Proposed Updates to Top Rated Beer Lists

It all makes sense to me in the ever changing landscape and revolving doors of beers. Especially in now times, as you mention, just the sheer number of new US breweries and offerings alone not to mention distribution issues/disruptions we sometimes face now. I embrace all 3 main points: Raw Average raking in all numerical ratings, the proposed "active only beers"(2 yrs is IMO a fair amt of time although some beers are very slowly rotational vs 'one off') which makes way for your 3rd point proposing a lower minimal number of ratings to 5 thus creating more area/visibility for new beers. Sensible changes Todd for Top Rated Beers. Cheers!

 

Yeah I feel like this is important. I see many local and smaller breweries in general who are just shy of that 10 review cutoff on some beers

I also agree with this. Wouldn't even be too hard to go back and archive previous years. Maybe when you navigate to the top 250 it defaults to the current year but there's a drop down box where you could check the year you want

 

And this little snippit is exactly why this change is warranted, give small brewers an opportunity to be discovered. Heck there were so many breweries right in my local area I was completely blind to until I became active on BA. And isn't that kinda the entire point?

 

My issue here - and I don't know if I've actually raised it before or only said it in my head - is that you have way more raters throwing up straight 5's than 1's. Using raw averages would seem to result in a higher average than might be otherwise be warranted.

Many times beers that were initially added to the database as one-offs are subsequently brewed again, as an anniversary beer, or go into rotation. Whenever I come across one of these - not infrequently - I submit an edit request but I notice that other reviewers have been adding reviews in the meantime. I assume that there are a fairly huge number of these that I haven't stumbled across. For this reason, whenever I add a beer to the database, I add it as a rotator pretty much regardless - I apologize if this is dickish.

100% yes. I often feel lonely and irrelevant drinking all these low-traffic northern New England and Québec beverages and crave validation.

 

Messing with the top 250 list really throws some people’s world in the chaos. How about expanding it to the top 500!?! … I bet that would get the trade forums moving!

 

I Like the proposed changes Todd.

Just a little confused because I thought only active beers appear in the top lists now as it is. Currently retired beers are not eligible anyway, so not sure how this is a change? What am I missing?

lowering the minimum number of ratings to 5 is a good idea, and it is not going to affect the Top 250. I don’t think people understand there is an “unknown weighted formula” Todd uses to get the rankings. Just because a new beer gets “5” perfect 100 scores, does not mean it’s instantly jumping into the top 10. It still is put through a weighted formula to get ranked.

 

I think the change from 10 to 5 is a good idea since it will open up people to more beers and breweries, just as Todd mentioned.

Often at times many of the inactive beers I find aren't inactive either, they just haven't been rated in a long time, so I just find them when I happen to review them and sent a note to the staff to un-retire the beer.

 

I don't know if it is already the case but my suggestion is to only consider beers that meet at least the minimum number of characters to be considered a review.

 

Ratings vs reviews are two different things. I believe all of these changes are directly related to ratings, not reviews

 

Can we please have a top 100 list for retired beers… or beers that are only brewed annually…

 

I had this issue last night. I went to a brewery out of town and entered a new beer. I had no idea if it was a one-off, rotator, or even a regular menu item. I just make my best guess.

 

Since likely most of the beers to which you refer are subregional, I don't see the value of featuring them on the top beer list if the intended purpose for doing so is to expose the beer to more people.

Perhaps dealing with this on a regional basis would better serve the purpose of exposing top beers to people who are actually in the position to drink them.

 

Please do this! I’ve wanted this for yonks but never actually mentioned it. The Irish top rated beers list is just ridiculously inaccurate, because the best stuff being made these days is never getting more than 10 reviews. This change would really help I suspect. Thank you.

 

I am generally in favor of your proposals, but like everyone here, wondering what the real results will be. Have you considered creating a sandbox version of this that you and maybe some moderators can review and look for unintended consequences before going live with it?