The question is - has this policy reduced the number of spammy, irrelevant or ignorant comments on the Play store. It used to be several notches below the quality of Youtube comments.

The question is, does the policy prevent highly trained testing staff who are willing to donate their time to developers for free from helping developers (but for their own reasons wish to remain anonymous).

It's a trade off, and real name policies don't only exclude negative posters.

(To expand: I tested someone's js project on reddit just yesterday, offering my platform, multiple browsers, a decent writeup, images/screenshots etc. But my reddit account is fully anonymous. If my real name was required, s/he never would have gotten that free help)

Hmn. This is a genuine problem. And you can support the real-names-for-public-reviews-to-avoid-spam policy (I'm mildly against, myself), while still believing this is a genuine problem.

Do the developers give you no alternate avenues for communication? No email contact or anything?

whats wrong with society where we don't want to tell someone constructive criticism or positive feedback like it was a face to face conversation except online ?

What's wrong with receiving valuable information without being able to ascertain who sent it to you?

Information you can't trust because the source is suspect is significantly less valuable. See: spamming on Yelp and Amazon reviews.

How much more can you trust a profile pic and a real-ish name than "someguy443"?

A hell of a lot more, when it's someone you know personally. That's why they want the Google+ info - so they can show you what people you know thought of something.

Really A lot more?

Lets say you wrote a cool android app, but there is a little bug in it that is triggered by a phone you don't own or weren't able to test, I have that phone. I go to contact you, which of the following reports do you trust more -

From: mhurron [at] saminds.com From: Google+ Roman Fox

Now be honest, even though this exact setup probably smells off. Given receiving a email from the above or from the above Google+ account, are you going to trust one or dismiss one simply on the name of the account?

you're just detracting from the original question. You're absolutely right that feedback and information can be given without being able to ascertain who its sent from, but still why aren't people able to be civil and provide feedback with their identities known.

> why aren't people able to be civil and provide feedback with their identities known?

I find this quite funny with you being the anonymous guy and me being out there in the open with my identity.

Maybe you should answer your own question?

I do give feedback and provide criticism on the Play and Amazon store. When a site asks for a username, I pick a username. If the site asks for a real name I'll give that as well. If HN wanted real names it should have asked.