The Android Market's rating system needs a revamp...

**TwilitTruth** · 02-27-2009, 02:46 AM

This is actually my first post, I've been lurking for a while. Everything seems to be progressing well in the Android world, at least as far as the G1 goes. Great OS, good Apps, etcetc.. Anyways I just wanted to say that the Rating system for the Market simply does not work.

I'll leave out the fact that the Market needs a Sort By Rating tab for now. (Oh wait..) But even before that, the Reviewing system currently bases it's reviews on the total of votes that were placed on the application. Now this would be fine, if Android's applications were "End all-be all" applications. But because of the nature of the market, they have versions and will and do get updated.

I was just looking through http://www.cyrket.com/ because I'm currently letting my new invisibleShield "Set" overnight, and went to check out Meebo, as I've been wanting a good Multi-Messenger application, and liked Meebo, but the last time I used it there was no remembering of logins, and it crashed a lot (Which wouldn't be so bad with the memory of logins.) and come to find out it has that feature now. Hooray, but as I looked through the comments and ratings, and then the overall rating of the App, it's really going to put a hamper on it's "Sales"(Even though it's free), because people will see the bad rating, and decide against getting it.

Problem is, apparently it's been much improved (Not just including the remember feature), and has since been getting some good star ratings. But the old ratings are holding it back, even though their based on inferior versions.

The only thing I can think of to do to fix this, would be for an "Old Rating/New Rating" system to be implemented. By which I mean, when you searched for an App, you would see two sets of stars. One which shows the rating of the last version of the application, and one that shows the latest. And also, when you go in to see the item you would also be able to see Overall rating, and ratings of the various other versions before it.

I think that this way, the fact that the last rating would be seen with one bar of Stars, gives you a general idea of how popular and usable the App was, and will have a good number of ratings already applied to it. Whereas the newer bar would show only the ratings for the newest version, which there may be very few, or none, depending on when it was released. But if it did have any, you'd get a jist of how stable and well featured this new one is compared to the last.

Anyways, just a thought.. Was wanting to suggest it to Google, but I wasn't sure where I'd go about putting it. Or perhaps this has already been discussed and I just missed it. >_>

**kanzlr** · 02-27-2009, 03:52 AM

great idea about the versioning of ratings.

**_TheOne_** · 02-27-2009, 05:39 AM

I was just thinking about the bad rating and comments that were left on older apps that have since been updated; while checking out buddymob.
Certainly something to think about.

**TwilitTruth** · 03-03-2009, 01:37 AM

Woah, hold on a second. I just now realized that you can CHANGE your rating on the fly. Huh.. That changes things. However, ones that have NOT been updated for new versions should still not be counted in the total count, as some people just won't use them again/won't bother to update their score.

**SilleeString** · 03-03-2009, 08:44 AM

It's true that you can change ratings, and I do my best to update mine on improvements (same with my comments), but it appears that for now the only way to have a clean slate would be to change the name of your app slightly. Instead of Meebo, if they'd want a fresh start, they'd call it "Meebo Beta" or whatever. The original post does bring up an interesting conversation though, since it shouldn't be incumbent on a dev to change the name of their app and possibly lose some people who wouldn't know to look for it.

**Scythe** · 03-04-2009, 10:45 AM

I fully agree, the ratings system is completely broken. The fact that a dev must rename the app to flush the ratings of prior bugs and similar is ridiculous. There should be perhaps a devaluation of a rating over time -- much like Digg or Reddit. Regardless, it's sad when 2 people can completely devastate a perfectly fine app just as it's released when something minor doesn't meet their needs (in which they never provide useful feedback).