App Store Reviews are Busted
3 points by outervale
3 points by outervale
Slightly tangental, but nowadays I rarely catch myself looking at the reviews when trying to evaluate whether I should try out an app. I almost always look at the App Privacy section to see what kind of data the app wants to be able to access to judge whether it is decent or not.
I don't think this is specific to App stores, but just reviews in general everywhere on the internet to be honest. The star rating system is just not a good fit. IMDB and rotten tomatoes are examples where the increased granularity improves this situation. For example a 10/10 on IMDB is unheard of, and it's commonly accepted that a 7-8/10 is a fantastic score.
IMO aggregated user ratings are very hit-or-miss for anything beyond "is this terrible or not?". Something that is very niche is likely to have high ratings because fans are the only ones discussing it online. I'd rather read a review from a reviewer whose tastes are similar to mine instead of aggregating the opinions of thousands of people.