Hi, recently I got some 1-start reviews for my add-on without any comment/explanation as to the reason for the low rating. Is it possible to challenge these kind of reviews (they don’t have the “Flag” action next to them) ?
Bumping this, still want to understand if there’s a way to remove these kind of “reviews” from the addon page.
Case in point: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/exify/reviews/
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I understand your frustration (and so do many other extension developers, I guess).
I have no idea of what Mozilla’s general policy or procedures for this is, or if there actually are any specific. But long time ago I had a 1-star review removed from my browser extension (xIFr, another EXIF-viewer)…
The user had written a comment to the 1-star review saying the extension “didn’t work at all” (or something like that). I responded with a request for more details on how he tested, and mentioned that (by design) no extensions work on amo-pages in case that was where he tested. He never reacted to my request for more information, and I think I reported it somehow (But I don’t remember if I was able to “flag it” somehow or just wrote in this forum).
After some time the 1-star review disappeared. But I don’t know for sure if it was Mozilla or the user himself that removed the review.
In your case no comments are given with the 1-star reviews, and I don’t think you can respond to reviews if no comment was added by the reviewer(?).
If Mozilla are reading this, maybe make commenting obligatory on 1-star reviews, and/or always make it possible to respond to reviews, even if no comment was given by the reviewer?
For some reason, and maybe it’s just an oversight, there’s no way to interact with reviews that don’t include a comment.
This is mostly crucial for addons that don’t have much reviews to begin with, and every low-star review significantly affects the average.
In addition, if no comments are provided I really have no way to address the issue (given that there is a real issue).
Making the comment mandatory (at least for lower ratings) can be one of the solutions.
The spammer would not delete his comment anyway. Probably Mozilla removed it.
Mozilla could do two things to stop bad reviews.
- Make the comment as requirement. You can add a star after writing a pretty long review (100 words or more)
- Do not let new user (who does not set up AMO profile correctly (Firefox user 1234567)) review any add-ons!
What do you think of this add-on reviews?
Thanks for bringing this up to discussion.
I understand your frustration towards the uncommented 1-star reviews @thesilentman. However, controlling what kind of reviews (outside of harassment, targeted review bombing etc) users are allowed to share is a challenging balance to find.
From a developer’s perspective, I get that getting a 1-star review with no way to know what to fix or improve is frustrating. But it’s also the reality that even the best extensions don’t fit everyone’s taste. When it’s just one or two 1-stars without comments, I think the best way is just to ignore them.
Your extension has a great rating and a couple of great written reviews so you can be proud of those!
I’ll note these ideas from both of you down and bring them up to the discussion with the team in the future. Thanks for sharing them!
What do you think of this add-on reviews?
@waxxed, thanks for flagging this, for these kind of clear review bombing cases we’ll step in and fix it. I’ve passed it on to our team.