These sound like the same reasons people give for why the model for most ratings platform are broken - The reviews are not moderated closely for value, and objective, careful research is lost on most mainstream consumers. I have a love/ hate relationship with reviews on Amazon, Yelp, and the App store for this very reason. You can't look at the overall star rating, you have to really dig in to sift out the mostly useless reviews.
True. This just bothered me a lot recently because the ratings are also used for the ranking of your apps. That's not that case everywhere. Plus, at sites like Amazon you can reply to feedback if I'm not mistaken.
Actually, yes you are right about the 'reply' function on Amazon. Apologies. I think I mostly have problems with Yelp. They require business owners to have a paying account in order to respond. It fosters an unbalanced power dynamic that is left unchecked, since moderation there only serves the purpose of Yelp itself, rather than quality user generated content.
