ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Niklas Wenzel <nikwen.developer@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rodney,

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my post.
I think I should have explained better what I wanted.

My point isn't to display a second rating like the unofficial app store
currently does. I think it is fine to display the arithmetical average in
the search results.
However, I'd vote for not using that as the only parameter for sorting. In
my opinion, the store should also consider the number of reviews an
application has to calculate its position in the search results.

The heart rating is described the following way in the FAQ of Brian's app
store:

The heart rating is similar to the star rating, but it rewards apps for
> having more good reivews. An app with more 5 star ratings will have a
> higher heart rating than an app with only a few 5 star ratings.
> Heart ratings are calculated from the star rating where a 5 star review is
> 1 heart point, 4 stars = 0.5 hears, 3 stars = 0 hears, 2 stars = -0.5
> hears, and 1 star = -1 hears.
> It is possible to have a negative heart rating.


I mentioned it to give an example of a value that could be used for sorting
the applications.
Indeed, it wouldn't change much for apps without any reviews besides the
fact that they will rank higher than apps with primarily negative reviews.

To give another example of a value that could be used for sorting, we could
have a look at the way Brian's app store calculates the average star
ratings:

The star rating is the Bayesian average of the star ratings that user give
> to an app when they leave a review. The Bayesian average allows apps with
> more reviews to rank better than apps with less reviews. The star rating
> can be between 1 and 5, where a 0 means that there have not been any
> reviews yet. For more information about the Bayesian average calculation,
> check out this article <http://fulmicoton.com/posts/bayesian_rating/>.


As pointed out in the article the description refers to, it makes sense to
use something else than the arithmetical average.
The store doesn't have to display that calculated value. It can still
display the arithmetical average. However, the search algorithm could be
smarter than it is today.

Cheers,
Niklas

2015-04-08 21:38 GMT+02:00 Rodney Dawes <rodney.dawes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> On Wed, 2015-04-08 at 21:23 +0200, Niklas Wenzel wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> >
> > I've recently been really unhappy with the order in which applications
> > appear in the Ubuntu Store.
> >
> >
> > Apparently, apps are currently only sorted by their star ratings.
> > However, when an app gets popular, users start to use the ratings
> > section as a way to request new features or to report bugs.
> > This often goes hand in hand with bad ratings and messages similar to
> > "Implement A and I'll give you 5 stars". As a result, most top-notch
> > applications are beaten by webapps whose owners give them a single 5
> > star rating.
>
> If people are using ratings/reviews as a means to demand features, then
> I think that is a separate problem that needs to be dealt with properly.
> IMO, such behavior would be out of line with the Ubuntu CoC, so we
> should probably look into ways in how we can improve how users use
> ratings/reviews, and keep people from doing this. Perhaps a way for
> developers to flag problem reviews in the developer portal, would be
> helpful here.
>
>
> > This is exactly the reason why one cannot find Dekko and Telegram in
> > the communication category easily.
> >
> >
> > In my opinion, such an app with a single 5 star rating should never be
> > shown above an app with hundreds of reviews and an average rating of
> > 4.x.
>
> The converse problem is also true however. Apps with no ratings at all,
> will also continue be difficult to find, as they'll always end up at the
> bottom of the list, if sorted by average rating.
>
> > Brian Douglass has recently introduced an additional "heart rating" in
> > his appstore [1] which does the job very well in my opinion.
> >
> >
> > Would it be possible to use a similar approach in the official Ubuntu
> > Store scope?
>
> I think having two ways of rating the same thing will only complicate
> matters, and provide a poor UX for our users, so it is not something
> which I would like to see implemented. I think we should find better
> ways of solving the social problems, that isn't just adding more ways of
> allowing people say that they like or dislike something.
>
>
>