I agree in parts, I guess we can shape your suggestion into something cleverer to something that can be well-used in the future.
- The binary way of thinking is fast and easy for most users, but stars help developers know with a bit more accuracy what they think. In terms of this, I believe we should prioritize what is best and easier to the user, even if stars are cool and more specific.
- Criticism must be displayed, not debatable. When you create an app, or an add-on, or anything and you put it out there, this is the price. True respect and recognition from the community comes from overcoming those hating comments. However, a way to filter down what is hate and what is actual feedback would be interesting, it’s a start, not a definitive solution.
- Now this is interesting and it’s something that is default for other stores such as App Store or Play Store. The user can either write it’s comment and have it displayed or just give a rating. Would make it easier for users to comment and stimulate who wants to contribute. An option to pin comments would also be cool.
When it comes to the current system: not very helpful to display add-ons, not very useful to evaluate comments and help users around, not very pretty (and tbh, very minor and nitpicky issue).
Here’s my take: AnkiWeb Add-on platform is simple and easy to maintain, the more features you add (stars, hide comments, report hate, etc etc), more bugs will show up and more maintenance will be required, so it needs to be decided either to enhance a few things, make it a little better, keeping the core of the website untouched, or building another one from ground-up like Unlucky suggested and did.
Interesting discussion, but low priority, I believe AnkiHub has other things on the list first before starting to improve the Add-on system. Personally, I hope for the best, but wouldn’t pressure them, even though it would be appreciated, and I would love to have a few new things too (such as pinning comments or having a built-in gallery to display previews), but we need to go step by step, be grateful to have a platform to show our creations and, when the time comes, give this part of the system a little more care.
Appreciate you bringing that up, Glace, and asking for opinions of the devs!
PS: An interesting side note, a little while ago I wrote this comment here, about a similar topic.