All 1 and 2 star reviews have been deleted for AdBlock Plus

[Foxinabox]

I just noticed that as of March 20, 2016, every 1 and 2 star review has been deleted for AdBlock Plus on AMO (addons.mozilla.org). See https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

I'm pretty sure it had many 1 and 2 star reviews.

Is Mozilla now allowing add-on developers (or someone else) to delete all negative reviews? If not, what happened?

Deleting all bad reviews makes the reviews meaningless. It also destroys the integrity of AMO, and makes it an unreliable place to find extensions.

Does anyone have any details?

[Foxinabox]

A little bit of research has uncovered that AdBlock Plus had many 1 and 2 star reviews. In fact, over 150 1 and 2 star reviews for AdBlock Plus on AMO have now been deleted over the last 12 months alone.

[the-edmeister]

Looks fishy with no 1 or 2 star ratings. IMO, the biggest issue with User Reviews at AMO is that too many users mention support related issues and provide a low rating for something that should have been asked in a support forum. I looked thru the first 5 pages of reviews and saw no "support related" reviews at all which I find strange.

ABP is one of the few extensions that has its own support fora, so maybe someone cleared any review that was a call for support and not a real review?

.

[Foxinabox]

I thought that was a possibility too. But taking a look at the cached pages, it's clear that's not what happened. Non-support reviews were deleted from AMO. In fact, EVERY 1 and 2 star review for AdBlock Plus has been deleted.

Something very fishy is going on.

[Frank Lion]

Is Mozilla now allowing add-on developers (or someone else) to delete all negative reviews? If not, what happened?

No, only AMO staff can. Login there, click on the 'Report the review' button in the top right corner for any review and there are the reasons why reviews get deleted.

See, wasn't that hard, was it?

Then again, I don't think it's that hard to see the Support link on every extension/theme either, but still a certain proportion of users will ask questions or report bugs on the Reviews, or just be outright abusive.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... -time.html

[Aris]

The problems with reviews nowadays is the influence on users Apple and Google app stores have.
Many users still think they have to give 1-star ratings for developers getting notified about reviews. Apparently Google/Apple app stores don't inform developers about good/great 4/5 star reviews (haven't checked, because I have no app on those stores).

Very often reviews violate Mozillas review guidelines ( https://addons.mozilla.org/review_guide ) and get deleted for that. Old reviews don't get updated by users even, if newer add-on versions already fixed issues a user had or explained why things work how they work. In that case reviews can be deleted too.

[therube]

If only AMO can, then what, they out of the goodness of their heart decided to clean out those posts in the ABP reviews that were cruft, & in doing so, it just happened that all 1 & 2 star reviews were excised?

Like they don't have enough to do without cherry picking reviews for 1 particular extension?

PS: The number of 3-star reviews dropped, between the cached page (18) & current (16). (4 & 5 star numbers are the same.)


(Can't say I've ever looked at "star ratings", nor am I a "member" of AMO.)

[Aris]

@therube

Once someone (or the developer) has reported an add-on review requires to be verified or deleted, the review gets added to a queue every AMO editor can look into. Nobody visits a particular add-ons page to search manually for specific reviews.


--------------


Look at this recent review for example. Anybody here under the impression it is valid?



Google translate

When a moment turns into a very very long time.
Which solution?
Especially that this module was instaled and disappeared alone!

Most likely this user has a problem with his Firefox or the connection to AMO servers failed in his country for some reason. Would anybody think this is a "valid review" (independent of being a review for ABP) that should not get deleted?

[kreemoweet]

Extension authors can request AMO to delete reviews for any number of valid reasons. Dunderheads who can't figure out how to use the extension, in spite of abundant pointers to help and instruction sources, frequently
badmouth an extension. Those reviews should be deleted, as they help no one and are an embarrassment to the author(s). There's a small army of creepy idealogues who give AdBlock Plus bad reviews, on AMO and elsewhere,
simply because ABP enables its users to use it in a way not in accord with their One True Way. Those reviews should also be deleted. There is nothing surprising at all in some extensions not having any valid 1 and 2 - star reviews
simply because they do exactly what they say, and do it well. The reviews at AMO should not be regarded as some sort of unmoderated comment section that all too commonly pollute the internet.

[Omega X]

The problems with reviews nowadays is the influence on users Apple and Google app stores have.
Many users still think they have to give 1-star ratings for developers getting notified about reviews. Apparently Google/Apple app stores don't inform developers about good/great 4/5 star reviews (haven't checked, because I have no app on those stores).

Very often reviews violate Mozillas review guidelines ( https://addons.mozilla.org/review_guide ) and get deleted for that. Old reviews don't get updated by users even, if newer add-on versions already fixed issues a user had or explained why things work how they work. In that case reviews can be deleted too.

Not just Google and Apple. Online Product Reviews have been used to voice dissent for years now in many places from Amazon to Yelp and other services. You can inform a developer of issues all you want, many of them will ignore you. But if you indirectly influence the product placement instead it affects revenue which gets them motivated to address complaints. This is why 1 star bombing exists.

Mozilla's policy is aimed at curbing that behavior, but it doesn't work well.

[Compuitguy]

Guilty as charged

It was me who reported the bad reviews

Have been using Adblock Plus since forever so it was just a little thank you to them

Took this screen during the reporting



Have done the same with

Adblock Plus Pop-up Addon which is related but not made by the same devs

And to a lesser degree with NoScript, Greasemonkey and others

[Scarlettrunner20]

Are you the person who got most one star reviews of Ghostery 6 removed? That is a bad thing to do because users will no longer trust the extension or Mozilla if most 1 and even 2 star reviews are removed.

I have had my first two reviews of Ghostery 6 deleted even though I and others couldn't see anything wrong with them. The first review got some praise from other reviewers and the second got a Ghostery dev to reply with information that Ghostery had been coy about but many of us long time Ghostery users wanted to know. They stayed for a few days and then got deleted. My third review - a one star review - has survived and I have no idea why. It is a reply to an earlier 5 star review where the reviewer was making some very inaccurate claims about Ghostery 6 functions as well as calling one star reviewers "trolls". I took offense because I have had Ghostery since it first became available at Addons site and I loved it until the radical changes with v6x. I tested v6x extensively and still have it on Fx 38 ESR so I didn't write ill informed rants. Anyhow, the 5 star review I responded to was one of the few 5 star to get deleted later...yet my response is still there.

It would be really nice for reviewers to be notified when a review is deleted and told why. The guidelines are not very clear and Jorge Villalobos stated there were problems with the current way reviews are deleted in the Addons blog back in December 2014 and called for changes but nothing has changed and since he closed the bug at github in March that nothing will change for who knows how much longer. It is a very poor system currently. I had both Fx 43 or Fx 38 ESR and Pale Moon open 24/7 to Ghostery at Addons site for over a month now and I could get up in the morning and go there and be really perturbed by all the deletions (maybe 15 or more) overnight of 1 star reviews. Since I didn't refresh the page in either browser I could reread them and the vast majority met the guidelines for acceptable reviews at Addons yet they were deleted. Almost no 3, 4 or 5 star reviews were deleted.

Anyhow, what you did with Adblock Plus makes that extension look just as bad as Ghostery looks as those devs continue to delete almost all 1 star reviews most of which meet the guidelines ...except, of course, as Jorge pointed out in his blog it is all SUBJECTIVE. As pointed out at github and Moilla community threads Mozilla gets blamed for allowing unfair removal of 1 star reviews. The considerable shortcomings in the review process are well known but over a year after Jorge wrote his blog on this issue nothing has been done to attempt to improve how reviews are handled.

https://github.com/mozilla/addons-server/issues/1906
https://discourse.mozilla-community.org ... dd-on/7811

[Compuitguy]

Not me

Not using Ghostery here so no reason to report reviews there

[Frank Lion]

My third review - a one star review - has survived and I have no idea why. ..yet my response is still there.

Fixed.

[Foxinabox]

Thanks to people like "Compuitguy", reviews on AMO have become worthless.

Whoever is approving the deletion of valid negative reviews on AMO needs to have their privileges permanently revoked.

If negative reviews get deleted, then reviews are obviously worthless.

At this point, so many negative reviews have been deleted that AMO reviews have no value. It's amazing to see Mozilla let their property get devalued by a handful of people who think censorship is a good thing.

I have also noticed that many positive reviews for certain specific extensions are written by people who have only written a review for that one extension. The huge number of such reviews makes it very questionable if those reviews are real.

Here is a list of extensions for which people have reported that negative reviews have been deleted:

• AdBlock Plus
• uBlock Origin
• Ghostery