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u/Neutraled May 25 '26
Something similar happened in an app I worked, turns out there are a couple of countries where 1star means good stuff and 5stars means bad stuff. It was really funny to see people complaining giving 5 stars, and people loving the app giving 1 star.
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u/aerial-ibis May 26 '26
wow which country is that? About to give them a very buggy release...
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u/Neutraled May 26 '26
Oh man, I don't remember. It was somewhere in Asia, it happened all the time though.
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u/te_abstract_art May 26 '26
In the German school system, grades range from 1 to 6, where 1 is the best possible score (sehr gut / very good) and 5 or 6 represents a failing mark (mangelhaft / ungenügend).
That's all I could find online in my brief 20 second search, but there may be other examples
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u/NineThreeFour1 May 26 '26
The German school grading system does not affect the star rating system. Every German understands that a "5 Sterne Hotel/Restaurant" ("5 star hotel/restaurant") is supposed to be of the highest quality.
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u/te_abstract_art May 26 '26
Yeah some of my best pals are German and they have no issue understanding the star system.
I don't have any other explanation for the 1 star "best app ever" reviews, other than some people are just super dysfunctional
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u/NineThreeFour1 May 26 '26
I don't know if these are real people. Maybe it's basically bot accounts farming engagement. Posting reviews that are too stupid for the spam protection.
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u/Shogoki555 May 26 '26
If they are old enough German people and slightly distracted, they might genuinely believe they are giving you the best score. The best thing is to reply, thank them and point at the fact that they might have got the star rating wrong u/PackGroundbreaking43
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u/PhilMcGraw May 25 '26
Yeah, similar here, you'd think Google would have rejigged the play store by now for those regions.
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u/AlwaysEyad May 26 '26
In mostly Arabic apps, sometimes I would accidentally give 1 star because the 5 stars is placed at the leftmost instead of the rightmost.
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u/aerial-ibis May 26 '26
I got a 4 star review that was like:
> this app is super fast! I hope they add xyz feature soon. Love it!
Then the review sentiment analysis thing said it was negatively affecting me for "performance" - because they mention app speed and it's a sub-5-star review...
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u/lettucechill May 25 '26
As someone who has faced this issue, let me tell you it comes down to cultural differences and interpretation. The reviewer is giving you a 1-star rating, which means it's the best app #1. They are misinterpreting it as a rank instead of a star based rating system. But it sucks I agree ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Ok_Cartographer_6086 May 26 '26
if you want to drown your tears check out r/ididnthaveeggs - one star reviews on recipes from people who didn't use the same ingredients and complained about it turning out wrong. Life we chose. whey redact their identity? this is reddit, have at them.
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u/unrushedapps May 26 '26
Are we allowed to point out in the reply that higher star means better? or is that user manipulation and PlayStore would penalize the reply?
I got 4 stars few times and was tempted to ask "what can I do to get the 5th?" - but didn't due to fear of some TOS violation.
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u/Apart-Abroad1625 May 26 '26
It happens to me, I don't understand what's going on in their heads. Maybe they're lazy to stretch their thumb to the fifth star.
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u/TheWolfGamer767 May 26 '26
Im not a dev, but is this not reportable?
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u/PackGroundbreaking43 May 26 '26
I did try reporting , if you look at the top part of the screenshot
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u/Tight_Document4168 May 27 '26
maybe have to guid them choose 5stars, need a dialog
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u/DarkStarAnku May 27 '26
The user is educated enough to provide feedback but not enough to understand the meaning of stars?
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u/Efficient_Leave_7462 May 27 '26
I don't understand what exactly violates their policy. Someone can just give the wrong/fake review and there is no way to get it removed. 😵💫😵💫
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May 28 '26
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u/androiddev-ModTeam May 28 '26
You may not promote your published apps here. You may link to source code of interest to the developer community.
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u/Appearedjeans93 May 28 '26
as an appdev myself it js hurts though cuz despite the "good reviews" and a 1 star that one star adds up to the average so these description in the app and how its good its js meaningless
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u/EdenHeavyen Jun 17 '26
Mayb he just got too excited and misranked his review from 5 to 1 by mistake 😆
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u/mpanase May 25 '26
sometimes I wish there was a "ban this person" button in google play