I strongly agree that the PyPI ratings were mostly useless and that removing the feature was a good decision.
iPhone app ratings can be much more useful for popular apps, but for the long tail of apps, they suffer the same problems as PyPI's rating and review system did.
Amazon and Yelp ratings, on the other hand, are quite useful. I think it's partly because users have profiles and are better able to express themselves.
I think the app ratings for the popular apps are all useless (they're well know apps, other people rave about them, so no need to read all the reviews). I agree on the long tail being useless as well.
Instead, I think it's most useful for the "middle tail": those apps that do get a fair bit of usage, but are not considered popular: the developer may not have build up a reputation yet, but the reviews help confirming the application does what it is supposed to do (or not of course).
http://code.activestate.com/lists/python-catalog-sig/3482/
I strongly agree that the PyPI ratings were mostly useless and that removing the feature was a good decision.
iPhone app ratings can be much more useful for popular apps, but for the long tail of apps, they suffer the same problems as PyPI's rating and review system did.
Amazon and Yelp ratings, on the other hand, are quite useful. I think it's partly because users have profiles and are better able to express themselves.