Yes, when I read about this new “feature” I was, too, a bit concerned, because, regulation creep may start to crowd out good smaller competitors.
Also what defines ‘good descriptions’. I actually agree that apps that take the time to make a description and screenshot, no matter their quality should be positioned above apps that don’t so long as the apps that don’t are loaded at the same time and presented below the apps with such.
I think that if an app is perceived to have a “poor/ugly description” we should, as a community, encourage and/or assist the app developer to improve the quality of the description (especially if the quality of the description doesn’t match the quality of the software itself! This is actually something that I am interested in doing myself, but not before improving the landing page of the website.
For me updating the quality of the website landing page takes top priority, I do feel that not enough people are getting on board with open source software and I believe it’s because it is perceived to offer a lower quality user experience. When I give someone a link to f-droid dot org, I kind of expect and want that person to get excited by the idea of open-source software without me having to explain why it’s so great. I think the actual website is failing to stimulate the interest of people that I talk to online. I could be wrong. Anyway I don’t want to hijack this thread with that discussion, if you are interested I recently opened a thread for this.
Secondary to my interest in improving the landing page is to improve the user experience of the app itself. One of the main gripes that I have is that you don’t know when you are at the top of the “Latest” page. I OFTEN find that I am accidentally triggering the repository update process. I have a plan to improve the “Latest” tab which involves a heading region at the top. I also want to have a small area of the interface dedicated to highlighting where in the world the app is downloading information/apps from, and how the files are verified in a decentralised way, with a link to possble information on how to setup a node/mirror(?). To me, these are more important right now than bringing in regulations. I also have ways to tweak the look and feel to present a more high quality product.
At this point in time, however I do feel that the most pressing thing is to get prospective users who access the website to become excited by the free and open-source aspects, and to download and install F-Droid in the first place, and that we need to be weary of introducing regulation creep that might favour entities with deeper pockets.