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Completely unmoderated reviews would be awful, which suggests moderation is necessary. Moderation requires judgment, and different people have different ideas

Completely unmoderated reviews would be awful, which suggests moderation is necessary. Moderation requires judgment, and different people have different ideas about what good judgment looks like. Your question made me think about what a "real review" is. Should the person have used the app for more than a certain period of time? Do they need to have taken certain actions (make an account?) Different folks will draw lines in different places because reviews are just opinions, and there are no real credentials for having an opinion. I don't see a way to resolve this with a centralized model. Federated/distributed systems where the network is itself the filter seem more promising to me, even though they tend to come at the expense of usability.

odessacubbage 6y ago
why do scores need to be simple? why not simply graph satisfaction over time and allow for demarcations like number of hours used. trying to apply a roger ebert scoring system to products and services that are ephemeral and ever-changing is largely meaningless. whether review bombing is legitimate or not, it at least always has a cause and that cause should be considered highly relevant purchasing information.
- rpdillon 6y ago
  Totally agree...ratings could be quite sophisticated. In the end, I suspect that sophisticated scoring system would still need to draw lines that some will disagree with, and we'd be back where we are now. Sophisticated scoring might also bring common critiques, like ratings being biased or opaque (or just confusing). I recall Netflix had a issue when they made their star rating a prediction of what you would rate it (based on your previous viewing habits). It confused a lot of people who thought it was simply the average star rating. They since switched to percent-match as a result, and dropped star-reviews in favor of thumbs-up/thumbs-down. Come to think of it, your suggestion may lead to something like percent-match for apps...though I suspect rating apps along dimensions the way Netflix does TV/movies may be tricky. Maybe different dimensions for different categories in the app store? I'm still intrigued by a distributed approach that filters opinion through the sieve of the social network...I think it has more promise than centralized rating systems that attract abuse.
- gfxgirl 6y ago
  I don't agree at all. I want to be able to rate an app that made it impossible to sign up with 1 star. Or that required access to my camera even though the app has nothing to do with taking photos or images. So, no time in but the app deserves IMO 1 star and potential customers should be notified to stay far away from the app As for breaking apart reviews into categories that also has its problem. Zagat used to rate restaurants in 5 categories and it ended up requiring people to lie if they wanted to convey the message "do not go here".

odessacubbage 6y ago

why do scores need to be simple? why not simply graph satisfaction over time and allow for demarcations like number of hours used. trying to apply a roger ebert scoring system to products and services that are ephemeral and ever-changing is largely meaningless. whether review bombing is legitimate or not, it at least always has a cause and that cause should be considered highly relevant purchasing information.

rpdillon 6y ago
Totally agree...ratings could be quite sophisticated. In the end, I suspect that sophisticated scoring system would still need to draw lines that some will disagree with, and we'd be back where we are now. Sophisticated scoring might also bring common critiques, like ratings being biased or opaque (or just confusing). I recall Netflix had a issue when they made their star rating a prediction of what you would rate it (based on your previous viewing habits). It confused a lot of people who thought it was simply the average star rating. They since switched to percent-match as a result, and dropped star-reviews in favor of thumbs-up/thumbs-down. Come to think of it, your suggestion may lead to something like percent-match for apps...though I suspect rating apps along dimensions the way Netflix does TV/movies may be tricky. Maybe different dimensions for different categories in the app store? I'm still intrigued by a distributed approach that filters opinion through the sieve of the social network...I think it has more promise than centralized rating systems that attract abuse.
gfxgirl 6y ago
I don't agree at all. I want to be able to rate an app that made it impossible to sign up with 1 star. Or that required access to my camera even though the app has nothing to do with taking photos or images. So, no time in but the app deserves IMO 1 star and potential customers should be notified to stay far away from the app As for breaking apart reviews into categories that also has its problem. Zagat used to rate restaurants in 5 categories and it ended up requiring people to lie if they wanted to convey the message "do not go here".