New Rating System +/-

I'm gonna back you up with this excellent perspective on the changes.

 

Exactly, seemed like old system accommodated the tickers and the serious reviewers. Now serious reviewers have been disenfranchised for no good reason.

Does BA have a users council that they can float ideas like this by before they actually go and implement them? Seems like it would save a lot of pain on BA and the customers of this site.

 

Great points. But, if I wanted to review on untappd, I'd go to untappd.

Why scrap a system that so many enjoyed and replace it with something that's watered down? Would it have been too complicated to add a comments option to "hads" and keep the old 5 category reviews (I'm not a programmer, so maybe)?

I know it's easier to go ahead with something and deal with the backlash rather than hearing it up front and looking like you don't care, but I would have really appreciated a heads up on ditching the data I took time to consider and input.

I always viewed BA as a symbiotic relationship. The bros provided an awesome, free database and message system while the users provided free pics, new beers, reviews, etc. If I don't know that my time and input is worth keeping around, what's the point?

 

We aren't the customers of the site. Like any free website, you as a user, and your user-generated content are the "product". The clients are the advertisers.

 

Wrong, we are customers. Every time you click a page here it contributes to the money BA gets from advertisers. Maybe not a customer in paying for the site, but we are the customers of this site, free or not.

Not to mention the people who subscribe to the magazine and attend BA run events.

 

Man, just as with some of your (fantastic) reviews, I may disagree with you, but you express yourself intelligently and respectfully. You are indeed an asset to the BA community. Keep on keepin' on, sir.

 

Magazines depends very highly on advertising dollars. In order to bring in those advertising dollars at a higher rate, magazines need more readers. An advertiser will have to pay a higher price for an ad in a magazine if it has a high amount of readers. Think of why BA lowered their price. It wasn't to be nice, it was to ramp up the reader numbers, so they can demand higher cost of advertising.

Changes to this site are doing the same thing. I don't see many people at all benefiting from the changes, outside of those who run this site. These changes will generate more subscribers, more page views, more clicks, more ratings, more $$$.

 

You forgot that those extra dollars also pay the professional staff hired in last couple years who brought out the mobile app and who are revamping the underlying site programs to be more reliable and less prone to crashing, etc., etc.

 

Well we're just arguing semantics, but usually the definition of a "customer" is someone who exchanges money for a good or service. The advertisers are paying BA in exchange for an advertisement on the site. We do not pay to use the site.

Now since it's the internet it's a bit different because I'm sure it's based on # of page views, so yes, obviously the users factor into the revenue equation. If the users don't visit the site, then the advertisement income decreases. But to further complicate things - most of the content on the website is user generated, so without the users, the content decreases as well.

As for the magazine - as it's priced, I would have to imagine that it's only self-sufficient, not raising extra funds for the operation of the website. But that is just pure speculation.

 

Look I have tried to be tactful and hoped that the answer to this question would be obvious from the amount of disappointment expressed here. Here is my opinion in a less tactful way.

IMO, The Bros made a business decision.. It wasn't ever really open for debate because it was a business decision that involved "the bottom line". It is obvious that the Bros are smart enough to realize that the level of happiness with the new system would be extremely small among "veterans". And while they may care in a general sense what we think, in a specific business sense they do not care what we think. And shouldn't. Therefore they did it, and so it was a fait accompli, which they assumed, rightly, was how a decision like this should be made.

This is about clicks. That is how this business works. It is exactly like a store that moves a whole section of merchandise to an area of the store that their business sense tells them will produce more profit, and/or stops providing a service that they feel was keeping new customers from visiting. Customers don't get asked if this makes business sense, but they may be asked, after the fact, if they like the new setup, and this info may be combined with a look at the profits, or lack of them, from changes made as a way of gauging if it was a smart move or not, or whether things should go back to as they were, or to some even newer arrangement.

Could they have made it possible for folks to get their info before it was done away with? Yes. But this debate would then have been occurring before the fact, and my gut feeling is that is exactly what was trying to be prevented.

 

to be less tactful myself, it's not a huge surprise that a site that transmits your password in the clear when you log in also didn't consult users before deleting a large portion of their data.

 

Well, none of that was very "punk" of them to do.

 

Well said, I would even take it a step further and say many people on here are "partners" also as without thread participation, adding beer reviews, beers, places, etc. this place would not exist.

 

Removing the categories is a real kick in the nuts to the thoughtful reviewers who spent years reviewing beers in a very conscientious, beneficial manner.

Hopefully the Bros will take this feedback and improve this latest change. BA in general just took a major step backwards in the dumb downing of the reviews.

 

Actually, we are the product BA is marketing. Without the reviewers, BA could not exist as it does today. We the reviewers are what bring the advertisements to the pages of BA, the ads are, for the most part, for us, and the peeps.

I, along with the other reviewers, have willingly been exploited, in exchange for a venue to post our beer reviews and beer thoughts on the web.

BA was the best of the web beer sites... was.

 

Like others have already said, I have to now do math using the percentage breakdowns to get an overall score that the old system would have given automatically. It's not the worst thing to have to to do, but it's still a hassle.

 

I'm confused, personally..

When I go to review a beer, I only can score it 1-5 with .25 increments. Am I screwing something up?

 

At the top of the drop down, click on "precise". It will allow you to enter any number from 1.00 to 5 in increments of .01

 

Thanks.

I know it's idiotic to be so specific with ratings (others have said it in this thread), but it's some sort of OCD thing with me.

I also agree with the lot of people who prefer how the review system was in the past... the tap/nitro-tap/can/bottle requirement was more helpful than I thought it ever would be at first.

 

I agree totally with the sentiment, yet after examining a competitors website (ratebeer) that is used in the largest store around here with the biggest selection (The Party Source in northern KY) along with this one, it is disheartening to think I should import my reviews there to have a cohesive review that does not involve blind thought to a single variable. What "clicker" thinks a websites business revolves around something that is in descriptive as a flat vanilla non descriptive number? None. I am new to reviewing beers online, I have tried new ones each and every week for 20 years and am getting to the point of forgetting some characteristics---thus online reviewing, had I started early I would have over a thousand judging from what I have reviewed in the short time I have been here. I wanted solid processes to help me keep track of all this and to help others with like minds find what they like. The single number does not help anything at all. Vanilla just IS. Take no stern thought I am attacking you, I agree with you and have followed your posts on here noting a sensible straight forward approach. I am shocked though we are debating "vanilla". This is THE ADVOCATE, NOT THE ASSOCIATE. I have sought commonality and comrade, not "vanilla" as I like to refer to it.

Love the icon by the way----Dawg music is some of my go to for relaxation.