The Connect IQ Store is getting worse by the day by a few developers who dump a shitload of *** watch faces

sorry I wanted to say limitation for only new Apps, not updates,

but yes you are right with your example, so very hard for Garmin to put a limitation

You call this realistic?

As already stated apps that "earned" their place (in that time they did have all the time to shine in the sun because nobody was spamming the Store) are and will be always visible in the Store on the front pages and therefore they will keep shining because everybody keeps downloading them even if new apps could be better. 

Soo you are actual telling that there is no room for new apps because the "older" apps have earned their place, no room for innovation? If you look at the categories you mentioned the apps that are visible have been there for the last 2 years or more. The only 'innovation' Garmin did is add more categories to show even more older apps and make it available on the watch itself.

Can you give me one example of a new fresh app that did make it to shine because it outstands all the older and spam apps?

We are in a situation where:

• the Store is already to full of spam and the eco-system is unhealthy
• older apps will be there for every and holding back innovation
• lack of regulation what can be put into the Store
• good developers walking away

I don't have the answers to solve this issue but if you keep doing the same thing you already did you get what you already have! I have read some great idea's here and there are definite a lot more that can help:

• Spam apps/developers should be banned or give their own category where they spam each other.
• Give new apps a fair chance to shine: introduce some kind of ranking system for new apps for example depending on the features they have, how innovative they are, design and style, how they are maintained, etc.
• Provide a better classification system
• Highlight apps that introduce new features
• Provide better standards an app should meet
• etc. 

Jim as you say the same complaint about this keeps coming back and with your 8+ years of experience, I don't understand why you don't see the problem here or maybe that's the reason why it still exists...

So you are saying older apps in a category should be replaced by newer apps.  What if there are 50 newer apps that have the same or better ranking as yours?

"Hot & Fresh" is specifically a category for newer apps, so there is already a place for them...

You want Garmin CIQ to hire someone to judge an app based on features and innovation and the design and features?

The Garmin CIQ group is small.  It's not an Apple or Google when it comes to supporting/maintaining their store.

Every dev thinks their own ("non spam") app is the neatest thing since sliced bread.

Jim stop spamming!

The categories were introduced to increase discoverability but at about the same time it was also prevented to browse multiple pages. 

I can't say I'm a big fan of the categorization because for me it makes it less clear what the type of the connect iq app is. I personally found it better a few years ago when there was just categorization based on the application type. Then people could actively choose to browse and install data fields. Now people are surprised it's not a watch face. I can assure you if you have a popular data field you're often asked how to install it. I don't mind explaining even though I already explained to great extent in the faq of the app. 

But for discoverability  of apps the categorization is probably an improvement on how it used to be at the start, especially if you're only into creating watch faces like OP Gerard is.

The limitation to browse multiple pages was (I'm assuming) done because it was very slow to load the connect iq app, but there are better ways to speed up the process. Limiting the load by limiting the count is the easy way out, dynamically loading the next batch of pages would be my choice.

Something I also liked more was the "category" recent changes where you could see new and updated apps. I think it trumped "hot and new" which is there now as it didn't take "stars" into account and it actually showed you recent developments or recent updates. 

Back when "recent changes" was available I often browsed it until I was up-to-date by what was done by the community. As you're now limited to a few pages of browsing I've stopped doing that. Besides as already said  "hot and fresh" isn't really that fresh... 

As to spam authors that's indeed a subjective thing to determine. Something that could be a solution is that you could block authors so that you no longer see any of their creations. (Of course an unblock functionality should also be added).

Summarized:

- Implement multi-paging properly (allow to browse all, make it fast and snappy)

- Bring back recent changes 

- Implement Block/Unblock

Garmin absolutely has to do something about this.  It's gotten way worse in the past weeks with all these SCAM & SPAM developers flooding the store with low-quality faces that cheapen the experience for everyone. 

Here's my proposal as a fix:

1)
What: Update the ranking system to factor in the number of platforms supported
Why: Incentivize and elevate products that utilize modern technologies.

A listing with 100 downloads that supports 50 products should be considered differently from a listing with 100 downloads that supports 5 products.  

For example, imagine someone made an app that's special for the diving watches and uses a special feature only available on them.  Right now, that app will get lost because it's going to compete with everything that targets a wider range. 

"Gross downloads" are a major factor in the rankings, yet this disincentivizes the development of watch faces that can only target modern devices with newer capabilities or specialized devices.

Garmin's doing a great job giving us modern features (like radial/angular text), but it's not viable to build niche apps that target modern devices.  Some face/app concepts don't have an alternative for graceful degradation on platforms without the special capabilities.  But if you just target the portion of devices that support your required CIQ feature, then you'll get drowned out by faces built to a lower requirement.

The rankings should be updated to incentivize the adoption of these compelling new features by factoring in the number of platforms supported into the ranking calculations.  Otherwise, there's a strong barrier to the adoption of newer capabilities and advancement of the ecosystem overall.

Apple solves this by creating categories to highlight apps using new features:

2)
What: Allow "infinite" pagination through the categories
Why: There are probably hundreds or thousands of watch faces that can't be found except via search

We get just 4 pages of results per category.  If a watch face isn't in the first 4 pages, the only way it can be discovered is via searching. 

Why limit customers to only seeing what's ranking highly right now?  These rankings tend to be stagnant towards the top and volatile towards the bottom.  Some great products are getting lost off page 4 if they can't compete against the apps that were published ages ago and have accumulated so many downloads that their top ranking is assured permanently.

3)
What: Enforce new-app upload limits
Why: No developer is producing 10 quality watch faces each week.

It should be harder for SCAM & SPAM developers to flood the store with low-quality items. This doesn't mean prevent developers from updating existing apps.  But developers who aren't spamming tend to upload at a much slower rate, because real quality takes time to produce.  There's no reason any one account should need to upload 10+ faces each week.

There's no great solution to prevent them from setting up multiple accounts to circumvent this.  But it might be a start.

4)
What: Give new / small developers more exposure
Why: It can be especially hard to get started here; we should welcome newbies

If someone's gone and created their first (or second or third) face, the community should give them a little extra exposure vs. a developer that's on app 750.  The community would be better served by having more developers, so we should make new developers want to keep making new things.

5) 
What: Update the terms to block SCAM & SPAM
Why: This can't purely be automated; spammers always find a way around

Garmin should be empowered to give out warnings and put blocks on accounts that have uploaded too many apps that are too similar. This would also help them weed out "bot rings" (developer accounts that are shared by the same person / entity). 

6) 
What: Add an upvote / downvote capability (Reddit-style)
Why: Users should be empowered to have a voice without needing to download a watch face

We can recruit the community to help stamp out spam and low-quality stuff.

The current rating system is limiting because you have to download the app to rate it.  Some things are obviously spam or low-quality, but you're not going to download it just to downvote it. The community is missing a LOT of value from average users being able to vote on what they want to see (and not see).

There could be a secondary system (alongside app ratings) that allows everyday users to upvote cool things and downvote obvious spam.  It could be one factor, not the main or only factor.  

7)
What: More Garmin editorialization
Why: There's a reason there are food critics and tech writers; average people want help identifying "extraordinary" products

The Garmin team should have a way to help clever or useful items rise to the top more, and they should rotate what they highlight to keep the community getting exposed to a wide variety of new things.

Apple has the "Editor's choice" for this.

Here's what I see happening right now:

I suspect it's just a small handful of developers that built the automation to do this and are just hammering the store constantly.  

They seem to have discovered the "trick" to the Garmin store that I've also recently learned: newness is the best way to get noticed. If you don't build a mass-appeal face, once you're off the main lists you're watch face is permanently undiscoverable (except via search).

For example, I started out just building for AMOLED-416px faces like the Epix gen 2.  I was just building for myself and wanted to share.  Then I realized that rankings are based on total downloads.  So if you just deploy a niche face for a small group of devices, you're dead on arrival.  I started developing AMOLED & MIP faces, but I set a floor on only supporting modern-gen devices with enough memory to support all the metrics and capabilities I wanted to offer.

But this quality philosophy is always going to hold me back.  And that seems like the wrong incentive for the community.

So these SCAM & SPAM developers are just constantly launching new stuff so they stay "above the fold" due to being new.  They're not trying to build enduring quality stuff.  They just need to launch enough stuff constantly to raise the number of spots in the "NEW" rankings they hold.

Just explore these:

• NowClockFaces: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/developer/5eb82629-9993-405f-ad49-c1bc4b74df49/apps 
• Simon433: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/developer/eb17537a-1f42-456a-9c26-099e7ecc12ca/apps
• TimeFaces: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/developer/63e39b3d-2801-46f5-934d-1b4db7ebbc7a/apps
• Kreadores: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/developer/0fd0eae1-86d5-4e39-a543-8f263f46a122/apps
• tatu_vic: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/developer/4c948224-2a26-477b-8b9b-b981f98c1004/apps

It seems like some of them have even diversified and now publish under multiple different developer accounts.  See here:

garminer.com/all

They list 10 different developer accounts they are using.

One developer is advertising they have a bundle with 782 watch faces!

I'm betting Garmin is aware of this and concerned but can't quite think of a good solution right now.  I really hope they figure this out.  Otherwise, it's going to get worse.  And that's going to crowd out all the quality developers (which are the ones here on this thread commenting).

If that happens, it's going to become a wasteland.

For those of you who think this is serious, I've logged a "Bug" ticket here.  I searched and couldn't find a duplicate listing, so I created a new one.  Please consider upvoting it and adding your comments.

forums.garmin.com/.../address-recent-tidal-wave-of-spam-low-quality-watch-faces-in-the-ciq-store

For heavens sake Garmin the store is old crusty and Windows 95 like.  Even Amazfit puts all the faces available to shame.  The apps suck too.  The GarminWatchfaceBuilder site has better faces.  But most of it breaks.

The face is the face of your business.  While your at it, add a payment ability in Canada !!!! Pfff.

You can make a rating mechanism for developers, based on downloads, ratings, the number of free apps and other dimensions. A high rating can upload more apps per day, while a low rating limits uploads. In addition, there is a regular removal mechanism for those with low downloads and those that have not been updated for a long time.