i still like the instinct behind the idea of retention rates… 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, it’s some sort of summary and average, which when left unchecked will lead to the same issues as any metric, including abuse from the apps… 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 care…
not sure what that means, but this got me thinking, the opposite would actually make sense… 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 thought… if you check out X apps, and choose one, and write notes… that sounds like a review blog to me )
i would default the “all reviews by this user” to “order by desc date”, though. the category filter could be secondary.
they’re 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 on…
randomness is essential to our life and sanity.
and it’s indeed a complex topic on its own. at this point it’s easy to think it’s about trust, because it’s also true… but i deviate…
in practice, my suggestion to add random comments isn’t to do that exclusively. by all means, add smart filters and new ways to visualize the data. and keep creating them. that’s 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 noise… but that’s 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.)
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.
It should be noted that the developers of these applications usually do so altruistically on a non-profit basis.
A rating system can lead to toxicity or simply undeserved negativity.
It’s not really necessary.
This is not the same as the apps of those other stores where they are commercial either directly or indirectly with a multitude of trackers and ads.
I’m not saying that there are no paid apps on F-Droid or that it’s wrong for it to be that way.
For inexpensive things, like apps, it usually takes less time and money to get it and try it yourself, than to read through reviews and decide which reviews and ratings can be trusted, which are fake pro or con reviews, or are by people who have completely different values in apps.
If it’s important to you, a web search for detailed reviews can sometimes be more efficient, and may even find discussions in this forum.
As someone who publishes to both F-Droid and Google Play, I can’t count the amount of times I feel regret for having spent any time coding because of certain people giving 1 star reviews on Google Play because one minor thing isn’t as they want and being extremely rude about it.
I understand ratings can help to give a better idea of what you’re going into, but the way it works on Google Play is EXTREMELY demotivating for developers like me.
One should read FaireMail/Netguard’s developer posts elsewhere on rating and fairness, it’s really sad.
I’m not saying everything should be “5 stars 'cause it’s free” but it should be judged in the context of FOSS. Everyone likes constructive criticism, but that’s hard to come by. Also it’s hard to come by the acceptance of stuff not being fixed/added every time one complains, as everyone work on what they like in the end.
I remember that fight now. But honestly, most stuffs on XDA go like that. When a user requests, and as mentioned dev goes haywire, it turns to much towards hatred and fiery words. I was have a hearty laugh out of it.
I still think F-Droid should require all users to click through a payment prompt, with a default value set by the developer, and the option to set it to 0.
I agree, and should cancel my F-Droid Liberapay until implemented., to encourage it. Although F-Droid is doing well on Liberapay now, I feel the reliance on donations, from day 1, has been a mistake. Implementing a payment system, with default prices set by developers (and small “tax” taken by F-Droid and processor friends), would be a great service, and big improvement over the “click to buy a coffee” links.
How is gnu Taler going BTW? I still can’t get anything over Tor from their repo.
but I guess that is what review sites or curated app listings are for 
(that was basically my first thought… if you check out X apps, and choose one, and write notes… that sounds like a review blog to me 
Although F-Droid is doing well on Liberapay now, I feel the reliance on donations, from day 1, has been a mistake. Implementing a payment system, with default prices set by developers (and small “tax” taken by F-Droid and processor friends), would be a great service, and big improvement over the “click to buy a coffee” links.