As a developer, I find the review/rating System on Play really infuriating. And I’m not even talking about the dozens of Spam mails I get every week from Sleezeballs promising me fake reviews (thanks Google for mandating a public email address with every developer account!).
Things could be so much easier:
- Do away with that 5 star rating bullshit. A lot of dumb asses give 1* ratings to abuse the review system for asking support questions. Those who use the system the intended way usually have completely different criteria, making their vote more or less arbitrary. A simple Thumbs up/down widget is all there should be.
- Disallow ratings without a review. Seriously, what’s the point here? Giving a 1* rating without an explanation is like shitting on the table before storming out of the restaurant.
- Mandate at least two sentences per review. Anything less serves absolutely no one except the Sleezeballs that spam developers with an offer to provide fake reviews.
Once you have done all this, trash the review/rating system altogether. It works on Amazon because people there are actually literate. People that use phones a lot are conditioned to express themselves in 140 characters or less.
