restore a single wysiwyg box to allow proper reviews

[shoulders]

Since the JED imposed this workflow where you have several boxes Functionality, Ease of use, Support and Documentation no one is able to leave a meaningful review. It was better when there was one box and a star rating.

These 4 areas all have super restrictive fields and when I left a review I ended up having to invent stuff to go in the boxes.

This is a typical example: https://extensions.joomla.org/extension ... /weblinks/

I appreciate the JED is in flux at the minute but I hope this is helpful for a future version of the JED.

all the best

[sozzled]

While I agree, in general terms, with the restrictions on the length of text that can be entered in those four areas (140 characters for each of them and 240 characters, as a general summary, for a fifth "I used this for ..." box)—and how can one write something "meaningful" in 140 characters or less?—the whole review system is rather meaningless in my opinion.

For example, some extensions (that people have to pay a lot of money to obtain) have dozens of reviews—all of them praising the developer—while thousands of extensions (a significant proportion of them free to download) have zero reviews. Does that make sense?

Many reviews are obviously phony and there's no real way to sort honest, genuine reviews from bogus ones. Further, many reviews are based on old, superseded versions of products and the assessments made at one time may not be relevant to the current version(s) of those products.

Therefore, it's difficult to discuss the "meaningfulness" of reviews while these systemic issues remain.

Some time ago, we were asked to provide feedback via a survey about (a) the desirability of retaining reviews on the JED and (b) mechanisms to ensure that reviews were honest, genuine and relevant. The results of that survey were never published. As far as I can tell, the JED team decided to retain the review system (with its inherent problems and the general belief—based on my interpretation of the many experiences I've read on this forum that suggest the review system is broken, rigged, not credible or too difficult to work with) and have not improved the process.

So, for all of these reasons, I agree with you that JED reviews (both from a reviewer's perspective as well as from the reader's point of view) are lacking meaningfulness.

[shoulders]

at least I know I am not on my own.

the JED survey probably got missed by most people because of the way joomla hides all of it news in many different places on the joomla estate rather that having 1 bog on joomla.org.

you could limit reviews to people who have enough forum posts, are a Jed published developer or perhaps have been a member who has been regularly logged in for a set amount of time

[sozzled]

The JED survey probably got missed by most people ...

Who knows? I can't agree or disagree with that comment. I can only say that the survey was discussed but the results of that survey were never made public.

You could limit [who can write] reviews [in several ways]

Yes, I suppose the JED people could engineer a system to limit who can write reviews in several different ways. We have discussed a few ideas on the forum; the JED team are about to implement a new system possibly as early as this month or November this year. That's all I can tell you.