Update: BeerAdvocate Rating System

Blog Discussion in 'BeerAdvocate Talk' started by Todd, Aug 14, 2014.

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  1. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,254) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    Staff Super Mod Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    After much discussion, and listening to feedback from our users, @Jason, @Mike, and I have come to the conclusion that our rating system is dated, lacks cohesion, and is unnecessarily complicated. While it worked back in the day, it's not as user-friendly as it should be. It needed a major overhaul.

    New Rating System
    In an effort to simplify and encourage more interaction, the following changes have been applied to both Beer and Place ratings and reviews.
    • Rating: 1-5 (0.25 increments). Precise Rating: allows for manual 0.01 increments for those who want to get granular, while also supports older reviews. This option can be found in the rating pulldown on desktop and the slider on the app.
    • Review: once rated, the review box appears for optional notes (5 to 5,000 characters). We lowered the minimum characters as forcing more deters participation and doesn't always result in quality.
    • All place types are now ratable. Visited a brewery? Took the tour? Rate and review it.
    Note: User ratings have not changed. Beer and Place ratings have not changed.

    What About Categories?
    They were superfluous and essentially mimicked many beer judging systems, however, BeerAdvocate is a consumer website that needs to cater to a wide audience.
    • Many users would adjust each category until they get the final rating they're looking for, which defeats the purpose of having categories.
    • Thoughts on each category can easily be, and typically are, summarized in the review notes.
    • The vast majority of people focus on overall score for a beer or place, followed by individual user ratings.
    • Categories only applied to individual reviews. They didn't apply to ratings, weren't used anywhere else, nor did we plan on extending our use of them. In fact, we've been planning on retiring them for years now.
    • We also retired "serving type" for beer reviews. Again, they didn't apply to ratings, weren't used anywhere else, nor did we plan on extending our use of them, and the feature was often misused. Serving type can be mentioned in the review text.
    Power to the People
    To support the new system, we've also launched two new features that gives users a say in what content matters to them and to encourage more people to review.

    Usefulness
    • Users can now up or down vote reviews (doesn't apply to ratings), allowing more thoughtful reviews to rise to the top.
    • Usefulness has been added as a sorting option and acts as the new default when viewing ratings.
    • Beer Karma: Usefulness is being tracked at the user level and will eventually be applied.
    Flagging
    • We brought back the ability to quickly flag inappropriate reviews (doesn't apply to ratings) for review.
    • Flagging a review should only occur if it's inappropriate, not simply because you disagree with it. If you don't agree with a review ... down vote it.
    We're also working on an algorithm to help us detect users who abuse the voting and flagging feature. Abuse will not be tolerated.

    API Preview
    The new rating system is also the first time we've extended the internal API that Mike's been developing to the desktop site, allowing us to optimize the rating experience. Example: Actions, alerts, and stat updates no longer refresh the beer or place page. They occur asynchronously.

    Expect more of this optimized code and experience with our site redesign.

    For more on this update re: the app:
    http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/beeradvocate-mobile-update-history.77116/#post-2679031

    For help, comments, suggestions, and to report a bug:
    http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/forums/site.66/

    Cheers!
     
  2. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,254) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    Staff Super Mod Pooh-Bah Society Trader

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  3. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,254) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    Staff Super Mod Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    Misc Updates/Answers To Some FAQs:
    • As of Sunday, the main Beer page now displays most recent Beer Reviews only.
    • Fixed rDev bug on the most recent Beer/Place ratings pages.
    • Adjusted Usefulness default sorting to exclude our reviews (Alström Bros) unless they've been up voted.
    • Why can't you down vote our reviews? If you're asking the question, you already know the answer.
    • Old category breakdowns have not been wiped. If or how they'll be accessible has yet to be determined, but we're reviewing it.
    • We're compiling your feedback and will have a team meeting next week to discuss. In the meantime, please continue to share your constructive comments.
    Thanks,
     
    woemad, rudzud, BucannonXC5 and 7 others like this.
  4. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,254) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    Staff Super Mod Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    Update
    As promised, this morning we discussed your feedback and have decided to move forward with the following:
    • Ability to start a beer/place review without being forced to rate it first.
    • Re-enabling the display of historical Beer categories (appearance, aroma, taste, mouthfeel, overall) in reviews.
    • Re-enabling category (appearance, aroma, taste, mouthfeel, overall) pulldown fields for Beers when rating/reviewing (as optional fields).
    • Re-enabling the "serving type" field for Beer ratings/reviews (as an optional field).
    • Re-enabling the "value" field for Place ratings/views (as an optional field).
    We don't have an ETA yet, but we're working on all of the above now.

    More updates to follow soon ...
     
  5. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,254) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    Staff Super Mod Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    Update
    Today I made some minor visual updates to the display of ratings and reviews on Beer and Place profile pages, as well as the main Beer page. The goal was to reduce some clutter and create a similar view for what are essentially posts across the site.
    • Puts more focus on the review (text) and rating (number).
    • Reduces the footprint of ratings, which allows reviews to standout more.
    • Individual posts now display a footer that's similar to forum posts for consistency. Click the username to view their member card. Click the time for a direct link to their rating of the beer or place.
    • Post date is now the same format as forum posts, which are much more user friendly.
    • Clicking on the avatar now pulls up the member card.
    I've got a few more tweaks that I'm considering, like adding a member info box similar to forum posts.

    Update re: the Updates
    As for the updates found in the post above this one, we're @Jason and I are meeting with @Mike tomorrow morning to check up on his progress and will hopefully have an ETA for everyone.

    More to follow ...
     
    woemad, jmdrpi, gatornation and 4 others like this.
  6. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,254) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    Staff Super Mod Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    Update
    Our goal is to apply the following by the end of the week:
    • Ability to start a beer/place review without being forced to rate it first.
    • Re-enabling the display of historical Beer attributes (appearance, aroma, taste, mouthfeel, overall) in reviews.
    • Re-enabling the ability to rate a Beer by its attributes (optional).
    And soon after:
    • Re-enabling the "serving type" field for Beer ratings/reviews (as an optional field).
    • Re-enabling the "value" field for Place ratings/views (as an optional field).
    Cheers!
     
  7. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,254) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    Staff Super Mod Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    Update re: the Updates
    The update has been applied. You can now rate beers by attributes (look, smell, taste, feel, overall) again.
    • Select "Attribute" from the pulldown to access the attributes. Review box (optional) opens when this occurs; you can't submit until you've rated.
    • Your final score is calculated once you've rated all 5 attributes.
    • An attribute rating can be applied to past ratings.
    http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/beeradvocate-ratings-explained.184726/

    We've got one hell of a flexible rating system that now caters to all user types.

    Thanks to @Mike for the update. He'll be working on applying this to the app soon, as well as adding serving type to beer reviews and value to place reviews.

    In the meantime, thanks again for your feedback and patience.

    Cheers!
     
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