Thoughts on the latest updates? Top 250, etc.

The first thing I noticed is that everything from De Garde is gone.

I'm not a huge fan of the change, the rAvg's all seem to be generally the same as they were before purging the ticks (meaning there was likely very little bias in them) but they've now cut their sample size dramatically. That certainly doesn't help the statistical significance of the list..

 

I am from Iowa and can get these when they're released. That being said anytime beers that are easier to have access to get higher on the list it's better for the beer community as a whole.

 

As it should be. To my mind, the hype plays a big factor in these new releases, so it should take time before a brand new beer becomes part of the list.

 

CBS is there for me.

 

I hear ya, but i bet whatever system you use the rare beers will float to the top. Now i know TG beers are a whole different level of hard to get....but in the top 4 you still have

Pliny Younger- pretty much regional draft release
Heady- regional release
Westy- pshhh, who knows when it will come back to US
CBS- draft only release as of now....

 

Yes, because Choklat Oranj is a better example of the style than Good Morning. Let's be honest, only those beers which are prevelant and receive greater distribution will be reflected.

 

So you're saying a beer released yesterday with 10 5.00 reviews should top the list?

 

I agree with this, the recent trend of people not doing reviews and just providing a score will hurt the newer beers that predominantly have a small % of reviews compared to ratings.

 

Not sure how you derived this from my posts. There needs to be a greater balance. The Top 250 list basically just became another Beers of Fame. I preferred the previous distinction.

 

If the goal is for the reviews have a greater affect on the ratings, I think the solution isn't to remove the hads from the calculation completely, just simply weight them less. I'd do a weighted function where a review is worth 2x what a had is. That way you don't drastically decrease your sample size but the reviews do have more weight in the calculation. Shouldn't be too difficult to implement I'd assume.

Cheers again to you Todd for trying to make the website function even better than it already does!

 

This thread should not be buried in this forum, this is a major change and should be in one of the more mainstream forums for all changes to see.

This is a major change to the site, if the goal is for people to know about these change and encourage more reviews, the more eyeballs see this the better.

 

My problem is that previously, the top 250 was suppose to be the best beers out there while the beers of fame list were the best beers that have established themselves or somewhat easier to get. Now, both list are heavily filled with the more established beers and the newer ones (like Tree House Good Morning, Nuthulu, anything De Garde, ...) are left off. So when the beers at the bottom of the top 250 are very blah, it makes the list less relevant. Now the top new beers list has a better selection of beers, but because of the drastically reduced numbers, the stats integrity of the top new list is terrible (#3 and #7 beer have 11 reviews, how is that helpful to anyone?).

BA was my favorite site because I loved the top 250 list, an honest pro-rated list of the best beers currently out. Any beer needed a good 90-100 beers to make it on the list, anything retired was removed, and all the best beers bubbled on to and up the list. Pretty much nearly every beer on the list was gold. Now, a lot of the beers on the list below 150 I find myself rating in the mid to low 3s and not beers I would recommend to people. Not what I call a set of top 250 beers.

 

Yes the top few are still incredibly limited, but top to bottom the new top 250 is way more accessible.

 

The Too 250 beers is not about accessibility. It's about the Top 250 beers. This is the problem many of us are having. If anything, the Beers of Fame was always a good reference for attainable beers.

 

More accessible, but way worse beers. I would say it would be more fair to list some of the best IPAs on the list like Trillium's Artaic and Upper Case over mediocre but accessible beers like FSW Union Jack and Wookey Jack. If I want to know more about the FSW beers, they are on the beers of fame list.

 

Alternatively, were they originally rated so highly due to the rareness?

 

If a beer gets good enough ratings it will be on the list. If a brewery is so damn small they cant get their beer out to enough people to get enough reviews....then too freakin bad. Do we really want 100 people in the new england region deciding what the best IPA is just because they are the only ones who can get it?

 

I agree it's about the best I'm just saying with the new system the top 250 has more accessible beers rising. A lot of the other limited beers might have gotten higher ratings because they are harder to get. The new system has definitely changed the top 250 but out of all the beers I've had off of it I can't say too many of them weren't great beers.

 

Recent trend of ratings instead of reviews will have negative impact on new breweries unless people start reviewing again.