The iPad App Store is full of phony ratings and flame wars

[Prasius]

Yip, you shouldn't feel outrage at paying a couple of "whatever" for an app. Page for iPad costs £5.99 in the UK and I think that is an absolute bargain. There are lots of other apps out there from small developers that are great with a small amount of money. The problem is that many reviewers are morons, the App store dosent seem to check the reviews or follow up on them - which I accept is a difficult task seeing as it would be so massive.

 

[Spiritinthesky]

I find that with all ratings, you learn to spot the nutters.

 

[Ultrimate]

*
"The iPad App Store is full of phony ratings and flame wars"

Good, I will feel right at home then, lol

 

[Howard9999]

MAVRO came back with his sock puppets!

I looked again, and my negative review of this app, which briefly was rated Most Helpful only two days ago, is now down at the very end of the list. It is suddenly the least helpful?

In front of my rating are the following reviews:

1. The most awesome medical app (5 stars)
by JimGary&Partners

2. Nothing short of AWESOME (5 stars)
by JayMD2009

3. Ingenious app! (5 stars)
by Albi_Resp-Tech

4. Howard9999 is an idiot (5 stars)
by Dr Edwards (UTSW)

5. Very useful (5 stars)
by Paramedic Steve

6. *****Top APP*** (5 stars)
by NickParamedic

7. Amazed (5 stars)
by Nikoli Cyr

 

[delabeaux]

What medical spanish app would you recommend then?

Please help!

 

[Howard9999]

What medical spanish app would you recommend then?

Please help!

Are you looking for a phrasebook? Do you already know the Spanish pronunciation system? Is your objective to find a very complete phrasebook, perhaps without audio, or do you want a more limited phrasebook with quality audio to practice the pronunciations?

I am traveling overseas at the moment, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I notice that Kaplan (a reference book publisher) has just released one. When I get back to the USA, I'll buy it and give you my impression.

It's nice traveling with an iPad. I'm using it as my maps, guidebook, book to read, weather report, and lots more. I started a thread here about traveling with iPad maps.

Later,

Howard

 

[delabeaux]

Just something to help me learn the language as an adjunct to what I'm doing now.

I currently work in healthcare and thought this app would be good, but it appears that is not the case.

I have the Oxford Spanish-English dictionary, a few free Spanish apps, a point and touch Spanish app, and an app called Medical Spanish.

Anything that can further aid in learning Spanish, or Spanish in medicine would be useful.

Thanks!

~Bb

 

[Canadacow]

As a two year veteran of the App Store I can't begin to explain how much the review system is abused.

In another thread someone did some research and correctly pointed out that I accused a competitor app of engaging in payola (i.e, paying or handing out free copies in exchange for 5 star reviews.) Maybe this was cheap of me do so, but it was also blatantly clear that my competitor was making a last-ditch effort on the part of this developer to recover from 600 1 star reviews out of 800 total reviews.

You see, generally the number of written reviews will be in proportion to the number of anonymous reviews. When this is out of whack, it's clear something is amiss. Too many anonymous five star reviews and it's payola going on. Too many one star reviews and more than likely there's something the software does that really, really annoys people.

And here's where that "trialware" in some cases would really make sense. Within this niche category of apps there are presently four different developers offering versions.

This is a hard category of software to write (it's not just another to-do list app!) And so I'll fairly say that there are only two serious competitors in this niche. The other two are fine examples of how to do a half-a$$ job. And that's just it. More than likely people will try out one of the two apps that just don't have it figured out completely and give up on the others in the store.

Trialware in many respects would eliminate this problem. One could quickly wade through the cruft and find the good apps within their niche. Payola to pad rankings would quickly become a pointless endevour. Sure trial periods would be abused, but this is the tradeoff to improve the App Store review process.

 

[Howard9999]

According to Wired, "Apple CEO Steve Jobs has described the App Store as a 'curated platform' that is regulated to ensure a high quality, secure experience for customers."

I wish they would make the App Store's rating process a bit harder for a determined developer to game. I discovered that MAVRO, the company with the bad medical Spanish app, had somehow had my review of their app removed from the App store.

It appears that Apple's iTunes uses a crowd source algorithm to remove reviews, yet has no human beings involved in the process and no checks to assure that a determined developer with sock puppet accounts cannot manipulate the review process.

I resubmitted the review and it was posted again almost immediately. Let's see how long it stays there.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/apple-review-guidelines/#ixzz0z5Qj8VHM​

 

[Bennettb]

Most of the apps I've bought are becuse of comments on the forum or from review sources other than the app store. this works pretty well.

 

[Superbike81]

Old thread.

But yeah, if you guys think the AppStore comments are bad, try reading through YouTube video comments. You will read some of the most uneducated, racist, hate-filled, illogical comments you will ever see.