The ability to "like" beer reviews?

This was a thing for a while, but disabled for some reason.

What I’d really love is the ability to search for beers in a particular user’s reviews, so I could know what that BA said about a beer I wanted his/her opinion on.

 

This might not be exactly what you're looking for but you do have the ability to follow other contributors to beer advocate.

That way you can see their review on whatever beer you're looking up. That is, if that person has reviewed that beer.

 

There's the Top Reviewers thing - not sure how that works, but I find it pretty useful as I can usually locate a review from reviewers far more discerning than me or from names I know or some people in my neck of the woods. Not quite the same thing as "likes", but a decent and useful (if you ask me and nobody did) tool nonetheless.

I'd have some concern that adding "likes" to reviews would potentially create a popularity contest, but maybe not. We can report inappropriate reviews, so I guess having likes again wouldn't be a bad thing. I read reviews all the time - after the fact mostly when I am stumped on identifying something or my thoughts are coming down totally against the grain - and I only vaguely recall the feature and never used it.

 

Part of the user appeal of BA is the number of divergent opinions on the reviews and part of the corporate appeal of BA is the number of reviews.
I can easily see a Like button becoming a “me too” button with users clicking Like rather than adding their own review.

 

As others have said this has been discussed before, but I definitely agree here. It would be helpful to be able to like a certain beer review and then sort by likes. This used to be possible, but was removed roughly a year ago. I suppose this was because it became more of a popularity contest where users would fish for likes on their reviews and thus get sorted toward the top. You can still sort by top reviews which is somewhat helpful.

A few things I would support:

1) Bringing back likes on beer reviews and to the sort function. The popularity problem was real, but better than nothing.
2) Allowing more than 25 reviews per page so that you can CTRL+F within all reviews rather than the 25 on that page. Sometimes I'm looking for a certain keyword within reviews.
3) Adding an undo button on beer reviews and forum posts. A mistake within the textbox can be permanent. An undo button would be helpful so that you don't accidently erase your whole review or forum post while creating it.
4) My most novel idea: Add a button for a second text box for consecutive reviews that would be placed below/above your first review. Sometimes you want to review a beer more than once without replacing your first review. This would allow repeatability of beer reviews without cluttering the page.

I'm pretty simple and nice, so maybe this is too demanding, but one can hope for change.

 

I’d be ok with that. If a review has lots of likes, I would have to assume those users felt the same way.

 

Thank you. I do like the idea of adding different reviews and do the same for my additional reviews with the line format. I know you can edit your reviews, but I would like an undo button so that if you accidently erase your whole review while you're typing you can restore it. Like what is present in most Microsoft Office programs.

 

Maybe if there was a notification that the like was received it would be used more? I think this could be a good tool to increase the number of reviews.

 

I remember when there was a “dislike” button. My review of Sump had 2 dislikes... Haterz always gonna hate!!!!!

 

This might make it a bit too much like Untappd, but has commenting on reviews been considered? I think that would drive up review numbers

 

There was a discussion on this not too long ago. The consensus seemed to be that it would not be helpful. Anything that could be said in a comment could be said just as well in a stand-alone review.

 

I'm probably glad it's not available anymore, I'm a lousy reviewer. There are certain BA's that nail reviews and are spot on when you try that particular beer. It helps a lot when you are shopping for new ones and don't want to blow 20 bucks or so on a 4 pack of beer that is something you won't like whether it's good or bad.

 

Personally, I feel the lack of ability to like or comment on reviews is what makes our reviews better. There is no back-n-forth, social-media type conversations there. It's strictly limited to the experiences of users with a particular beer. That simplicity is one aspect that makes BA stand apart from other beer rating websites.

Likewise, the inability to like / comment on reviews made it easier to start getting into reviewing beer. People can't call you out right below your review, so may as well run it and share your experiences.

 

I’m in the camp of adding back the Like ability, rarely used or not. I use it now and again, and for those who do use it - it only serves to engage people. I know it’s sacrilege to do something like discuss adding the number of likes to beer karma, but I think the Likes is another missed opportunity. I’m sure there are technical difficulties, but I can’t imagine re-enabling the functionality could be all that difficult. Taking it to the next level with some of the great ideas in this thread, or in a manner like what Untappd has done - I can see the challenge in that. But similarly, improving this functionality seems to me like an easy fix.