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.
I think it would be helpful if F-Droid had some sort of ranking system for apps (not the 5 stars thing but rather some sort of like/dislike good or bad). We can sort apps based on ranking or better make a category of highest ranked apps to give a good chance for new developed apps.
I’m pretty sure that when a user give an app a like or dislike he/she realizes that his/her click will be recorded just to make that like counter change.
Many users complain about how F-Droid doesn’t have a ranking system and how does that make good apps and games hidden deep into the repo.
If F-Droid doesn’t really want to add ranking system.
I think that position of no user accounts is a mistake. Repositories should be able to request authentication, for situations like this. Without it, there is no feasible mechanism for adding reviews.
Consider the Open Desktop Review Standard utilized by KDE and GNOME – it has anonymous reviews that cannot be modified or deleted when the review client closes, and any moderation requests go to the small team managing it:
That’s the only possible model currently. Any anonymous system is necessarily centralised and brittle.
How about adding some sort of a test that only humans can pass in order to post reviews and avoid bots. Something like CAPATCHA.
I don’t know if it’s possible to verify a user only once when they install the client. but verifying users every time they post is better than nothing.