New Rating System Feedback

Good point about the outlier. I've not fully absorbed the new rules yet, that's why I was testing with a new beer. I too favor reviewing over rating as it better helps me remember the beer and what I liked and disliked.

Drinkability was indeed more ambiguous that I liked as well. So as do you I like the use of overall impression since it lets me add in a bit more context.

 

Well as someone who reads reviews to help decide whether to spend money or not on certain beers I like the idea that an outlier rating deserves an explanation. May not be as friendly as you might like for the person doing the rating but it certainly is more friendly to the reader/user of the information.

 

For me, taste makes up 99% of my score, smell maybe 1% unless the beer smells really bad, mouth feel and appearance mean nothing(to me). I liked the old rating system better. I don't like putting scores on things that aren't equal factors to the overall score. Fresh caught bluegill look like shit, smell like shit, and feel strange on the tongue but the overall score would be about a 4.75

 

But if your fresh-cooked bluegill looked like shit, smelled like shit, tasted like shit, etc. you wouldn't enjoy it and it wouldn't be a 4.75 after you evaluate it on those points. Barley tastes like cereal, hops smell pretty good but taste pretty bitter, etc. and are not very enjoyable, but once converted to beer, it could be a 4.75. Like your bluegill dinner, you evaluated the taste, smell, appearance as part of the total experience. Why not enjoy that experience with your beer and document it that way?

 

TLDR: take this shit more seriously or join untappd

 

These are my concerns as well.

I don't like how the attributes contribute the same percentage to the overall score regardless of the style. When I'm having an IPA mouthfeel means almost nothing to me, but when I'm having an Imperial Stout mouthfeel is very important, second to taste in my opinion. I would like to be able to put in my overall rating with those differences in mind. I could say the same thing with appearance in regards to IPA and lagers.

I do understand and agree with the outlier aspect though. I recently wrote my first review simply because I had a beer that I hated in comparison to the handful of other reviewers and I didn't want my low score to skew the average of the beer too much without offering an explanation. But, and this goes back to the attributes, I was thinking that I would probably give that particular beer a 2.00, after putting in my attributes I was essentially told that I thought the beer was a 2.98...almost OK, when in fact I had to choke it down.

 

I use reviews, too, but I skip all the 3 sentence ones and go down to the longer ones where it's obvious the reviewer took their time and cares about doing a thoughtful review. Do you actually read every review? That's crazy.

 

would it help if I told you I was blind and the appearance aspect isn't a factor for me?

 

I have only rated a couple beers since the new changes went into effect, and have already had this same issue for them both. I found myself tweaking the different numbers to bring the final rated score down to where I meant for it to be. Which then defeats the entire purpose of the rating system breakdown. This is why I think the Overall score should be the final score that shows as your rating of the beer. It would keep this problem from coming back up.

Essentially, with the weighted scoring from the different categories, it is going to create a situation where every beer rating is pulling toward the middle, or a 3 rating. It makes it much more difficult to truly rate a beer a 1 or a 5, which if I drain pour a beer, that is one that needs a 1. Likewise if I find a beer that I cannot find fault in, it needs to get a 5. This system tries to pull back toward the median though, unless you of course give all attributes 1's or 5's.

I have had some horrible drain pour beers that still looked good or smelled good, but I am not giving them a good appearance or smell rating due to fear that this horrible beer will end up with an overall 2.5.

 

You realize how intimidating and unappealing this is going to be for new members, right? Forcing someone who's trying a style for the first time to score said beer's smell or mouthfeel is a total crapshoot. It's much easier to assign a single score to a beer and potentially revisit that score when you have more experience. Asking everyday people to deliberate factors like "mouthfeel" every time they try a new beer, just because professional beer judges use a similar criteria, is a good way to earn your site a beer snob reputation. While I don't necessarily want to see things dumbed down around here, shouldn't top priority be making things more friendly and streamlined for new members in order to expand the community? Or at the very least giving people new options, rather than taking them away?

 

How is it intimidating? Just tell me how you felt about it. Sounds pretty simple to me.

As for the thread subject, I applaud the return to attributes. (Granted, I had no real problem when they were present and optional.) It's not hard to think about your opinion for a minute or two. All you have to do is tell us what you thought of the beer. In defense of the outlier-defense situation, as well as the idea of quick ratings, numbers don't mean very much, especially when there are thousands of beers out there. Two 3-star IPAs can be vastly different from each other. It's the words that actually hold weight, as they articulate what the numbers tend to obfuscate. In addition, the words help sort people's tastes by actually defining the numbers. It's the words that led BA to be valued over RB and Untappd (as the consensus seems to be from the above posts).

You want a quick summary of beers and ratings from your history? Do what I used to do and keep a Word document or something.

 

You realize only a small fraction of users submit full written reviews, right? Telling people not to use a key feature of the site because they would prefer to just submit a score is asinine. We're not all here with the intent to write in depth consumer reports to influence others buying habits.

Also, I elaborated on why it would be intimidating to new users. See: every sentence following the first one.

 

It's a consumer website. The reviews are the core of that. Just sayin'.

And even after rereading the rest of your post, I'm missing the intimidation factor of telling people your thoughts. I think you're overthinking things a bit. No one's asking anyone to go full-on BJCP or anything, just to give their impression of a given beer. That's all reviewing is. Frankly, if people put half as much effort into reviewing as bitching about reviewing, we'd be drowning in reviews...

 

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I rarely turn to user reviews when deciding whether to give a beer a try or not. I will, however, often take a quick glance at the beer's aggregate score. So from my point of view, reading through the notes of dozens of people I've never met before when deciding on a six pack is a much greater example of "overthinking things".

 

How? By that logic, if I click on a random beer right now nearly every other score would have text under it. That is very rarely the case.

Also, what percentage of users have submitted a review? Do you guys have that number?

 

Well I read each post and agree with everyone against the change. I just find this is going to be an extra step in the process of reviewing - and an annoying one at that. But if we are going to have to keep this system, I'll just use the across the board method so if I want a beer to have a 3.5 rating, i'll put 3.5 for every attribute.

This is because I don't see anything but taste and smell as being a factor in my review. I don't need these extra steps to help me judge my own opinion. I don't need a system to tell me my 4.0 rating should actually be a 3.5 because the appearance was off.

I still don't feel as though we got a real reason behind the update. And if catering to the casual user is important, I wouldn't think the word requirements should come into play in any place.

I like the idea of the outlier system but it just doesn't work. I got flagged as outlier on Bell's Venus, so I just wrote "This beer tasted really bad". Being forced to write these doesn't make me want to write an explanation of why I rated this the way I did. The idea works on paper but the implementation doesn't.



This just all boils down to change, and people don't like change. A week ago we all had the freedom to rate how we pleased. It catered to every reviewer and their style of reviewing. Now, everyone is forced to review based on attributes. This is a massive change from the freedom to being forced into a new system. Windows 8 epicly failed consumer support because it was a drastic change from windows 7. Now they are going back to their roots and mixing in old implementations of 7 and 8 to form windows 10. I feel like BA should do the same. If you are going to force people into attribute ratings, make it gradual. This sudden change has made many people upset, and that is not good for BA. I don't intend on leaving because of it, but it definitely discourages me from using the rating system. I really believe there was a step backwards on this one.


A good suggest I saw above, was the ability to toggle between written reviews and non-written reviews. But still the best idea I think, would to go back to what was implemented last time.
Maybe a good way of accomplishing your goal would be to give more weight to written reviews. This would encourage users to write reviews so their rating counted! Think encouragement for your goal rather then discouragement.

This is just beer, and we're all getting worked up over it, but in the same case, it's just beer, and a few ratings from the old system should't make a impact worth these changes. So what if someone thinks a 3.0 beer is a 5.0.... Let the people choose to rate how they want.

 

It's funny you mention being forced to review Bell's Venus, because I had to as well. And this is what I put as a result of needing a review:

"5 Words are all that is needed: This was a drain pour."

 

Would like to know the numbers for reviews the last couple of years. Prior to that to do a review you had to attach a written review. The 40% number for all historical reviews may be correct but I assume by looking at newer beers and breweries that number is much lower since recently number reviews could be added with no text review.

Here is a good example, new brewery, new beer, 21 ratings, 0 reviews.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/33510/146138/

I am guilty of not writing reviews too, real bummer so many ratings now and so few real reviews.