Changes: Beer Hads, Full Reviews & Ratings

Add another rating. The full reviews, community Hads rating, and the bro's rating. What's wrong with this idea?

 

I've been reading through the feedback and there's a few common responses:

1) Most established members of the site like how the site was before. This one is fairly obvious, and is human nature. It's been working fine for a long time, why change it? Especially enraged about "Had"s obscuring reviews on beer pages.

2) Honest "Had" users defending the system from attack. Again, natural reaction. There are many people using "Had"s responsibly and it seems this is something of a silent majority on the site. It's a multi-purpose system, and there are users using it for many different goals.

3) A lot of newer members say they were attracted to the site because of the quality of reviews, even though they didn't feel confident enough to review themselves. I think this is the most important aspect to consider. The beer scene is moving more social, more check-in (Had) based, and BA needs to adjust to that to survive. However, it seems clear that the site should stay strong in the areas it has had an edge on other sites (Quality reviews, strong regional forums, accurate ratings scale, etc.), while moving in that direction.

Tweaks I would make based on feedback provided (perhaps in site redesign):

1) Replace Bros score with the new overall score that includes reviews and hads put together (perhaps weighted or not, depending on stats research). Let the review score stand on it's own in addition in the place it's always been.
2) Have two sections on a beer profile page, a "social" tab and a "reviews" tab. Possibly show both on the same page, with the option to go full-page of either with a click. One area would show check-ins, Had ratings, local comments. The other would show the detailed reviews. Similar to how Facebook timeline has 2 columns.
3) Users' ratings should not count towards the scores until a minimum number of reviews/hads has been conducted.
4) With the return of the karma system, allow top reviewers to have their reviews shown at the top, and/or have reviews from people you follow at the top.
5) Make it clear with instructions that a Had rating should not just be a 5 or a 1. With incremental numbers, that should be a little more obvious to newer users, but it should be stressed that this is not a rating to be taken lightly.

 

I was mostly asking the question to the community not directed entirely at you guys.

 

Agree whole heartedly. Luckily I'd made notes on many of the beers where I felt a quarter increment was warranted, so changing some of mine won't be too hard.

 

wow, this thread has reached TL;DR length...

seriously tho, i think giving people the option of ticking via "hads" was giving voice to people "with real lives" just fine. i'm also fine with those scores having an impact, but they really should be weighed less heavily. it's only fair. hopefully this will be sorted out as you guys figure out ways to filter or refine the different datasets that different people are looking for, and giving individuals the options to do so.

(EDIT - and of course, that means i miss axesandanchors' AWESOME suggestions. +100000 to his post!)

 

I think you're missing the point. This is a change in expectation that will likely influence the site dramatically. It is (amont other things, some good, some bad) disincentivizing users from providing reviews for the site. BA needs to balance getting a lot of new users (revenue) and incentivizing there new users to provide good user input (reviews, among other things). This good user input is what is getting all the new users in the first place.

 

get some sleep. you deserve it! fresh eyes and rested head in the morning is always best for working with code.

 

I think we should make an important distinction here...BA has always been ticker friendly, but friendly to the good type of ticket (the one who thinks critically and at some length about each beer and writes a thoughtful review). I agree with your worry, but it is more a worry that BA will become friendly to the bad type of ticker (RB-style mass ticking).

I think that there will continue to be, in the everyday culture of the forum and its users, a greater respect for full reviews than for Hads, regardless of the score integration. As long as people on here still hold up the value of a full review, I don't think mindless ticking will become the norm. (This isn't to say Hads have no value, or that people who don't review aren't contributing to the site.)

 

i'll join ya. cheers and thanks for listening to us bitch and wine. it is what we do best!

 

Personally not a fan of adding Hads into the overall review score. Whenever I "had a beer" and then review it later on; the review vs had score is almost always drastically different. For a tasting where you have a small pour; your opinion will be drastically different than tasting a full serving of said beer, and actually concentrating on the tasting like I always do. Most people's hads (at least almost all of mine) are from tastings.

Also really want to have the time stamps back and not the inaccurate time vs present note at the bottom of reviews. I'd like to know when one-off bottles were distributed sometimes, and since they don't date them; the reviews are the only accurate point of release vs the first available bottle review.

 

This is a date which will live in 'famy.' Thank you so much for .25 ratings.

 

As I read and think about this more it hit me. Hads are for either personal use by tracking beers you had, or for traders to let others know what beers you have already had. Why make the scores so public? Why not just keep them as part of a users profile? I see this as a mix of the way things were, and how they are now. Just my 2 cents.

 

i propose we stop calling them "hads" and instead renaming them something like "quick rates"... or hell, let's just embrace the beast and call them "TICKS"!

 

Great feedback!

I think this suggestion is a necessity to be tweaked. I would love the option to be able to sort a beer's ratings by either including only reviews or reviews and hads.

 

Todd, this is slightly unrelated to a beer's reviews, more so to a user's reviews but...

Is it possible to add a drop-down menu type system within a user's own reviews so I can easily look at say just my reviews of a certain breweries beer or just my reviews of a certain style? For example, lets say I want to see which beers I have reviewed by Founders: currently I have to click the button to sort by brewery and then keep clicking over to the next page until I get to them alphabetically, which can be somewhat cumbersome for a BA that has reviewed a lot of beers. It would be nice to be able to somehow filter my reviews to show me only my reviews of Founders beers (in this case). Hopefully that made sense....