We are debating whether or not we should allow users to delete their reviews. I am wondering what the best practice of what should be done here or any cons involved if possible.
one thing I think would be a benefit of not allowing would be transparency. If a user makes a bad review we should try to convince them to change it instead and let the end user know we never delete reviews.
I think two of Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design might be helpful here:
Support undo and redo
Preventing users from deleting content they've created limits their control and freedom within your site, and could negatively impact their perception of your product.
Regarding your transparency point, I do think it might be helpful as a company to publish strict guidelines about what types of comments you delete. This would help establish clear expectations about how and when reviews might be deleted.
Provide your users with helpful guidelines and confirmation/warning/error messaging so they can correct mistakes quickly and easily. That may help reduce the types of mistakes which would encourage deletion.
With the limited context provided, this is the best I can give you (more info about what the reviews are for, what they contain, and who the users are would be useful):
I consider those two different usecases.
Amending a "bad" review (I would encourage you to rethink the wording, though) with a change, explanation, new rating, ... is great for transparency. In the case, that the user needed your input to realise their "mistake".
What if a user posts something by accident? If they mistype, if they do something wrong and post without noticing? What if they realise they misunderstood something and want to delete the irrelevant and "bad" review? They have to write to you? I find that uncomfortable for the user (bad for them), and also much less likely to happen (bad for you).
Regardless of that, I believe users should be able to delete anything they create / post. And in at least some cases, this is also legally required - did you check that?
Tough question. On one hand you want users to stay in control of what they post, but on the other hand, allowing reviews to be deleted opens a can of worms when it comes to transparency. You may be accused of removing bad reviews, or tampering with existing ones, or other users may question why a review was changed.
You can allow edits to the original review if the platform supports it. It'll be like a way to clarify something to the original review. Then you allow errors to be corrected, or 'updates' to the review, but avoid any possible negatives that come with reviewing in general. Depending on whether you respond to the original review or not, having a user 'add' a change to their review shines on your customer service. You can show that the service was so good, a user changed his mind.
