Tired of irrelevant and poor reviews! [ Edited ]

[moldybagel]

Hey everyone,

I honestly appologize if a rant similar to this has existed, but I really need to let this out:

I am sick of people reviewing applications with irrelevant topics, content, ratings, and questions. It destroys the entire positive purpose behind allowing user feedback. We all technically suffer when the star rating system is impacted by false ratings.

I realize this problem cannot be completely solved, but even if one person decides to post relevant feedback due to this topic, I would feel as though I helped.

EXAMPLE: Super Duper Age Calculator App was developed by a company who provides applications for children with special needs (information found in the application/company website). Some users posted poor ratings because it ONLY did EXACTLY what it described. They also said it was dumb (IT DID EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS MEANT TO DO). Some posted pointless spam as well. So I posted an honest review and have recieved all positive feedback on it.

Sorry if this is long, but I would just like to encourage everyone to post relevant, honest reviews about applications so that we all benefit and so that developers know what they are REALLY doing right/wrong.

Laurel my post if you agree. Thank you everyone. Have a good one!

[Czechboy]

I totally agree with your rant .

I get tired of wading through customer reviews that were written in haste and written angry, just because the person expected something different.  It would be nice if people actually thought about it before they took the time to spew out negative (and usually false) comments about what they are reviewing.

[j-andersonjma]

I can not agree more!  In fact I Private Messaged (PM) Alex with a request that B&N develop some methodology for "equalizing" reviews.  I proposed that they segregate or delete reviews that are utterly without merit or that provide no information for making a purchase decision.  Alex did reply that B&N was considering how to proceed.  It seems like if B&N does not have the staff to monitor reviews then they should give the developer an ability to send a specific review to their attention.  Personally I would like all reviews with no text to be eliminated along with all "questions" about how an APP works or about it's purpose.  Reviews are there to help B&N's customers make purchasing decision, it would be a valuable service to those customers if reviews were subject to oversight.

[moldybagel]

Great job on bringing it to the attention of B&N! I would bet that it's hard for them to do any type of monitoring on the reviews, but hopefully they can eliminate the spam, questions, and pointless feedback.

It's sad that those sloppy reviews are likely taking away purchases from those developers who spent so much time on the applications and are attempting to broaden our app marketplace.

[northlite]

Absolutely! I agree whole-heartedly. I just reported one to B&N...the review was for the AccuWeather Nook App. Here it is:

"Anonymous

Posted January 3, 2012

 

I give it 2 because i dont have it but it looks more for grownups but some kids might like it i dont and im 10"

I reported it for suspected underage user ("Doesn't even HAVE THE APP!" is not a choice!) because that was the most relevant and hopefully will get it removed. I have read a lot of reviews like this one and it isn't fair to the app developer to get a two star review because someone who doesn't even have it doesn't like the idea of the app, or worse is just a kid playing around! I think B&N should take a page from Apple's book and if you don't have the app, you can't review it.

[bobstro]

One dark side to the Free App of the Day that Amazon offers: Often an otherwise wonderful app gets bad reviews because it's no longer offered for free a day later, or someone paid for it the week prior. The reviews are horribly cluttered with complaints about Amazon rather than the apps themselves.

[botski]

I am glad that someone has started this topic.  I have mentioned to my wife that there is a huge proportion of useless reviews for apps.  Even when sorting by "most useful" it doesnt take but 3-4 reviews before finding one sent by a 7 year old learning to text, or someone asing "Is this fun?" and giving it 5 stars.

[moldybagel]

Glad more and more people are agreeing. This is easily one of my biggest pet peeves with the marketplace.

I also feel like users shouldn't be so critical when reviewing free applications. This community needs every app we can get! We have a limite selected and we shouldn't be shying developers away.

UPDATE: Even developers are angry about this problem. Mike Kohn developed the Mike Kohn Poker game app that is free on the Nook Marketplace. If you go to his website ( http://www.mikekohn.net/android/ ) you will see that he is considering taking this application out of the marketplace due to rude and terrible reviews. These spam/irrelevant reviews are honestly hurting our Nook community as a whole.

[LadyTessie]

Oh yeah, me too! I can't help but feel that reviews posted "anonomous" with star selection but no text should be eliminated.

Along similar lines, I am fed up with book reviews with poor ratings because it was no longer free or the person had trouble downloading it or any other reason that has nothing whatsoever to do with the book's content.

Terry

[deesy58]

The posts in this thread are spot-on.

The question is:  What, exactly, can be done to eliminate these spurious reviews?  How might they be censored or filtered automatically, by a computer program?  If the problem can't be accomplished with computer technology, we probably shouldn't expect it to be fixed soon.

[Czechboy]

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LadyTessie wrote:

Oh yeah, me too! I can't help but feel that reviews posted "anonomous" with star selection but no text should be eliminated.

Along similar lines, I am fed up with book reviews with poor ratings because it was no longer free or the person had trouble downloading it or any other reason that has nothing whatsoever to do with the book's content.

Terry

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Yes, I agree. The "anonomous" thing is out of control and invites people to not be accountable for their reviews.  And if it's truly a "review", then say something about the product.  Hitting the 1 star, and not including any text is not a review.  We're given the ability to flag reviews to B&N if there is included text, but the no text reviews are even worse because there's no way to flag them or dispute them in any way.

Still, my biggest complaint is the person that doesn't understand that it's not a forum, and gives a 1 star rating with the text, "is this thing worth buying?".  I know that B&N probably wants to be careful about how they censur the reviews, because if you cull too many of them, you don't get useful data out of it, but I still think some things can be done to nudge things down a more useful path.

[orb9220]

Sorry and do wish something could be done. And maybe eliminate anonymous posting would help.

But like just about anywhere where there are post comments or reviews I see this.

Shows the level and state of the Mediocre Mass Minds of Ignorance!. From uninformed to the poorly laid out to common sense and rational critical thinking skills to do it right. An unwillingness to take the time to think and the implementation of laziness to take the required time to be thorough.

Reminds me of that Star Trek episode Spocks Brain - "Brain and Brain!...What is Brain!"

.

[Ryan_]

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The question is:  What, exactly, can be done to eliminate these spurious reviews?

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One thing that can be done is set an example with high quality, insightful reviews that help others make informed decisions. I don't review apps (since it is a conflict of interest) but I've seen some really great reviews get recommended by others and promoted as the most helpful ones. When others see high quality reviews, patterns tend to stick. I think I can safely assume many of those reviews most likely come from here

It's not fool proof. From experience, there will always be the off-topic reviews. But the more high quality reviews out there, the easier it is to find the information you need to buy an app or not.