Excellent!

WordPress, please get rid of this silly ‘leave a comment with your rating’ bullying.

Bullying? Sorry and I mean this sincerely: you think that a review without words has any meaning…? ??

Absolutely. A star review can be separate of the text review. The star review is an expression of favor toward a plugin liked or disliked and it forms an indication of usability to prospective users. By usability I mean that the plugin works as billed.

The text review should be optional for those who wish to justify their condemnation or support of a plugin.

Here is a question: are reviews left less often now than they were before WordPress introduced this silly (my opnion) ‘leave a comment to review’ system? I wager fewer plugins are being graded now than they were.

How many non English speakers feel unable to comment?

How many WordPress users find it harder to decide on one plugin over another because they cannot visually deduce from the star rating whether a plugin works?

When I want to know that a plugin works I look in the support forum for that plugin and I check the number of stars the plugin has been awarded. I don’t look at text reviews.

When I use the WordPress admin panel to install a plugin, I need a quick way to decide which plugins to investigate for suitability to the sites I develop. Where do you think that quick overview comes from? I don’t see a button to toggle plugin reviews in that screen.

I’m not attacking you personally. I know you need to ask the question. I just find it so annoying that every time I want to grade a plugin that I must also leave a comment whether it is a valuable comment or not. I guess most text reviews left at WP are beginning to look spammy because of this coercion to leave a comment with a star grade.

Do you shop through Amazon? Do you leave product reviews? What stops people clicking the link in the follow up email Amazon sends to request they review a product? Could it be that they can’t simply click like/not as billed/dislike without leaving a long winded or spammy text review?

As it happens, I love SEO Ultimate. The only reason I’ve left a comment is so I can nudge the developer into carrying on with development. A cheeky method I know, but I believe it warrants my time. I hope the developer does too.

Lee ??

Wow. That’s a thoughtful reply. That really make me glad! Thanks!

I’m not attacking you personally. I know you need to ask the question.

That’s good and I understand that. It would be a short conversation otherwise, as I am a forum moderator. ??

The reason I’m glad is that there are a lot of reviews here. Some are sadly by people attempting to game the system with sock puppet reviews or just plain abusive. Most reviews are very good but the few bad ones are a pain to deal with.

Absolutely. A star review can be separate of the text review.

This is true but not here.

The goal in the review section as I understand it (and I do) is to provide feedback to the plugin or theme author. It’s also a way of other users gauging the utility of the plugin or theme.

Bad reviews, meaning a user is unhappy without providing details or posting a support request, gives the plugin or theme author a chance to reply well. Most do reply well.

Just as you could not convey why you don’t like being required to leave a comment in a few words it’s also true that you really can’t convey a review with just a star rating.

That’s why the review section will not let you post a review without some verbiage.

The text review should be optional for those who wish to justify their condemnation or support of a plugin.

See above. ?? If someone just left a review with just one word then that’s not a review. Also people have left condemnation without an explanation. Repeatedly. Those get treated as any other abusive post here.

Here is a question: are reviews left less often now than they were before WordPress introduced this silly (my opnion) ‘leave a comment to review’ system? I wager fewer plugins are being graded now than they were.

If someone’s not willing to leave a comment then that “review” isn’t a review at all. In a review section that’s silly too. If that means that fewer plugins are being graded then that’s a good thing. A rating without context is just not useful.

This isn’t Amazon and no one is shopping for anything that costs them money. But installing and trying a plugin or theme does cost the user time and these reviews can help that user make better decisions.

I understand the need to prevent spam. Totally agree that something needs to be done to stamp out spam and to deter gaming. Whether a text review is forced or not, no one can leave a review or star grade without first having a WordPress account so perhaps the initial WP account creation needs to be made more spam proof.

How about two systems:

1) a text review and star system as we now have, and
2) a separate grading system that allows plugin users to quickly tick whether or not they like a plugin (without a compelled text review), as we used to have.

Implemented with a captcha or with email confirmation, I think this would work well. It would give non English speakers a means to leave feedback, it would provide plugin developers a quick way to assess satisfaction, it would allow plugin end users a fast way to decide whether to try a plugin or not and it would allow text reviews to be left when someone wishes to leave one (along with a useful grade for the developer to assess).

Maybe WordPress could canvass for opinions from plugin developers and WordPress site owners. I know which way my vote will go ??