New Rating System +/-

I've been reading reviews in this website for a while now, but I only started reviewing beers myself a couple of weeks ago. I was very disappointed with this change, both as a reader and writer - it was very nice to read a review and see exactly why the person liked the beer (for example 4.5 for aroma but 3 for taste). I believe this new system is doing exactly the opposite of what it was meant to do initially.

I think it's really unprecise how I'm supposed to pick an arbitrary number from 1-500 to review a beer in multiple aspects. The 5 categories system was the best thing about this website, and just like many other people said, the new system makes BA closer to Untappd. I like Untappd because it's a nice tool to help me keep track of every beer I drink, but I have never care if I didn't rate a beer accurately there, because that's what BA is for. This change defeats the purpose of this website.

I really hope the bros will reconsider this change and bring back the old system. Or even easier, give us two options when reviewing - either use the 5 categories system, and leave a 1-number rating option for people who also want to write a review, even though I think the second option encourages unprecise and arbitrary ratings, as I believe it's been doing since the change.

I'll keep reviewing and doing the calculations manually using the old percentages.

 

To me, the loss of the beer serving type is a bigger issue as there is no work around for that as there is for the rating change fomat. For those of us who travel (or trade for that matter) it is really helpful to know whether a certain beer is available in bottles, cans, growlers, etc. Reintroducing the "Serving Type" function for each review would enable this site to offer something that the other sites don't and, if that function were combined with the ability to note the serving type availability on each beer's landing page (which RateBeer offers) that would be a powerful combination that would considerably increase the utility of this site relative to the others.

 

So, after the change was implemented, I intentionally waited to come and post on this forum, because while my initial reaction was negative (unexpected change will do this), I could reasonably see some benefit to the ideas presented for the overhaul. I also wanted a chance to actually use it a time or two before I decided whether or not it was ultimately a good change. Also, I think this thread needs to be in Beer Talk--or at least somehow bumped to the front page, rather than hidden away in the Help section.

I'll start with the positive:

1. This change ultimately doesn't do anything to the most valuable part of reviews--the words. Some of the best reviews on this site are the best because of how the writer describes their beer experience. Guys like BuckeyeNation and BEERchitect were incredibly compelling reads, not because of the category scores that they gave to the beers they reviewed, but because of how they described those categories. I can say that reading their reviews while enjoying a beer or few definitely helped me refine my palate and put a specific ID to a flavor or aroma that I recognized but couldn't quite place. That said, the categorical scores did help provide context for that description, which itself is valuable as well.
2. The idea of giving reviewers more freedom to score precisely is a noble one. On a very basic level, you are enhancing usability of the site and therefore, user choice. And if users were tweaking categorical scores to arrive at a desired overall score, then this change essentially allows users to arive at a desired overall score without finagling the numbers.
3. I like the ability to upvote reviews so that some of the best can be featured.

BUT, I feel like this change overwhelmingly instituted more negative elements than positive elements, especially considering the fact that items #1 and #2 above could have been accomplished without any of the negative elements being attached. Below are what I see as the drawbacks to this change (I know pretty much all of these things have been mentioned in some form or another, but if there is any hope to the change being tweaked, etc., it will depend on specific and thoughtful feedback. I'm simply adding mine):

Context
As noted above, the most valuable part of a review is the written word. However, also noted above, the categorical numbers give a reader context for that person's written word. After all, two users who describe an aroma for all the positives impart may still score that aroma differently. One may score it a 4.25 while the other may give it a 4.5. Written word is excellent for being descriptive, but it's not so good at imparting an objective value. And ultimately, the change, while it doesn't take away the ability to write a detailed description, it also doesn't really encourage it. So you've removed context for... what, exactly?

Precision
Building upon item #2 above, the idea of giving users more freedom is, in theory, a good one. However, as others have already noted, I feel that you have to consider the fact that you can't give more freedom than people can reasonably handle. In this case, the freedom to manually rate a beer in increments of two decimals ignores the fact that the vast majority of human beings don't have a palate that is capable of distingishing between ANYTHING at that level of precision. Having two decimal places makes sense when you are calculating the score as a weighted average, and even having two decimal places at quarter-value increments works because you are limiting the number of nodes at which a user can distinguish between beers A and B.

Personally, if this new system stays in place, I'm going to continue scoring categorically using a spreadsheet because I'm not comfortable arbitrarily picking scores to two decimal points. It makes me feel like I'm throwing a dart. It's a little frustrating that there is now an extra step, but I typically take a few minutes when I sit down to review my beers anyway, so this step likely won't account for any significant extra time.

Review Date
This is a seemingly minor thing, but it's frustrating that if you've reviewed a beer previously and go to update your rating, you can no longer change the review date. I recently re-reviewed a beer, and as I typically include bottle dating in my reviews, it now has a review date that takes place before the beer was bottled. I suppose I could just delete my existing review and submit a brand new one, but that seems like a hassle considering that it was just an easy thing to do previously. Yet another example of a loss of functionality without a well-articulated benefit that is coming in return.

Review Usefulness
As noted above, I think this is a positive change. However, I'm not really wild about the downvote side of the equation. I mentioned in a thread awhile back that I liked the idea of being able to note which reviews are helpful, but I feel like the downvote score is just too prone for abuse. And the offical way we're *supposed* to use the downvote is for reviews with which we don't agree? Seriously? The upvote is nice because you can show appreciation for well-written reviews, agree or disagree with the content of that review. Downvote will just be used for people to make their disagreement with a person's review known. Which means that the "usefulness" sort will ultimately become akin to the "lowest" sort.

Data Loss
All the above being said, my single biggest problem with the change is the fact that the categorical data for my 450+ reviews is gone with the wind. I can only imagine how those with thousands of reviews feel. At first, this didn't bother me because the weighted score was still in place for those reviews. But the more I think about it, the more it annoys me that from this point forward, my written reviews will have a parenthetical score next to each category, but my old reviews won't. And I have no realistic way of going back and figuring out the categorical scores. I tried using the Wayback Machine, but it doesn't seem to archive beer profile data. I'm jealous of all the users who had enough forethought to write their scores into the review or keep personal spreadsheets. This isn't as bad as just losing all review data wholesale, but it feels like a light version of that. Content that I worked hard to produce is now vanished into thin air.

Before I conclude this bloated and somewhat self-serving comment, I would say just a few things:

• I will keep reviewing, and while I don't like the idea of having to use a spreadsheet to continue with the weighted scoring, it's really not the end of the world, as I take my time for each review as it is.
• I would implore those of you who enjoy reviewing to keep doing the same. Remember, it's your words that those of us who read reviews care about. Keep sharing your beer knowledge and helping people like me expand their own knowledge.
• To the Bros (@Todd @Jason), I would implore you to, at the very least, find a way to get users who so desire access to their old categorical scores. I'm sure you can both appreciate the amount of effort that goes into writing hundreds (or thousands) of reviews and how those users--myself included--would appreciate having that data for their own safe-keeping or so that they can put the categorical scores into the written review. If there is a way to make this happen, please consider it.

Ultimately, I come to BeerAdvocate for the entire package, and losing what I like about one part of the package--even a significant part--isn't going to change my affinity for this site. I appreciate the community and everything it brings, and I just want it to be the best place it can be. Part of that means making sure it's financially viable so that it doesn't go away. And while I'm skeptical of how financially impactful this change could be, since it doesn't really add anything so much as simplify/take away features, if it's necessary to achieve that goal, then so be it.

 

Exactly. I review as I'm drinking the beer at my keyboard. I hate the new system and the fact that it's taken away the thoughtfulness that I typically put into reviewing a beer.

 

@Todd and @Jason
If there is no chance of retrieving the old weighted score data, can you say so now and I'll quit holding out any some hope?

 

Agree one hundred percent----it feels like a kick in the teeth for what WAS a fine system of rating versus a simple non-descript number that can mean anything. Will it come back or is this it for my enthusiasm and steering people who are into beer to this site????

 

I just found out about this new rating system after being away for a while. (And it looks like my thread inquiring about it was deleted...poor taste in my opinion) I am not a fan of these changes. Giving beer a single score as opposed to rating it on its various merits is very shallow and oversimplified. I have invested countless hours into reviews on this site and it feels like a core utility has been stripped away from us thereby trivializing the opinions that many of us care to share.

 

I'm still trying to figure out if I like the new system or not. I personally really like being able to do a straight rating that isn't forced to a quarter point. I would enjoy if they re-added 5 categories, allowed those to be "precise" along with overall, and perhaps removed their formula and simply used a reviewer's overall rating as "the" rating, the other values being for informational purposes.

Separately, sorry if this was asked in the 7 pages, but currently on iPhone. Anyone have issues with Safari mobile not recognizing the ability to vote a review up or down?

 

If the switch takes full effect, I'd love a week's window to cut and paste my weighted scores into my review narrative so I can have some apples to apples comparisons for my reviews going forward.

 

So I've been paying attention to this thread and have remained quiet up until now. As a long time reviewer, this change was a bit jarring, but like some others, I wanted to give it a few reps to really form an opinion.

A few thoughts...
As far as user-friendliness, I think having to pick a rating in order to have the option to write text is backwards. Yes, you can revise your rating, but it just feels backwards. I suppose I could get used to this.

The other thing I want to offer feedback to is the idea that the previous rating system was not user friendly enough and needed to be more interactive. While I think the changes address this, the omission of the categorical ratings and the reduced character limit seem to have a "watering down" effect to the reviews. The thing I have always appreciated about BA is that I can tailor the experience of the site to my heart's content. I primarily use it to review, complete trades, and use the homebrew forum. It is a customizable experience. I feel like with the streamlined reviews, the goal is to get everybody interacting in the same way and involved with reviews. With such a diverse community, I think such a goal is unobtainable. The new reviews I'm seeing that take advantage of the new minimum character limit offer very little (IMO of course) to the site, they might as well just have the numerical review without the text. It seems to have shifted the entire philosophy of reviewing beer on this site. Before, such a review would be deemed inappropriate and pulled from site, now it seems that such a review is encouraged. This may or may not be the case, but that's how I've interpreted it so far.

 

Your issue with the downvote aspect of the "usefulness" feature is very legitimate, and I hadn't considered it until you mentioned it. There's enough negativity on Beeradvocate (and the internet in general), without us needing to chase off new reviewers with discouraging downvotes. I imagine if Buckeyenation, BEERchitect, or even I (not that I'd ever consider myself anywhere near the same league as those guys) had had a bunch of downvotes on our early reviews, we might not have continued. Hopefully, brief and/or useless reviews will be lost in the mix because they *aren't* upvoted, not because they *are* downvoted.

 

I think some of what you say is true. I've seen a lot of new users with large amounts of beer karma, because they just go in and tick a number for 500 beers in a month. But like with anything, as it grows with popularity, people get in it for the wrong reasons. A lot of people seem to want to be apart of the beer culture and don't even like beer. Which is just very very very strange. New posts here popping up about "help me like beer." Either you like beer or you don't. Why do you need to like beer? There are so many other beverages to like. What makes beer so special?

And yes, it's seems like this site is getting watered down because of it.

 

1. There is no wrong reason, just someone with a different reason. 2. The clicks of new folks and the clicks of old timers are counted the same. If there are more noobs joining and clicking it is natural to try to make the site more comfortable for them so as to encourage profitable behavior.

 

May be best to post that question in this site sub-forum and post it as a bug to let the Bros know.

 

I am inclined to agree. To have the feature that we can just 'downvote reviews like that if we feel they don't offer anything' is not sufficient enough. When people write those couple word / one line reviews...I'm sorry, that's not a beer review. If anything it is more like personal notes (ala fictional "Enjoyed beer at Shake Shack with John" ). As others have eluded to, things like that would make more sense as a note viewable by only them in their 'hads' as opposed to a full fledged review. That's the reason why I don't use other beer review websites...the text part of the reviews always seem small and an afterthought.

Beer Advocate's rating and review system was what got me neck deep in craft beer. It's what made me want to trade and made me want to try beers outside of the ones my liquor store carried. Reading peoples concise reviews is what at the end of the day had me making 8 hour round trips to nowhere Vermont to seek out beer. 8 hours of driving for beer! Which eventually became an almost weekly beer-venture for over a year! Beer Advocate and it's well crafted and thought out reviews were the the motivation for me to go out and explore New England and find new things so I could 'return the favour' so to speak.

 

don't want to derail, but (1) implies that there is no moral order. pretty bold claim. also, morality aside, there are wrong reasons. for example, if you drink beer to lose weight, you're drinking beer for the wrong reason. as for (2), while there's truth in it, it's not entirely true. not all clicks are created equal. so too when you sell units of something. selling one unit in a way that sells you 100 more is not equivalent to selling one unit that nets you 0 more, unless you're using a stupid rubric for determining equivalency.

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on topic, having posted 2 reviews since the change, i still miss categories. i would like renewed access to my data, and i would prefer the option to fill out categories. if it's so clear to the bros that categories are the unpopular choice, i again request that you make it more difficult (but not impossible) to use categories (ie a bunch of extra clicks).

by the way, i think detailed reviews and blurbs can coexist. even if the first page fills up with "liked this beer. peace!" it's not hard to go to the next page if you need details. there were a lot of short reviews filling up the front page back in the day too, and it didn't make any difference. see also "top reviewers" and other easy ways to get at the info you want even if the default presentation isn't your preferred one. but bring back categories.

 

+1; I feel like virtually no one in this thread is acknowledging this.

I agree that there's a lot of noise in the "precise" score. I don't agree that there was any less noise in the categorical system. rAVG works to the extent it does because the noise of many reviews is assumed to balance out, but individual scores were still noisy. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Where did you see that? The update describes this as a way for "more thoughtful reviews to rise to the top." It's an answer (I'm not sure it's an effective one, but it's an answer) to complaints of reviews like "Mmm, good beer." That review gets downvoted.

Personally I think a better system would be to allow you to "favorite" reviewers. If you trust @BEERchitect's reviews, you can favorite him to have his review at the top for any beer.

If the equation was putting out scores that don't reflect how much you enjoyed the beer... then that's a bug, not a feature.

 

The categories offered context to the descriptive "words" being used. I can use Beeradvocate's review of Killer Penguin as an example:

1.98/5 (considered "awful".)

Honestly, I didn't get the sense that such a low score would have come from that review. Sure, it wasn't a super positive review, but nothing in it really stood out as being glaringly obvious of being "awful".

Now, if there were the categories, I could get a better sense of where this beer really suffered.