I got feedback today from Google Play support acknowledging my complaints about that quick-rating widget:
Thank you for contacting the Google Play developer support team. I > sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. > > We really appreciate your thoughtful feedback, and we'll be sure to take > your thoughts into consideration as we work to improve Google Play. > > Thanks for your understanding and continued support! > Fingers crossed that this issue will get sorted out soon :-) On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 1:33:59 PM UTC-6, Nobu Games wrote: > > I'm still far from being top or even mid-tier in terms of app downloads > but this morning I also got my first 2-star mystery rating for a paid app > of mine - no comment and no Google+ name I could respond to. That didn't > happen to me so far since most users tried the free version first and then > decided to buy afterward. > > This wouldn't have bothered me that much but nevertheless I wanted to see > for myself how that "recommendation rating widget" looks like on my phone. > So I opened the Google Play store app and scrolled down the lengthy front > page with several swipe movements. And I suddenly saw that an image was > flashing and quickly changing to "1 star". I accidentally rated some random > app while swiping the screen. > > This bug 100% reproducible: > > 1. Touch one of the stars > 2. Move your finger up or down outside the recommendation box > 3. Lift finger > 4. App gets rated > > This can happen quickly and accidentally while scrolling down the screen. > Since I am right-handed (as the majority of people), my thumb naturally > reaches to the left side of the screen, where the worse rating options are > (1 and 2 stars). I bet this happens thousands of times every day without > people even realizing what they just did. I sent a bug report to Google > Play support about that issue. > > I also have to agree that the phrasing of the recommendation is completely > misleading. If it weren't for this thread here I would have thought that > I'd be rating recommendations and not apps. If I were asked to rate my > favorite "scanner app" with the question "rate this item to get > recommendations", I would give that recommendation a bad rating because I > am already 100% happy with my scanner app and I'm absolutely not interested > in more apps like that. I guess something along these lines may have > happened with my paid app this morning. > > Google Play really has to fix that as quick as possible. This new > recommendation widget is a substantial change in the overall rating system > Google had no experience with before. Stuff like that should be extensively > tested before put into production mode. Real users should have been > observed while interacting with that new widget. Real users should have > been asked how they interpret the meaning of that new feature. To make that > feature more useful it should be either decoupled from recommendations and > be absolutely straightforward: "Do you like this app? Rate it". If > recommendations are more important than that then it should be a simple > thumbs up / thumbs down and the result must not affect the rating of the > recommended app. > > > On Friday, December 27, 2013 4:37:06 AM UTC-6, Tolriq wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> My app rating is being hijacked by competitors and I don't know what to >> do :( >> I've tried to contact Google but there's no category for that and they >> don't answer from the other category contact :( >> >> My app is 4.9 rating since a very very very long time and all very very >> few bad rating always had comments. >> Since 14 days I start to have lot's of 1 or 2 stars rating without any >> comments and without having released a new version or the app having >> problems. >> There's still the same amount of 4 / 5 star rating coming every day. >> >> This graph for the 6 last months from Play Store console : >> http://postimg.org/image/i2bpm94vt/ shows the problem clearly and proves >> without a doubt the hijacking action :( >> >> What are the possible actions against that ? >> This is a shame that years of work can be attacked so easily :( >> >> How to contact some Google representative to have this investigated ? >> >> Regards, >> Tolriq >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
