Your review was not useful...

I agree. Some readers will 'hate' anything for the wrong reasons. Unfortunately I see a lot of arguments coming. Do I have the right to give a 'Thumbs Up" to balance out the 'Thumbs Down?"

 

I kind of think this feature should just go away. Why should the usefulness of reviews be tallied? When does it end? Can I then decide after I drink the beer that the usefulness integer was not accurate/useful and downvote the downvotes?

In a way, it's allowing us to review (or rate) reviews...which is just weird to me.

 

I think its a nice idea for the "places" section. There have been many times in my travels where a user or two has written an informative review about a place that I was thinking of trying. I always wished there was a way to thank them short of a beermail. Just my .02 .

 

Agreed. This feature can easily turn into a circlejerk of beer people up or down voting reviews based on other factors, like popularity or whatnot.

 

The up vote, down vote is an unfortunate unintended consequence of the latest changes to reviews. Intended to have the ability to up vote reviews that are more informative than the "tick" reviews to make them more visible. System should be the way it used to be with reviews with a minimum character length with an added feature to put a short comment on hads and not include these as reviews.

 

While I am at it, the ability to rate places without writing a review really degrades the whole usefulness. I can see people not thinking they have the ability to write a whole beer review, but people should be at least be forced to write a review for places.

 

Agree 100%. It is frustrating when traveling to think 3 or 4 people have rated a place, only to find they are all ticks.

 

A while back, a buddy of mine 'rated' an established retailer which he'd never visited, in order to test the functionality of this new feature when it was first implemented (he later removed his rating). Ultimately it's up to users to interpret the data based upon full reviews and the sort of spot-check ratings described by @dbrauneis, above.

P.S. Doesn't everyone still carry a pocket notebook and 'golf pencil'?

 

Would you rather there be no ticks at all, and presumably zero ratings whatsoever for that particular place?

 

Why not have a window pop up asking the user to describe why he/she feels the review should be downvoted? This doesn't have to go to anyone but the staff, and perhaps they can guage how/why people are using the system.

Seems like right now, I can go and downvote a dozen reviews for no reason at all, and that could potentially have an affect on the placing of that users review. I'd like to see people held accountable for their actions.

 

I understand why it is helpful to upvote reviews, and let the most informative reviews float to the top.

I don't see why it is necessary to downvote reviews. On a site where people love to disagree with those who don't exactly share their tastes, the downvotes are not likely to be anything more than a device that discourages or hides the opinions of those who dissent.

Stick with the upvotes. Drop the downvotes.

 

Man, I swear I'm not trying to be an ass here...but how are you going to quantify abuse, when "usefulness" is such a subjective thing. If @markdrinksbeer goes and downvotes a dozen reviews for no reason at all, how will you be able to determine his intent?

As an example, I've received recent downvotes because when I use the new review function, I view it as a "notes to self" sort of thing and I don't think the review police appreciate that I use it that way. So personally I think those downvotes that I've received are bogus and should be considered abuse. But that's my subjective opinion.

Again, not trying to be an ass, just really having a hard time with this one part of an otherwise improved rating/review system, IMO.

Side note: will I in any way be penalized for writing quick simple reviews to help me remember things about a beer if I continue to get downvotes? Because if that's the case, I will just go back to simply ticking since that has no consequences.

 

I actually completely agree with this.

 

Okay...totally cool with that. Thanks for the reply. My "reviews" are very helpful for me...but probably no one else. At least in comparison to the other reviews. As long as I don't get swept up in the abuse algorithm, then I'm fine with being at the bottom.