An article about the iTunes App Store review system propagated through the PC World/Macworld/iPhone Central pipeline, and drew expectedly vocal comments. The basic question (not asked for the first time, BTW) is whether even the improved system is being “gamed” by developers to boost ratings artificially —  or, on the Dark Side, are programmers and accomplices guilty of trashing competing products.

Sometimes I think my uber-age and experience in some fields hinder my thinking on an issue. Modern-day review systems may be a case in point.

“Back in the day,” before the World Wide Web, I published dead-tree-derived books and computer software products in shrink-wrapped boxes — products sold on store shelves and through [snail]mail order catalogs. As the book and software publisher publicity machines started cranking with each release, the author sat breathlessly awaiting reviews to appear in the only public medium at the time likely to cover computer-related products: Print, both newspapers and magazines. There were some TV shows that covered these topics (I even co-hosted one in San Jose, CA for a couple of years in the mid-1980s), but unless you could somehow snatch a spot on the Today Show, a print review conveyed a gravitas that couldn’t be beat. Before YouTube, once a video transmission went out, it was either lost to the ether, or it was preserved on a private Betamax cassette for Mom to see.

As an author, I valued print reviews highly. In most cases, a print review was written by someone being paid for his or her expertise in the field. The piece was carefully crafted. It was edited. It was vetted. A fair amount of work went into the review.

That experience left me with an idealized view of the review process. Perhaps naively, I have always wanted to regard reviews as honest appreciations of a work. When I used to write software and hardware reviews for computer magazines in the early 1980s, I endeavored to live up to that ethos when I was acting as the critic. I even intentionally stopped writing software reviews of any kind when my own software products hit store shelves so as to distance myself from any semblance of a conflict of interest.

Fast-forward to the Amazon.com era, when anyone could post a review of a book or product. Like any eager author craving attention and adulation, I checked almost daily the reviews posted for my new books in the late 1990s. I beamed with every five-star review, winced at every four-star review, and got really pissed off when someone left a one-star review and explained that he or she had a completely different idea of what the book would be, despite a clear description to the contrary (simulated quote: “After reading this book on AppleScript, I still couldn’t repair my car.”).

Given the way some other authors then — and now on the App Store and elsewhere — have attempted to poison review systems by having friends, family members, employees, or paid stooges post phony, canned, glowing reviews, I do take pride in having never asked a shill to post a rave review for my goods. I have too much respect for what reviews should be all about to start screwing with the system. I simply can’t do it.

It’s true that one of my iFeltThat beta testers left a five-star review on the App Store, but that person did so without any prodding from me. The promo codes I sent to active testers were sent as thank-you gestures, not as prepayments for fake reviews. As far as I can tell, four of the five descriptive reviews up there to date have been written by paying customers. That the product so far averages 4.5 stars (the lowest, three-star review apparently came from someone who uninstalled the product without writing anything) fills me with joy. That most of the reviews comment favorably on the quality of the product sends me to cloud nine because it validates the effort I believe I put into product design and development.

One thing I don’t know is whether the total number of reviews impacts an app’s chance of winning the lottery of appearing among the eight new Staff Favorites slots assigned each week. Does the fact that iFeltThat bears only six reviews so far give it less visibility among the faceless “staff?” Would 16 or 60 reviews make the product glow with a brighter blip on the staff radar screen? I’d like to think that a small quantity of truthful high ratings would be just as visible as a large quantity of more moderate ratings. One can dream.

Just in case quantity does play a role, I openly encourage users to post reviews if they are so inclined. The actual words they use and number of stars they click, however, will fall where they may, and I’ll live with the results. As a friend of mine reminded me years ago when I received my first Neutral eBay rating, they don’t engrave feedback ratings on your tombstone.

I’m sure the youngsters out there in AppLand think I’m a fool for sticking to my purist — nay, puritanical — belief system of letting only real users (and potentially nitwit one-star pranksters [Update: Done within 12 hours of original posting...yawn]) express themselves openly in reviews from the heart. I’ll let the kids get their jollies by punking a highly punkable system for their own products. In the meantime, I’ll stick to my olde tyme ways and keep a clear conscience through every restful night.