Terry Godier:
For example, if you have a 4.1 star rating in the App Store, any 4
star review is going to decrease that average. In other words,
leaving a 4 star review is essentially leaving a negative
review. […]You will see a lot of 4 star reviews that say things like, “This
is my favorite app!” or “Gamechanger!” The apps that tend to
have these types of reviews are often over a 4.0 in the store and
are being actively harmed average-wise by having them, even though
the intent was clearly not to do so.
Problem #1 is that star-rating systems absolutely suck for aggregation. If you’re going to collect and average ratings from users, the system that works best is binary: thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Netflix switched from stars to thumbs in 2017, and YouTube switched all the way back in 2009. The App Store should switch to thumbs.
The logical endpoint of apps optimizing for a 5 star review
invalidates the system as meaningful on the store. The system
becomes a better representation of the sophistication at review
prompt execution than it does an accurate reflection of app
product quality. The incentive isn’t to create an actual 5 star
app, but rather to create a robust system that transmits only 5
star reviews.
Problem #2 is that even if the App Store switched from stars to thumbs, the system would still be gamified by developers, rewarding, as Godier aptly puts it, not the best apps but instead the apps that are best at “review prompt execution”. Apple should remove the APIs that allow apps to prompt for reviews, and forbid the practice of prompting for them. Nothing good, and much bad, comes from these prompts. Every time I see one of these prompts it’s like getting hit up by a panhandler — and some of the prompts come from Apple’s own apps. It’s all so greasy. One of the advantages of a walled garden ought to be keeping panhandlers and solicitors out.
