The Store is being decimated by a handful of developers spamming low-effort apps

Coincidentally, I was just browsing a Reddit thread about this very topic earlier today. With respect, this is not a bug report but a discussion topic. I'll respond here to at least provide some defense for Garmin's position.

We treat our store as a hosting solution rather than a curated storefront. YouTube is the best analogy I can think of—there's a whole lot of trash videos out there, but presumably as long as you don't violate YouTube's terms of service, they allow them and rely on their algorithms to serve up content to users. We operate in a similar manner.

None of the developers listed above have violated any of our terms. They are just prolific and use a strategy of creating many, very similar watch faces to cast a wide net. I doubt anyone would want Garmin to start making qualitative determinations of each app's value, so we approve any app that follows the rules (see https://www.garmin.com/en-US/legal/terms-of-use/).

Our intent is to allow customer activity to drive content on the store. Apps that have no or few downloads and/or no or low ratings would fade, while more popular and highly-rated apps would remain prominent. I believe the best we can do is make improvements to our store algorithms to make the experience better. Of course, if any of these developers is violating terms of service in some way, anyone can report them and that can be dealt with.

Regarding the topic of moderation, and legal considerations aside (which are many), by what criteria should we determine an app to be spam? Is someone that makes a lot of watch faces a spammer? What about someone that is learning and creates some objectively poor watch faces but offers them earnestly? Are watch faces that are too similar in design spam? Hopefully you can see the challenges we'd face if we engaged in some kind of moderation beyond terms violations.

Coincidentally, I was just browsing a Reddit thread about this very topic earlier today. With respect, this is not a bug report but a discussion topic. I'll respond here to at least provide some defense for Garmin's position.

We treat our store as a hosting solution rather than a curated storefront. YouTube is the best analogy I can think of—there's a whole lot of trash videos out there, but presumably as long as you don't violate YouTube's terms of service, they allow them and rely on their algorithms to serve up content to users. We operate in a similar manner.

None of the developers listed above have violated any of our terms. They are just prolific and use a strategy of creating many, very similar watch faces to cast a wide net. I doubt anyone would want Garmin to start making qualitative determinations of each app's value, so we approve any app that follows the rules (see https://www.garmin.com/en-US/legal/terms-of-use/).

Our intent is to allow customer activity to drive content on the store. Apps that have no or few downloads and/or no or low ratings would fade, while more popular and highly-rated apps would remain prominent. I believe the best we can do is make improvements to our store algorithms to make the experience better. Of course, if any of these developers is violating terms of service in some way, anyone can report them and that can be dealt with.

Regarding the topic of moderation, and legal considerations aside (which are many), by what criteria should we determine an app to be spam? Is someone that makes a lot of watch faces a spammer? What about someone that is learning and creates some objectively poor watch faces but offers them earnestly? Are watch faces that are too similar in design spam? Hopefully you can see the challenges we'd face if we engaged in some kind of moderation beyond terms violations.

Any update?

Hi Brandon.ConnectIQ,

> Point taken. I'll start an internal discussion about this topic of spam specifically.

It's been three weeks. Any progress on this you can share?

Brandon.ConnectIQ Thank you, this is great to hear.

"They do contribute to an overburden of apps on the server with to many apps and as you can read in these topics it interferes with the use and enjoyment of the Site of a lot of people."

Point taken. I'll start an internal discussion about this topic of spam specifically.

You asked for feedback on some moderation questions:

• Is someone that makes a lot of watch faces a spammer?
  • It depends. One click on a developer's page and 10 seconds is enough for any rational moderator to decide if they are a spammer or not.
  • E.g.,
    • reasonable number of apps with healthy number of downloads and reviews (users giving their vote of approval) -- not spammer.
    • many apps (> 100) with low number of downloads and no reviews -- spammer. Spammers pump out an unusually large number of low effort apps. 
  • Since Garmin wants CIQ store to be community-driven, allow us in the community to vote down an app or developer. If you give us these tools to vote down and flag apps or developers and collect the stats, I suspect you'll get a nice report every day with just a handful of developers being flagged by the community as spammers. 
• What about someone that is learning and creates some objectively poor watch faces but offers them earnestly?
  • Their new apps can be shown in a special "New" section. (E.g. see reddit.com for how new posts appear).
  • New apps should not be listed above more popular apps that have been "voted up" by users (Downloads and Ratings).
  • New apps need to earn their place in the listings through users' votes (Downloads and Ratings).
• Are watch faces that are too similar in design spam?
  • Yes. 
  • Watchfaces with the same complications but different backgrounds? Spam. See my previous post with titles like "African lily flowers", "Impala lily flower", "Fairy lily flowers", "Blooming red flowers", etc. 
  • Garmin, don't forget that you own CIQ store, you set the rules. You have to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise, what's stopping clowns from spamming even more variations like "12 hour format", "24 hour format", "white text 1", "white text 2", "red text 3", "red text 4", "blue text A", "blue text B", "white text with three data fields", "blue text with 2 data fields", ... do you see the problem?

What to do when a developer gets flagged as a spammer by the community?

• Send them an email with the Terms of Use
• use of the CIQ is a privilege, not a right. As you said, Garmin provides CIQ as a hosting service. If a developer misuses their privilege, limit or revoke their privilege.