

It's time to take into account the dates on the Android app average rating - fesja
https://medium.com/p/96ab0957e87e

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liotier
Just group by version. Time-based decay might work too but linking a rating to
a specific version (maybe only a major version - there are pro & cons) has
more meaning.

~~~
masklinn
> linking a rating to a specific version (maybe only a major version - there
> are pro & cons) has more meaning.

The major issue there is that new versions suddenly reset ratings entirely.
Using e.g. an exponential decay of history model means the weight of older
ratings falls, but it remains as a trail in the overall rating.

~~~
cheeaun
The iOS App Store does that. It shows 'Current version' and 'All versions'
(toggleable between both).

~~~
knff
The Play store (version 4.3.11) does this too, actually. There's an options
dropdown under All Reviews that lets you filter by only the current version
and/or your device.

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Imagenuity
The date should not only be taken into account for app RATING, but for app
RANKING. I see many apps that haven't been updated in over two years that are
ranked higher (due to more downloads) than current releases similarly or
higher rated with fewer downloads. I would favor an time-based exponential
decay type of factoring of ranking.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_decay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_decay))

~~~
TheCraiggers
Wouldn't that just favor apps that push trivial updates once a week that
either do nothing, or just add bloat to software that already fulfilled its
purpose quite well?

Personally, I like the idea that if I release an app that's actually feature
complete and relatively free of bugs, it should be favorably ranked and not
biased against due to it not being "new".

A great example of this is ConnectBot, which is a great ssh client for
android. I can't remember if I've ever seen an update for it in the years I've
been using it. Does this mean it should be ranked lower than JuiceSSH just
because Juice is newer / has updated about once a month since it released? I'd
say no.

Then again, I'm not a fan of the proposal of TFA for this same reason.
Frankly, I think the store already gives us the tools to make our own decision
by letting us filter by our device and by the current version.

~~~
gte910h
You don't have to do things stupidly.

You can say "Older than X, decay", "has feature Y, decay". This is the company
that makes pagerank, I'm confident they could come up with a useful ranking
and rating algorithm

~~~
TheCraiggers
True that Google came up with PageRank, and have some smart people thinking up
ways to rank things I may want.

It's also true that as long as PageRank has been around, there have been
people exploiting how it works for their own personal gain. See: My "update
every week to boost my score" example above.

Personally, I sort of like the thought that if somebody releases a crap app
and gets a bunch of 1-star ratings they are likely going to stick for awhile.
Harsh, I know, but it does give companies some incentive to get it mostly
right at first.

Speaking of, something I'd like to see is a developer ranking. Even something
so simple as averaging all their apps' ratings would be helpful. Done right,
it would help identify those soundalike apps, too.

~~~
droidist2
>Personally, I sort of like the thought that if somebody releases a crap app
and gets a bunch of 1-star ratings they are likely going to stick for awhile.
Harsh, I know, but it does give companies some incentive to get it mostly
right at first.

>Speaking of, something I'd like to see is a developer ranking.

It would discourage releasing early and often, something that's hard enough to
do already. I think I'm finally starting to get it through my head/ego that I
need to just say "good enough is good enough, release it into the world and
get feedback instead of spending 3 more months 'perfecting' it." Knowing a
single app with bad ratings in the beginning could bring me down for years
would just be another excuse not to ship.

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awjr
Amazon does a similar thing to seller ratings: [https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/G/01/sellerfe...](https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/G/01/sellerfeedback/time-weighted-graph-2._V389181558_.png)
.

Ratings have an initial slow impact (this is more to do with getting the goods
to the user and allowing the returns process to run it's course) then the
feedback has a 100% affect that tails off over a year or two.

A similar approach could be used by google.

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uwemaurer
You can see a graph of the ratings over time here:

[http://www.appbrain.com/app/touristeye-travel-
guide/com.tour...](http://www.appbrain.com/app/touristeye-travel-
guide/com.touristeye)

(in the "Changelog" tab)

~~~
fesja
thanks!

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cyphax
Seems like common sense to me? If I want to know if an application is any
good, I look at the ratings and if it has a lot of good ratings, I look at the
latest comments to make sure that the lower ratings are for older versions.

Surely it'd be a bit more convenient for Google to take versions of apps into
account, and additionally devices, too, if they can (a lot of times an app
will be okay for most devices, but users of a certain device, different from
my own, might have troubles), but it's -- in my experience -- not too much of
a hassle.

~~~
sjwalter
You can filter reviews by device for devices you own. See:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.worldiety.a...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.worldiety.athentech.perfectlyclear),
for instance. Check out the reviews section. Click on it to expand and notice
the reviews filters.

~~~
cyphax
That is awesome, thanks! I think in my situation I'm better off not using that
filter, as I don't have a phone that lots of people seem to have. :D And they
have a filter for newest version, too. Maybe they should mark reviews that
aren't for the latest version, perhaps by changing the font color to something
a little lighter. (It does super suck that you need Google+ if you want to
write a review though, they force that on us, so I've never written a review
myself nor will I.)

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eksith
A version/ratings graph might really help here. That will also dissuade devs
from frequently releasing updates to hide the fact that their product is sub-
par. If you have a whole bunch of recent releases with a handful of early
5-star ratings that are glowing with praise, something is fishy.

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daphneokeefe
Ratings trends over time can go in the other direction too. I got bit by an
update the other day on a mature and very popular app which just released a
tragically flawed update. I over confidently accepted the update and then
started reading the latest reviews which we're shouting in all caps not to get
this update.

And what you said about excluding ppl who aren't on G+.

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randartie
I think at a very least, votes older than a certain time should not be counted
unless a new version has not been released.

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ollybee
A well known tor hidden service weights customer feedback by age, spend
history volume, and variety of orders.

I think this would work well for android apps. you might want to change spend
history for number of apps downloaded but with higher rating for paid app
downloads.

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samsaga2
The problem is not the average rating. The problem is the faked ratings. I
think it's not normal that a lot of ios applications has five starts. It
cannot be that a new app that anybody knows about it has a lot of positive
comments.

~~~
fesja
just received an email from
[http://www.androidrate.com/](http://www.androidrate.com/) offering "Boost
your app with 5 star ratings and positive reviews". Yes, Google should ban
them.

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k3n
It's also time to take into account those who don't have a G+ profile...

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pbreit
Pretty much all ratings should be on some sort of rolling average based on
time and or quantity.

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coin
I refuse to up vote any medium.com post until they stop disabling pinchzoom on
mobile devices.

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coob
The iOS app store weights by version, I'm not sure which is preferable.

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Karunamon
FTA: _We don’t have a bad average rating (3.98 with almost 2.900 ratings), but
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t reflect the quality of the last version we
launched._

Really? The whole thesis of this article is that app ratings are broken
because you have a 4 out of 5?

~~~
fesja
no, the idea for the article comes from the changes in iOS7 that have improved
the number of our downloads. So it affects all apps that started a few years
ago.

But it's also true that I'm a perfectionist myself, so if we have spent
thousands of hours on the app, I want it to have the fair rating. And with the
current algorithm it hasn't.

~~~
madeofpalk
IIRC, iOS has grouped ratings by version (as show latest by default) for
longer than iOS 7. I believe it was introduced in like iOS 4 or 5?

