Good idea (IMO) for reviews in the market

[DesignDawg]

Hey all,

A few things most of us can agree on:
The open nature of the Market is a good thing.
It breeds innovation
It promotes competition

But, it also seems to me that the QC and verification process of the Apple Apps Store helps qualify quality apps and makes it easier to ensure that you are downloading a decent product, free or otherwise. With the Android Market, all we really have to rely on is the ratings system, unless we want to try every single app for ourselves. The ratings system is GOOD, don't get me wrong. It will allow quality apps to float to the top, and bad ones to sink out of the way... But currently, it's being abused. Too many people are downloading apps they have no need for and immediately rating with 1 star because they were disappointed that they couldn't figure it out (WHY would you download an SSH client when you don't understand a single word in the description? Furthermore, why would you give it a low rating if you don't know what criteria should be used to judge it?)

However, it's tricky: Should Google or anyone else be allowed to cherry-pick "fair" reviews? No. Who determines what is fair? The developers would think any negative review is unfair. And any positive review for a competing product could smell like Google "endorsing" one over the other, right? So, how do we let users freely review apps and still rely on the rating system to determine quality reliably? To me, there is a simple solution:

Waiting periods.

How about, you can't review an app you haven't had for at least {some given amount of time}? Let's say the time period is 1 week. Maybe it's even days? I don't pretend to know the optimal period here, but it seems to me that if you have to wait a week to review an app, you're going to uninstall it before then if it's just not worthwhile/you can't figure it out/you didn't know what it was in the first place, or you're going to have enough time to use it and determine if you think it's quality. Those who really enjoy an app will certainly want to do the community and developers a favor and give it a positive review. Those who have stuck with something, tried it, and determined it just kinda sucks will take the time to write a metered, thoughtful review telling why it isn't worthwhile. What you WON'T get is much more of people just downloading something so they can trash it and act like children. The people who just want to rate something down out of spite or immaturity won't have the patience to wait a week to review it. They'll just uninstall it and be on their way.

What do you guys think? Maybe another solution, or one that could work in conjunction could be to base a reviewer's eligibility to review or their importance/credibility in the review stack based on the amount they've actually USED the app? Like, you can't review something until you've used it 10 times... Or if you can post a review, your review and weight of your rating will be proportional to how much experience you've had with the app. That way, in the simplest terms, on an app with only 2 reviews/ratings, if one reviewer has used the app every day for 3 weeks, and gives it 5 stars, and another reviewer, some impatient kid who just wants to trash the app and say "THIS IS TEH GAY!" only gives the app 1 star, the review won't take a simple math hit and be rated a 3. It will be more like a 4.75. Because, honestly, are some reviews MORE VALID than others? ABSOLUTELY.

There may be some of this already in place for all I know. It doesn't appear so. I'd love to hear thoughts on this, and if anyone at Google is listening and thinks any of it is an implementable or good idea, I'd love to see it go into effect!

That's it for now.

[tread]

yah that sounds good... to take it one step even further, maybe the apps can have a built in "time used" and have it sent to the market before letting them post, as well as their comment showing the time that they used it...

could be a privacy issue with that, free demographics and all... sounds pretty stupid if it would be, but we're in the US, come on

[astevezimm]

This is the same sort of thing that bugs me about user reviews on movies. You get people on those saying how some film is the worst thing to hit the human race since the black death just because it didn't meet their hyped up expectations.

[ecspike]

Because of those reasons previously listed, I tend to distrust app reviews. My app has about 354 downloads with about 250 active installs yet I've only gotten 10 reviews. Less than 3%. I'll glance at reviews but haven't let many dissuade me from downloading if I thought the premise of the app was sound.

If not the time used, the percentage of active installs would be a decent indicator.