Repo rating system: 5 stars or binary ratings?


As I have said previously, I always rate a 5. That way the guy who ported it is happy that someone, somewhere, thought his port was awesome. It's just a nice thing I do.

D.
If everyone did like you we'll end up with all applications (crappy ones and good ones) having the same rating. It's as pointless as the guy who puts 1 to everything.
Not true - my strategy makes people feel good.

D.
only the people who post applications.

Not the end users who care about finding good apps among 900+ applications in the repo.
 
I'd rather see

:blink: Horrible - -_- Meh - :) Good - :D Great - B) Gold

Stop giving things 5 stars unless it's polished and perfect...... and there are only 3 of those.
 
Could do the old 'nag screen' (or implement it in a less naggy way), so after playing your game for at least X minutes (10 maybe?) or after a certain event in your game (getting a score over X maybe), then bring up a game dialog page saying:

"If you enjoy playing <game name> your rating/comments would really help and inspire me!

[sure]                 [Not now]             [Never]"

Sure would bring up a web page (or web view within the application) that goes directly to the rating page (and never ask the user again), now now will do nothing but ask the user next time, and never ask the user again does nothing and never bothers the user again. I don't know how possible it is to take the user directly to the rating page, and find their default browser etc. but I can confirm that adding these screens to titles I've released on iPhone/Android has a positive correlation with getting more ratings (to be honest, generally more positive ratings, as the timing of the events is designed to mainly be seen by users who are enjoying/playing a lot of the game so will therefore likely find it good).
 
You need to be logged in to vote... but you could alert when the application is closed and jump into the repo.

It's a UX nightmare tho. asking to vote, asking for username and password and confirming the vote :)

Could be built into the firmware to ask when you dismount a PND?
 
I'd rather see

:blink: Horrible - -_- Meh - :) Good - :D Great - B) Gold


Stop giving things 5 stars unless it's polished and perfect...... and there are only 3 of those.
That's more or less the proposal I made quite some times ago :p

And I'll give 5 stars to whatever I see fit. For example, I know that the Freespace 1 & 2 portages still have some small quirks here and there. But since I've dreamt about playing those on pandora and they work, I've rated them 5 stars almost immediately.
 
You need to be logged in to vote... but you could alert when the application is closed and jump into the repo.


It's a UX nightmare tho. asking to vote, asking for username and password and confirming the vote :)

Could be built into the firmware to ask when you dismount a PND?
One option would be to be able to go to a URL, something like:

repo.openpandora.org?rate&app_id=minesweeper.pro

Which would then go directly to a rate/comment page for the given application, on the page as well as taking comment/rating it can have a username/password field (if the user is already logged in, and browser remembers them, perhaps auto fill the username and just prompt for password to verify).

I do kind of feel it would be a much nicer end user experience if instead of loading up a separate browser, a minimal browser overlay could pop up over the game to allow the rating to take place (kind of like Facebook log in does on iOS/Android games), although the amount of work required for all these ideas just keeps going up ;)
 
I have to say that I actually really dislike the idea of having a game prompt you to rate it like that.    

That being said if you were going to do it,  I'd be checking for an API key in the PNDManager appdata, and using that to submit a rating directly if it exists.

Actually...    I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to store the repo API key in a central location anyway (/media/SDCARD/pandora/config perhaps? or even somewhere in the /home/username folder on the NAND)  and provide a program in firmware that provides an easy way to retrieve it and store it.  Then any app that needs to use it could look for it in that one central location,  or trigger the program to fetch it if need be...

Just a thought anyway...

- Neelix
 
I don't like nag screens in software, it is just annoying. A better solution would be to:

1) make it easier to put your repo API key in PNDManager so you can rate from PNDManager (it is already possible but too hard for most users);

2) have another screen or sort key in PNDManager to easily see which PNDs you recently downloaded and didn't rate yet.

Now when you try something new, you basically have to remember you tried it, then go to the repo website (something you don't typically do on your Pandora but on another device), search for the right PND, make sure you are logged in, and rate it. Too many steps, too hard to do unless you're really motivated to go and rate something. It would be much nicer if I could just check "most recently downloaded unrated PNDs" directly in PNDManager, and rate them directly. Even better:

3) make it possible to rate a PND off-line in PNDManager, and auto-upload the ratings the next time you sync.
 
Great ideas, especially 2) would've helped me massively.


I'd also like a function to find recent comments for PNDs I downloaded. I regular browse for them.
 
Wow this is why there hasn't been any changes, the opinion on the best way to rate is so diverse.

Some suggestions have been quite good though like easier way to add repo api key to pnd manager, show your unrated apps (in pnd manager and repo) though getting people to download apps logged in (in order to log against user) would be difficult.

Anyway maybe one day there will be a general consensus / agreement on rating :rolleyes:
 
I personally never use PNDmanager.

Anyway, the high ratings are often due to people not bothering to take the time to rate on apps they found mediocre or were forgettable. If rating - and looking at apps you've downloaded - was easier to do (say, browser add-on or integrated to firmware), it would be easier to get more ratings (both good and bad, but more of the latter probably). A very good idea to encourage this would be to let users be able to rate without going onto the page of the software. A problem with having rating on the Pandora is that while it eliminates one step, it adds another - most users don't have their wi-fi on all the time (or it isn't even working altogether).
 
I think it would already help if you didn't have a separate login for the repository. 
 
I have to say that PND Manager is dog-slow on a CC pandora - it doesn't smoothly scroll, it jerks and jumps about and is plain unresponsive whenever stuff gets written to the SD card.

It'd be nice to have a skinnable, more fluid experience - that would really do the job for me.

And I'd certainly rate it a 5.

D.
 
I was under the assumption that I had to be logged-in to download .pnds from The Repo in the first place, but I just tried it in another browser (and on another computer) and ANYONE can download anything (from the Repo), so tracking or reminding people to vote may not even help?  I was going to suggest a less intrusive option, where the Repo could be configured to "PM" a member just as a reminder of sorts (after a week or so?) to give a rating for downloaded software, but as it currently works, I'm not sure if that'd help...

Edit1:  As for the current rating system (five stars).  I personally think that it's fine.  One star essentially is a "2" on a 1-10 scale.  A binary scale would also be fine, but I wouldn't suggest anything simpler.  Like a "thumbs-up/thumbs-down" type of scale would get a "thumbs-down" from me.   :D

Edit2:  I guess my suggestion(s) may not be as clear as I intended.  I'm all for a "scalable" rating system - be they "stars" or a range of numbers... if you mean strictly a "binary" one like a yes/no, good/bad (only TWO options), then  that's not ideal to me - sorry for the confusion.
 
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