User leaving only bad reivews

It’s acceptable behaviour for the review system on www.ads-software.com. Reviews are just there to voice someone’s experience to the theme developer/ author. That is what happened.

Thanks for the reply, Andrew.

I personally feel like there should be some guidelines on reviews.

Contact Form 7, as an example of a popular plugin, has 583 5 star reviews right now. If 1,000 people got together and decided to each write a single 1 star review for the plugin. It would take the plugin down.

That would hurt the community and the plugin author. It would do no good at all, yet that behavior would be allowed.

As a solution, I would recommend reviews star rating be weighted by the length of time the user has been registered. Star rating should also only be valid for 1 or perhaps 2 years, not forever.

Thanks,
Scott

It would take the plugin down.

That would hurt the community and the plugin author. It would do no good at all, yet that behavior would be allowed.

It doesn’t hurt the community and it certainly doesn’t hurt the plugin author. Nor does it take the plugin down. The community wants unvarnished feedback from users even the ones who leave “Plugin. Doesn’t work. 1 star.”

The reviews are feedback and plugin authors do have the ability to reply well and that counts much more than any 1 star review.

Here’s an example of an author or contributor “responding well”.

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/horrible-plugin-and-i-cant-deactivate-it?replies=4

See the initial review? It’s not even really about the plugin per se. The user got that plugin due to it being bundled with a commercial theme. The customization problem the user has is with the theme. That problem really doesn’t have much to do with the plugin.

How did the author reply? Very well. ??

Granted, Modern Tribe is a whole team but their replies are always a great example of a) being conciliatory and b) seeks a conversation to improve their plugin and the user experience.

The moderators do prune abusive reviews. People losing their cool in EPIC profanity laden rants will usually do it. Also when someone games the reviews system against or for a plugin then that gets caught and dealt with.

A user who leaves many 1 star reviews that are not helpful, those count too and are also feedback.

It’s not our place to say that someone’s review wasn’t legitimate. Moderators have better ways of exploring that if it is the case.

Thanks for the comments Jan and Andrew! You both bring up interesting points.

May I ask what you think about the idea of star ratings only being valid for either a time period or per major version release? This is how Google Play handles reviews.

Thanks,
Scott

I think that reviews are less about bugs with the plugins/ themes and more about general integration issues. I think Jan’s case is more common.

Thanks Andrew.

So, I tried to help the user that left me a 2 star rating. They changed their rating to a 1 star. Perhaps I am looking at this from the wrong perspective, but that doesn’t seem very legitimate to me.

Thanks,
Scott

Scott,

why do people need to go too the subforum of the plugin? How many authors bother to check it?

When I test a plugin, if it doesn’t work, I deactivate and delete then move to another similar plugin and repeat until I have a plugin I like.