A 10 day quarantine may be too long for some and I appreciate the developer(s) need to see the package in Extras quickly but in the real world, I don't see how 10 days go against the 'release early release often' mantra. 10 days before an app reaches a large number of users is not too long IMO. Perhaps the time can be reduced by a bit and maybe more for updates. But on the other end, 5 days for new apps is not enough. We must provide a 'weekend opportunity' since most of us use our free time to contribute towards testing. Reducing it to 7 days would be preferable and enable testers at least a weekend to come around to the app.

I agree with the assessment that the current process has too many 'open to interpretation' areas that have brought the process very close to abuse.

1) Packages without bug-trackers
These are the most common. But again, this is a grey area depending on the size of the project. small project, like wallpapers etc may be not all that necessary. Its not difficult to find many of these apps with >10 thumbs up (e.g. Easy-chroot).

2) Optification
These are easily caught but again there is a grey area on how much should an app take (including/excluding dependencies) before it is categorised as not-optified.

The sad part is both the above checks can be easily automated (build? promotion?) to save energy downstream. Requirement for a bug-tracker or a mailto link would be easy to check. I am sure some simple rules can be applied for checking optification.

The process as it is today is good enough but its not properly written up. Lack of clarity in QA-Checklist doesn't help justifying a thumbs-down against a popular app.

The idea of having a dedicated super-testers group is also a good one to "override" the judgement of testers. but this complicates the process further IMO but perhaps a necessary step as more people begin to rate without a firm understanding the goals of extras-testing.

Maemo community apps stand for reliability and authenticity. I hope we can iron-out the process and come to a consensus quickly.