow it down even to 10 and the community would decide the final placings. But then we'd lose a lot of the community involvement.

Bah .. i don't know, brainstorming..

Well, kojacker, you're right. Score system need much more time and testing (7 points or 8? Hmmm... let me run this app once more) in general.

But as long as every developer has his (or her) preferred area, so do users. If I don't use much mobile office applications (I really don't), why'd I test them? But some of them may be great and handy for those who do use and test them more accurately. Let them vote and make their preferred apps win!

If we make a big pot, I _will_ have to test all of them, too, because the other way wins the app which has more users and testers (auto-win for games, for example). And there's a danger that some very good, but niche application, will just get drowned. As an example, like if Fremantle and Harmattan get drowned the same way in Android/iWhatever flood

This sounds good to me. I think multiplatform is good as long as we keep it among related platforms and it promotes that type of work, which the community would greatly benefit from.

As to getting rid of categories, I think they worked OK last year. Maybe reduce the number of categories.

I may be interested in participating here; I currently only own a N900, but I'm not a beginner in Linux or programming. I may contribute in various ways to this community
Is there a place where to subscribe ? Or is it still in "beta"-stage ?

Hey Tofe, thanks for being interested - welcome aboard! With your programming skills and your N900 you have everything you need to get involved

The competition is still in the stages of being set up, and once it's ready to accept entries you'll be sure to hear about it! In the meantime have a look over the competition wiki and feel free to join in on our discussions here as we get everything ready. For example, the recent discussions on categories - your point of view would be appreciated as much as everyone elses so don't feel shy to join in

@SD69 could you do us a favor and add the 2012 wiki link (http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_coding_competition_2012) to your OP? It's just for new folks stumbling onto the thread.

I noticed qwazik was proposing replacing the council election banner on the side bar on the right hand side of the TMO page. He was proposing replacing it with a banner pointing to the council pages. I've asked if we can time share the space with a banner for the coding competition, similar to how we had our coding competition banner last year. We'd only need it for 2-3 months so I can't see a problem with it The only problem might be getting a good looking banner lol maybe qwazix can help us with that. Or if there are any budding Michelangelo's or Rolf Harris's out there...