There are many people in the HN comments supporting the decision to rate apps with one star when said apps solicit ratings. You posted a screenshot of another person agreeing with this perspective, and I'm yet another.
I said, "Some of the comments are making baseless speculations about my software, without having used it."
Have you used my software? If not, then your speculation about the design of my review request is indeed baselesss.
I did not question whether some people have a personal one-star policy. Obviously they do. My statement was about my software.
The person in my App Store review screenshot has indeed used my software. That's one person. There is no second or third person here, as far as I can tell. What the App Store reviewer meant by "nag" is not at all what many commenters here are imagining. For example, there is no nag screen, and there is no modal interface that blocks other actions. People are projecting their experience with some other apps onto my app, but my app is not the same as some of those other apps.
If someone says “hey, this guy has a nag screen” and your response is “but everybody does it!”, it’s not baseless to think you have a bag screen without checking your app.
If you don’t, I would expect you to write “the reviewer here is wrong, I don’t have a nag screen”.
The App Store review in the screenshot used the phrase "ratings nag on the app interface." It did not say "nag screen".
My app does have a ratings request on the app interface, which does not interface with the other controls on the app interface. It does not have a dedicated ratings request screen.
People are just assuming "nag screen" based on the single word "nag", and even that word is questionable in my opinion, but I do indisputably present a ratings request.
Suppose for the sake of argument that every review in the App Store for every app was like the one in the screenshot, a complaint about ratings requests. How would that be helpful? How would anyone know whether, aside from the ratings requests, the apps were any good or not? How would those be good reviews? You might defend the reviews as accurate and justified, but they would still be largely useless, because they're so narrowly focused.
I'm happy to receive 5 star reviews for my apps, but honestly, some of those are poorly written too, overly vague, or too narrowly focused, occasionally inaccurate, claiming my app does something it doesn't actually do!
The underlying point, though, is that Apple is relying on user reviews as a poor substitute to cover up its own shortcomings in reviewing app submissions. If an app doesn't do what it says, or it's user-hostile in some ways, how are those apps even getting through to the store in the first place?