[ziddoap]

>a JetBrains employee said that reviews were removed because they mentioned issues that had since been solved

That shouldn't be considered a valid reason to remove a review. I could maybe understand down-weighting reviews as they age and as issues are resolved, but as a potential buyer of some product/service/whatever, knowing that something was released with a bunch of issues (even if now solved) is a valuable signal. Preferably, they would reply to reviews and say "XYZ was addressed in update ABC" or something.

Nuking reviews is a valuable signal as well, I guess. Just not in the way that they hope. Knowing that they've done that has (further) lowered my impression of them.

[lolinder]

Yes, it's a terrible excuse, and it's concerning that they think it's a good one. I highly doubt that they make a habit of fielding requests from plugin authors to nuke outdated reviews: you simply can't scale the verification that would require to do honestly. If they don't offer this as an option to others then this move is wrong both for the reasons you give and because they're claiming a privilege in their app store that they won't afford to their competition.

[kevincox]

I don't think that they think it is a good one. It was just the best excuse they could come up with after being caught. The "good idea" was to remove the reviews without anybody noticing.

[mystified5016]

They sent emails notifying people that their comments were removed. They weren't exactly trying very hard to be sly.

[collingreen]

Or the PM didn't know it would automatically send emails.

[serial_dev]

I wonder if they remove reviews that complain about bugs that were resolved (at least according to the plugin author) for all other plugins that aren’t theirs… Do they? … yeah I thought so.

[rchaud]

Ive seen plenty of reviews in app stores where the vendor responds to negative reviews and confirms when the issue described in the review was fixed. Is JetBrains also removing positive reviews that mention features that have been discontinued?

[chmod775]

Something tells me they wouldn't remove positive reviews mentioning something that has since changed.

[zamalek]

They should attach a YouTrack issues to reviews, which would automatically show that the issue has been fixed. Their YouTrack integration is pretty deep elsewhere. Still doesn't solve the problem of the average score, though.

[chii]

if the youtrack issue linked is fixed, it's also possible for the average score to get updated to weight those reviews lower.

But this needs to be transparent - hidden average score manipulation just leads to distrust in those scores.

[mystified5016]

My comment complaining about it being bundled and enabled by default, with no way to uninstall, only disabled. They gave me the same excuse, but those "features" are still exactly the same as they were then.

[DaedPsyker]

I agree, it shouldn't be. Particularly as I can't imagine them removing reviews if it praised a feature that was subsequently removed or changed.

[hahn-kev]

I like how I've seen this addressed (maybe in Google Play?) where they tag the review to the version and indicate that to the reader.

[willcipriano]

"This thing is expensive and it barely works"

"We fixed yesterday's outage, review removed"

[TZubiri]

If they are both marketplace and seller, and if this is a policy they apply to all vendors, seems fine to me.

[thfuran]

It's a bad policy even if it's not anti-competitive. At the absolute bare minimum, they should also be removing every positive review that mentions any feature that has been changed since the review was written. Then, once they're all out of reviews that actually mention the software in any way, they can institute a sensible policy of not deleting reviews.

[sgt]

Normally I'd agree but this is a project that has changed significantly over a verey short period of time. Those reviews may simply not be relevant anymore. I trust that JetBrains going forward will simply respond to the reviews, not remove them.

[yladiz]

They should have responded to them in the first place, not removed them, and state that the issue has been fixed and invite the commenter to try again. I wouldn’t trust them to not remove reviews until they start not doing it.

[7bit]

And then the reviews would not have been changed by their authors anyway, because that's not something people typically do. So you still have a bunch of negative reviews for issues that have long been fixed. And that's not fair. If you handle critic and improve, then thats a positive thing that should not be punished by an obsolete negative review.

[yladiz]

This is kind of the reality of ratings online: you have to accept that someone could leave a bad review about something that you’ve fixed, or even arbitrary. In general if you’re doing a good job the positive reviews will eventually counter the bad ones. It’s arguably not fair but 1. in this case maybe they should have put more care into the initial release, and 2. I, not the company, would rather be the one to judge the review and the response because I don’t have an incentive to hide negative things about the product.

[ImPostingOnHN]

> And then the reviews would not have been changed by their authors anyway, because that's not something people typically do. So you still have a bunch of negative reviews for issues that have long been fixed. And that's not fair.

That is more fair than Jetbrains removing other people's negative reviews unilaterally, especially when it remains to be seen whether Jetbrains actually fixed the issues.

Legally, Jetbrains is allowed to be judge, jury, and executioner of reviews on their own site. Morally, they should not act unilaterally, and should gain customer approval before harming customers.

> If you handle critic and improve

You are assuming they improved. With the reviews deleted, there is no way to know for sure, they could just as easily have gotten worse and hidden it by deleting the review. That's why you don't delete the review.

The proper move here would indeed be to post a reply, and have a public conversation. Readers of reviews can then read the reply, and either trust them at their word that they fixed it with no bugs or other mistakes, or test for themselves.

tl;dr: the reviewer, not the biased company being reviewed, is the judge of whether the issues described in the review have been addressed / fixed / made irrelevant. YES, there may be downsides to this, but they are not as bad as the downsides of the alternative (company deletes arbitrary reviews about themselves for arbitrary reasons with no oversight).