New Connect website Reviews includes ratings with no text - Useless Noise IMO

Here you go (I only see it on the web): 

We will have to agree to disagree.

I honestly don't understand what your position is on including ratings with no text on the website.

I understand that ratings with no text are not useful to the dev.  Well, a 4 or 5 star rating gives us feedback that we're doing okay/great.  1 to 3 star ratings are a bummer because we don't know why they rated low.

But how is showing any rating without text useful to the dev or the user looking for an app to download?

And I honestly don't understand why it bothers you.

makes it harder for users to see useful reviews with text.

makes it harder for me to respond to reviews.  Now I have to scroll through a bunch of useless ratings

A series of 5 star review with no text is not "useful" to users?  I doubt many users go past the first page, or even all the way through the first page,

A user already has a fine sense of the star ratings at the top of the app description and in the list of apps.  When I click on Reviews, I only want to read what people have to say.  This is how every other rating system that I'm aware of works.  No other system includes the simple ratings in the Reviews section.

I think some of this depends on what you want in reviews vs contact developer vs a showcase thread.

I point users to contact developer or the showcase thread vs using reviews for a question or even a bug, as in reviews, it's often very unclear what device/fw is involved etc.  With the other methods, I can ask questions, maybe ask for a picture of what the user sees. etc, and can usually get them happy and running in a short time.  That of course might lead to a good review!

That way reviews aren't cluttered by something that only 1 of 500 users have seen or is confused about.  Therefore I don't mind the reviews with no text, unless it's a 1 star, as that makes it clear the user didn't read the beginning of the app description....

To each his own, but as I've said I don't mind this change at all.

jim_m_58 said:

Yes, without a doubt it's useful. This way you can report 1-star reviews  that say nothing.  There was no way to do that before.

???

There's no requirement to write a review (to add text).

I'd be surprised Garmin would delete 1 star reviews with no text.

jim_m_58 said:

A series of 5 star review with no text is not "useful" to users?  I doubt many users go past the first page, or even all the way through the first page,

The stars represent a "rating" (not a "review").

A series of empty reviews is useless to users.

The overall rating is more useful. If users dig into to looking at reviews, they want to read details.

jim_m_58 said:

I think some of this depends on what you want in reviews vs contact developer vs a showcase thread.

Not really. Reviews are not an appropriate place for help or bug reports (that's what the "contact developer" link is for).

If bugs are fixed, than reporting them in the reviews is not useful to users long term.