Beer Trader Feedback: Sneak Peek (Part 1)

Beer Trading has been a part of BeerAdvocate since our first forums back in the late 90s. Though it's evolved and become extremely popular, here at BA it's always lacked a critical feature to help traders better qualify other traders and reward those who truly embrace the camaraderie and culture of beer trading: a feedback system.

We've also promised a feedback system in the past, but never delivered. Combine this with the Bros' notorious iron fists of moderation and ... well let's just say we've felt your frustration.

Today we begin to own up to our promise, and make some changes in how we communicate what's going on here at BA.

For the last couple of weeks Jason, Mike and I have bounced concepts around and a few days ago I began development. Much progress has been made and I'm excited to release some screen shots of the work in progress; subject to change; see the thumbnails at the bottom of the post for large views.

Feedback View
The default view you'll see when looking at another member's beer trading history. It's simple and clean, with beer trader stats and a new beer trade form in the sidebar.

Traders will receive a rating (and text-based feedback) for each trade, which we'll track along with number of trades and points; see below. These stats can be extended and used throughout the site in endless ways.

Queue View
In this view you'll be able to see trades you initiated as well as those initiated by others. Based on the status of a trade, the queue will prompt you to take action; accept, deny or leave feedback.

How It Works
We wanted to keep the system simple, but useful.

• While this can certainly be used to capture feedback for past trades, we'll be encouraging all members to not ship a trade until both parties have accepted the trade via the new beer trader feedback system.
• Once both parties accept, each will be able to leave the other trade partner feedback.
• Once both parties leave feedback the trade will be deemed complete, feedback will be published and points awarded. (How this works may change as one trading partner might not leave feedback.)
• If a trade request is denied, the trade is cancelled; we'll track these too, just in case there's a pattern of abuse.
• The feedback system will be trusted based. Abuse won't be tolerated, but honest and constructive feedback will be encouraged.

Beer Trade Points
Each successful trade may yield points. We're not sure if these will apply to Beer Karma yet, but we're exploring ways to use points. In development we're using:

• Positive = 2
• Neutral = 1
• Negative = 0

When Will This Launch?
We're pretty busy with American Craft Beer Fest and the next issue of BeerAdvocate magazine on the way, but we're committed to release something soon. We'll keep everyone posted.

Also Under Development
We're also exploring these other beer trading related items. Some will launch prior to the site redesign, while others will occur during or after it.

• Main Beer Trading page; lists, links to help pages and forums, etc.
• Top & Bad Trader lists.
• Toggles for Wants/Gots that will allow members to decide which beers are up for trade, which are not and which ones rest in their beer cellars; with notes.
• Top Wants & Gots; based on the beers members tag as tradable.

... and a few more things we'll hold onto for now.

Recent & Upcoming Beer Trading Updates
I also snuck these in ...

• Beer Trading is no longer a sub-forum group.
• ISO:FT (Breweriana) has been created.
• Members only need to wait 30 days before gaining posting privileges.
• We're actively seeking mods.
• Once we get mods in place:
  • We'll return ISO:FT (Beer Only) to its original order thread by last replied to.
  • Include Beer Trading topics in What's New? again.
  • Allow Beer Trading posts to count towards totals.
  • Turn on Likes.
  • Put some trust into all of you beer traders out there, the new mods, the new feedback system and all of the other updates.

That's it for now. Much more to follow ...

In the meantime, we look forward to your feedback.

Cheers!

 

We thought about this too, but awarding zero points, increasing the number of negative trades and trade feedback/history should be enough. We'll see how it works and update as needed.

 

Good question. We're currently using positive, neutral and negative in development, but did consider:

• Awesome (above expectations) = 2 points
• Good (the norm, as expected) = 1 point
• Bad (below expectations) = 0 points

How's that?

(Original post has been updated to reflect this.)

 

Currently we're tracking 3 dates: the date the trade was initiated, and the date feedback was given for each trader; what we'll consider a completed trade for now.

We'd have to adjust things if we wanted to add delivery dates, at which point ... hell, we might as well add received dates and a field for tracking numbers. Of course we'd have to think about all of this a bit more and include it in a future update.

 

We're really trying to keep this as simple as possible, which will encourage use.

We're also thinking that the 0, 1 and 2 points would be cumulative (not unlike Beer Karma) vs. averaged across all feedback to create a score.