Allow user to rate app.
In addition, show number of ratings and average rating of the app. Also allow other users to see comments. I want to get away from play store,but It is much harder on fdroid to find out which open source app is better than other open-source app.
Another view like most downloaded app will help new users to onboard faster, as they can find all good app they need. Instead of trying of 5 apps and then picking one, and deleting rest 4 of them.
Wouldnāt that be the beginning of bias monopolies ?
I guess good timing, I have been working on an open reviews project: https://mangrove.reviews
It includes free license dataset, open api and a web app. Happy to adjust anything to suit the needs and host the data. What may be interesting is that the current setup does not require reviewers to create traditional accounts, which is nice for privacy and easy of use.
I think ability to review applications to help others find something useful is becoming a bigger need as we have more apps.
@Licaon_Kter Iāll check out the issue.
Interesting, thanks for the info.
You might or might not know that G-Droid, an alternative F-Droid client, lists both requests (Rating and comment) as its first two additional features.
Please have a look there.
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i actually donāt care so much for reviews on stores. the rating average does end up as a metric for a somewhat good ux or not, but not much beyond that. the reviews? theyāre too many to read, i rather just test the app.
no, i donāt think this system or the popularity contest would do f droid any good!
butā¦
mangrove is a neat idea! i hope you guys can give @keorn a chance. and it can eventually become a better rating system on its own ( some food for thought here cregox.net/rating and there To Build a Better Ballot )
andā¦
i do love to make notes for myself, to help me organize. and even better if theyāre shared with the developers. and i donāt care if they go public. they might help someone, if theyāre lucky.
just my 2 cents.
As an app developer i also think app reviews are a bit overrated 
. If you donāt bother your existing users to ask for reviews, all you get are from those hitting obscure bugs with one liner ādoesnāt workā āreviewsā instead of support requests where you could actually help them.
And from existing users it would also be worth more getting real feedback instead of 5 stars 
imho a useful metric would be what the OP kind of hinted atā¦ retention ratesā¦ if people install 5 apps and delete 4, it would be nice to know which once they kept. I know fdroid is a bit against install statisticsā¦ but imho having an app with 100k installations, but 1k users might be worse than having an app with 100 installs but 20 usersā¦ 
let people vote with their phoneās memory instead of stars 
From a userās perspective it is valuable to have an indicator how an app is perceived by others.
For instance, if searching for a note taking app you get dozens of apps in the search results. I am not even sure how they are filtered and sorted: The results on my phone and the website are way different to start with.
Anyway, my workflow is: Check out the description briefly, check the screenshots, permissions and update frequency. Maybe check out their repository. Then, I install a few apps, try them out and stick with one.
For me itās not a big issue, I have my go to apps for each area but for a new users this can be overwhelming and an instant turn off. Still, it would help me find new apps that could replace current ones.
The questions is how and what kind of indication could be implemented in a privacy respecting mannerā¦
Wellā¦ better go ask ask Big Brother which app is better then?
No, who said that?
I guess it was implied by my support for metrics 
It might be possible to anonymous such retention stats easily, but not sure if not tracking individuals makes it less Big Brother-ly.
on a second thoughtā¦
i still like the instinct behind the idea of retention ratesā¦ trying to figure out some practical, automated, and easy way to facilitate finding apps that are generally useful.
but yeah, more than being some sort of tracking, itās some sort of summary and average, which when left unchecked will lead to the same issues as any metric, including abuse from the appsā¦ and simply implementing it as such (without any further planning) will probably trigger this path.
i honestly would be glad with just being able to easily take personal notes and reading randomly assigned notes from others. leave whatever kind of rating for later. making the random assignments really random in itself could be quite challenging enough and rewarding if done with careā¦ 
not sure what that means, but this got me thinking, the opposite would actually make senseā¦ instead of random notes for an app, you should see all notes/reviews of a user for all apps within a category.
Imho looking at a single review in isolation adds little value, but if you could look at all reviews of somebody who looked a 5 different apps before choosing one, that could be useful but I guess that is what review sites or curated app listings are for (that was basically my first thoughtā¦ if you check out X apps, and choose one, and write notesā¦ that sounds like a review blog to me )
yes, thatās another great idea @hpoul !
i would default the āall reviews by this userā to āorder by desc dateā, though. the category filter could be secondary.
theyāre also complimentary (rather than opposite). and, just a reminder, to be applied on mangrove.review actually (from @keorn on the op topic, hope she will read this).
when there are hundreds of notes, i need some criteria to only read 1 or 2. 3 at most. and if there are hundreds of criteria to choose from and filter that notes, i need yet another criteria to filter the criteria filters. and so onā¦
randomness is essential to our life and sanity.
and itās indeed a complex topic on its own. at this point itās easy to think itās about trust, because itās also trueā¦ but i deviateā¦
in practice, my suggestion to add random comments isnāt to do that exclusively. by all means, add smart filters and new ways to visualize the data. and keep creating them. thatās also essential.
the idea is that the default view is made simply by random assigned notes/comments. as random as possible.
(the best way i know to determine the best digital random results is to use local noiseā¦ but thatās going a too far for this topic. the default random function will work fine. eventually i want to see all random functions to do that as a standard in every machine, though. especially good and easy for new devices.)
is there any way to leave this topic open for indeterminate amount of time?
or rather, why are topics even closed in just 2 months (with no replies)?
perhaps i should start a new topic about thisā¦
I think I just disabled auto-closing here?
lol, okā¦ not quite what i had in mind (always trying to automate everything), but it works for me right now! 
I discovered f-droid during pandemic last year. So far my experience with f-droid have been pretty good. But i have a few complaints. The app function pretty well but UI is kind of outdated. I am fine with that because there are client like aurora-droid. But my main concern is the lack of rating & review system like we see in appstores like playstore,apple appstore etc. F-droid needs a basic rating&review system if it wants to be more palatable to the general user like us.