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Whats with the "Nice App" 1 Star reviews?

akacaj

akacaj

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 21, 2008
227
0
NY
At first I thought that people just did not know how to write a review but I am starting to think that it is intentional.

If you think the app is nice why would you give it 1 star. Shouldn't it be a 3 star at least? How is that helpful to anyone?
 
Bobioden said:
How do you feel about the developer rating their own app a 5 star?
Click to expand...

I think that there is a problem if a developer does not think that their own app is worth 5 stars.
Most apps have hundreds of reviews so a rating from the developer cannot skew the average rating.

What do you think about the President of the US voting for himself?

FYI, it is one of two ways for the developer to talk to his/her customers. The other way is to post it on the app description. I happen to think that the app description is exactly what it is and should not be used to respond to bogus reviews.
 
akacaj said:
I happen to think that the app description is exactly what it is and should not be used to respond to bogus reviews.
Click to expand...

100% agree with this ... I cannot stand when developers use the app's description to communicate with customers ... talk about a turn-off to potential customers ... we have a few examples in our upcoming articles that are simply hilarious ... sad in terms of krappy marketing, but really cool to poke fun at ... from what we've seen, geeks do not make good marketers ;)
 
KRAPPS said:
100% agree with this ... I cannot stand when developers use the app's description to communicate with customers ... talk about a turn-off to potential customers ... we have a few examples in our upcoming articles that are simply hilarious ... sad in terms of krappy marketing, but really cool to poke fun at ... from what we've seen, geeks do not make good marketers ;)
Click to expand...

Would you like to include me in your article as a good example????
 
if you dont choose a rating then it defaults to one star

soo if you make a good review and forget to rate you get a one star

sorry if someone has all ready posted this fact
 
kyto said:
if you dont choose a rating then it defaults to one star

soo if you make a good review and forget to rate you get a one star

sorry if someone has all ready posted this fact
Click to expand...

I had a feeling that was the case! What if you choose no thanks when deleting an app?
 
There is a great app, "leveler" or something like that, good for constructional engineers and surveyors to be exact. And I had no use, so I deleted it and I rated it 1 star. Not because it didn't meet it's purpose, but for me personally it didn't have any use. People are curious how somethings work and if they dont like it, they will through it away, don't get offended.

Maybe you should add in your description: Age group or the app is intended for, industry, e.g. Computer science students. I don't know, get some family and friends to give you honest comments. Be as much honest as possible.

"honesty is the most valuable commodity on the wall street", W. Buffett
 
Bingbonghoho said:
There is a great app, "leveler" or something like that, good for constructional engineers and surveyors to be exact. And I had no use, so I deleted it and I rated it 1 star. Not because it didn't meet it's purpose, but for me personally it didn't have any use. People are curious how somethings work and if they dont like it, they will through it away, don't get offended.

Maybe you should add in your description: Age group or the app is intended for, industry, e.g. Computer science students. I don't know, get some family and friends to give you honest comments. Be as much honest as possible.

"honesty is the most valuable commodity on the wall street", W. Buffett
Click to expand...

With all due respect, I agree with everything you said except what's in bold above. I think rating an application based on its intended function/market is the point of the rating system. That is, of course, just my humble opinion. I can definitely understand not having a use for a particular app but I'm not sure I understand rating it poorly based on that. :)
 
return7 said:
"rating an application based on its intended function/market is the point of the rating system."
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I agree with you. I have to add, it depends on everyones personal experience, how they would comprehend it. if you order a dish from the menu, sometimes its good and sometimes its not. take facebook for example, great concept, cooked(coded) nicely, but some people are still not satisfied even with the update.
I have 4 amazing soduku apps that I would rate 5star, see the app store and the variance in ratings, pheeew, what can you say...
 
Bingbonghoho said:
I agree with you. I have to add, it depends on everyones personal experience, how they would comprehend it. if you order a dish from the menu, sometimes its good and sometimes its not. take facebook for example, great concept, cooked(coded) nicely, but some people are still not satisfied even with the update.
I have 4 amazing soduku apps that I would rate 5star, see the app store and the variance in ratings, pheeew, what can you say...
Click to expand...

/agree :)
 
kyto said:
if you dont choose a rating then it defaults to one star

soo if you make a good review and forget to rate you get a one star

sorry if someone has all ready posted this fact
Click to expand...

I don't think that's the case because it's happened too many times. Every time it's one review and it just says "nice app". Most of the time it's free apps too, indicating that the person may just be spamming every app he can get his hands on.
 
Bingbonghoho said:
There is a great app, "leveler" or something like that, good for constructional engineers and surveyors to be exact. And I had no use, so I deleted it and I rated it 1 star. Not because it didn't meet it's purpose, but for me personally it didn't have any use.
Click to expand...

This is just wrong.

It's like if I buy a guitar from amazon and then give it a poor rating because I don't know how to play guitar. That's my problem, not the guitar's!

Ratings should reflect the quality of the app. If I see a 4-star app and a 2-star app, I assume the 4-star app is better.

But if everyone is like you then that's not the case at all! :mad:
 
Small White Car said:
This is just wrong.

It's like if I buy a guitar from amazon and then give it a poor rating because I don't know how to play guitar. That's my problem, not the guitar's!

Ratings should reflect the quality of the app. If I see a 4-star app and a 2-star app, I assume the 4-star app is better.

But if everyone is like you then that's not the case at all! :mad:
Click to expand...

Perfect analogy!
 
When asked to rate apps that I delete, they always get 3, 2 or 1 stars. If it were better, I wouldn't be deleting the app in the first place.

I agree with the OP. I've seen those reviews that go:

"Omfg this was like omg so totally awesome <3"

and they give it 1 star. WTF?!

:rolleyes:
 
liptonlover said:
I don't think that's the case because it's happened too many times. Every time it's one review and it just says "nice app". Most of the time it's free apps too, indicating that the person may just be spamming every app he can get his hands on.
Click to expand...

Wonder if this could be reviews coming from the Iphone itself?

When you remove and application it asks if you want to review it? If you say 1 star is this posting as Nice App or something??

I'm sure those ratings go into the score somehow?
 
Dorfdad said:
Wonder if this could be reviews coming from the Iphone itself?

When you remove and application it asks if you want to review it? If you say 1 star is this posting as Nice App or something??

I'm sure those ratings go into the score somehow?
Click to expand...

Those scores do go into the average rating of the app. That is why the rating count from list view is different from the actual written reviews.

Take my app Tingalin as an example (plug: you should really check out the demo video on my site). Browse for it in the Music Section #87 in the Top Paid list. Notice that it says 380 reviews in the list view. Now go into detail and check out the ratings. Only 54 actual ratings. Now check out some of the bad ratings. They are not bad at all when you read them yet only 1 star. Now go back up and hit the buy button... just kidding

So as you can see the average rating is pretty useless. You should always read the ratings. Even the 5 star WOW ratings are useless. Unless there are 500 WOW's then I guess everyone is speachles and you should probably check it out for your self.
 
The pop-up box that asks for a rating was a bad idea. You're always asked to rate an app if you delete it, but most of the time if you delete an app it's because you don't like it. And if you do like an app, and you don't delete it, you're never asked for a rating. So more people who don't like the app are rating it than the people who do, resulting in lower scores.

IMO, Apple should get rid of that box and add an option to just rate an app without having to review it, whether it's being deleted or not.
 
something that bugs me about app ratings is all the people that give apps a one star review just because it crashes one or twice or they don't like the control scheme. Super Monkey Ball had this problem and it new recovered in its ratings. Sim City got hit this way too.
 
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