Google is tweaking its Google Play store to allow developers to reply to reviews posted by users. Great, right? But you should read developer Matt Gemmell’s excellent blog post on the subject before starting to type. His main concern: that this response mechanism is entirely public. “They’ve (as usual) chosen an odd and poorly-considered mechanism of encouraging app devs to air dirty laundry in public, and burn out due to having an additional public support forum over which they have zero control,” he writes. Gemmell would rather see a way for developers to respond privately to public reviews, among other changes. “A review that you feel compelled to respond to is probably, in essence, a conflict situation. We have a rule of thumb for this: deal with conflict privately.”