By One of the most common complaints about the Android Market is how irritation and offensiveness of the comment system. There are no checks and balances and it seems anybody can post anything, leading to obnoxious, ignorant messages that are completely worthless to the community. If this bothers you, take a sigh of relief – the problem is fixed in RC33 as comments can be marked as spam.
Simply long press on a comment and you’ll see the dialogue box asking if you want to mark it as spam. There is no telling how many spam complaints an app will get until it is removed or if there are other criteria, but its GREAT to see that Google has addressed this complaint since irrational commentors are running rampid.
I’d like to see the Google Android team take this even further, adding even more options when you long press. For example:
- the ability to rate the helpfulness of a comment
- ignore all of somebody’s comments
- follow (kinda like twitter) somebody’s market comments
- rate as offensive (differentiating from spam)
Hopefully measures will be put into place to punish people who continually spam the market or make inappropriate comments. At the same time, I hope developers don’t go to long distances in order to mark negative (and fair) reviews as spam. Anytime you bring a form of “voting” into the equation you get people trying to abuse the system, a la the “bury brigades” at digg.
Regardless, a much needed improvement to Android and thumbs up for acknowledging and addressing the issue! The rest of the updates that RC33 brings are listed now as well and include the following:
Fixes:
Comcast fails to download more than 1 email
- Symptom(s): No error message but it stays on “Load More Messages” without ever pulling another email.
“Messages” Stability Issue
- Symptom(s): When trying to send a message or exit the “Messaging” application you receive a pop up message that reads “Sorry! Activity Messaging (in application Messaging) is not responding. Force Close Wait”
WiFi forcing a logout of IM
- Symptom(s): While using the IM clients on the G1 if you turn on or off WiFi the sessions are terminated and you will need to sign back in.
No reminders for calendar items.
- Symptom(s): Missing appointments due to the lack of a reminder.
G1 hanging at the G1 Screen
- Symptom(s): A small number of G1 devices hanging at the G1 screen during the initial power up.
New Features:
- Support “Check For Upgrades” (New feature to check for system upgrades)
- Voice Search (New Google feature for searching)
- Ability to save pictures recieved as MMS(instructions below)
- Ability to report offensive comments in the Market as SPAM (instructions below)
- Google Latitude / Maps 3.0 (Google videos below)
[Via T-Mobile Forums]
Nice. Can’t wait till I get the update.
So many idiots I wish I could ban from commenting.
[This Comment Has Been Deleted As Spam]
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kidding
Now the kids will spam mark the good messages.
I’m glad to see this update if fixing a few things. But if they are going to make them incremental like this then I’d rather see them come quicker. People were starting to become disheartened and thats not good for the platform.
On the other hand I have the feeling that they are hard at work getting Android ready for the wave of devices in the pipe and the G1 users will see the benefits once Android is a little further along.
We can only hope that the intelligence of the masses …
(/me ducks to avoid flying objects)
… will retain the usefulness of the market while ridding us of those horrid comments we’ve had to deal with. My guess, optimistic though it may be, is that after a couple weeks of 1st-lolz-dawgz-1337 users attacking out of bitterness they’ll realize the futility and go join a hopscotch club or something. Maybe someone can write an app that says “1st 1st comment wins free service for life” but really redirects their market comments to /dev/null ?
:) ah, we can dream …
Some comments are offensive but I can see people down voting comments being critical of android. Since Google has put android on the back burner, I think a healthy criticism is necessary if Android is still going to try to be viable as a competing OS. Especially with the palm pre coming down the pipe.
I could careless about the comments…how about reduce the size of the market itself on my ROM.
The crap is grow everyday non stop. and no it is not truncating on its own.
“Rampid”??? Do you mean “Rampant”?
Not even CLOSE.
Rampant + Rabid = Rampid
I got this downloaded and installed! I was worried about how I would get the update since I use my G1 unlocked on AT&T. Here’s a description of how it went:
http://www.mooproductions.org/node/10
It could be that I just didn’t notice this but, the update also seemed to change the way the application names on the homescreen are truncated.
They went from a straight cut off to a fade out effect…
Like I said, could be me though
I received the update lastnight. It doesnt look like they changed much.
I got the update last night. I’m quite pleased with it. Voice search works better than I expected, and while I could see it coming in useful occasionally, mostly it’s a neat novelty.
The part I’m most excited about is the auto-check for new versions of your apps. I had about 6 apps installed with updates available and I had no idea before this system update was installed. Also, as a developer it will be nice to not have to worry about rolling your own method of checking for updates. Google just gave us a standard way to do it and took the burden away from devs completely.
I didn’t realize this update was supposed to fix the IM / WiFi disconnect bug. I’m excited about that one too, if it proves to be effective.
I would love if you could rate how helpful a comment is. Too much ignorance in the market these days…by the way does anyone know when the quickoffice qas gonna come out?
I just received the rc33 update in MN. Another bug fixed is automatic email retrieval for pop mail. I think it reset the check frequency on install but after the change I tested it and it works.
I haven’t received the OTA RC33 update yet so I am considering the manual download. I am on Wi-Fi a lot (80% of the time since I work from home most days) and wonder if the OTA can be received while not on T-Mobile’s network. Does anyone know? I know I received RC29 and RC30 on T-Mobile’s network because it was before I got a wireless router at home. Any info appreciate.