Show reviews of applications in snap store

[merlijn-sebrechts]

The problem

The Ubuntu Software Center now uses ODRS for reviews of snap applications. Many users write reviews which specify certain issues with the snap. However, publishers who are less familiar with Ubuntu don't know about this feature. Even if a publisher knows the review service exists, they need to install Ubuntu and open the software center in order to see these reviews.

As an example, the vectr app has been broken for a while now. Users report this in the reviews, but the publisher has no way to see these reviews.

Expected behaviour

• The online snap store shows the ODRS reviews and rating score for applications.
• Publishers can optionally receive notifications when a new review is posted.

Showing the reviews in the snapcraft store helps publishers get feedback on their applications and helps users choose between applications.

[Lukewh]

@galgalesh thanks for this report. ODRS support is on our long-term roadmap :+1:

[keshavbhatt]

I personally don't like ODRS for several reasons, i made tweet time ago to bring it to ODRS people but they ignored it totally. I am author of various applications which are exclusively published in snap store and i convey this message to you in favour of all other publishers who publish in snap store :

We(developers)

1- We don't want fake reviews by random reviewers who did not installed our apps. 2- We want give feedback to reviewers, this will help us create a better user experience and improve our app’s rating. In this user should be notified with an option to update his review (like we do in android or ios store fronts). 3- We want rating based on what our app is today, not what it was months/years ago. 4- Average rating should be calculated using the most recent users ratings instead of a lifetime cumulative values. 5- A feature - when we release an app update that fixes issues mentioned in older reviews, the update should include this information in app's release notes with an option to include review ID so that the reviwers can get a notification that the issue he raised in his review has been fixed.

ALL THESE FEATURES ARE PRESENT IN MODERN STORES BE IT ANDROID OR IOS OR MACOS . ODRS looks like something which is written ages ago and no one looked back at it again.

[customautosys]

Hi, this too. I think it's very bad that we don't get notified of reviews. It should also be displayed on Snapcraft when we login as a developer.

[stevenventimiglia]

Anyone who places a review should also be capable of editing or deleting their review, as well. If there actually is a way of doing so, it would nice if this was presented in a user-friendly manner.

[Melvin-Abraham]

This is a concerning issue since we as developers won't know anything about the reviews sent by the users from within the web version of snap store. Thus, it becomes unnecessarily necessary, at least for me, to spin up the Ubuntu Virtual Machine whenever I want to check the reviews and ratings for the application, JUST FOR THAT... This is not a good experience for any developer. Please bring the reviews and ratings feature to the web version of snap store as well.

[another4til7]

While using ODRS versus other means as a source/repository for reviews is an interesting debate, snapcraft.io bills itself as an app store. Reviews are a standard feature of online stores whether they sell physical merchandise (amazon, newegg, bestbuy) or deal in virtual merchandise (the app stores offered by Apple for Mac and iOS, Google Pay, Microsoft's app store, etc). Without the reviews, it's better to turn to another source for app discovery that includes both the description as well as reviews and then winnow out what doesn't run on your machine.

[damonlynch]

A related feature request I made on upstream ODRS.

[paroj]

ran into this problem and hacked this to get a list of reviews from different locales: https://paroj.github.io/odrs-browser/#io.snapcraft.vectr-vWtx1TdkiqI0GkF81qcKoUFMUSzbQy55

it uses static (scraped) data right now, but if ODRS sets the CORS header, this could easily switch to live data

[Lukewh]

@paroj I appreciate the effort here, nice work.

A general update: As part of the new flutter-based Ubuntu Software Center we have plans to integrate ratings and reviews, this work is being planned, and will be delivered, with snapcraft.io in mind. It's been a long time coming, and the wait isn't over, but movement is happening.

Take care everyone <3!

[merlijn-sebrechts]

@Lukewh is there a place where the community can see more information about this effort and possibly join the discussion about what this would look like?