New Rating System +/-

I've already weighed in by voting against the new system for reviews. Took me a while to sort out my reasons.

1) My last 150 beers or so have beer ratings only and now I've become convinced that a rating not based on a review can be just fine but I personally don't remember as much about the rated beer as I do when reviewing beers, nor do I feel my appreciation of a rated beer is as deep, complex or complete as it us with a reviewed beer. So I've lost out some on the value added by thinking carefully about the beer. More importantly my enjoyment of later bottles has gotten lower. Effectively I'm losing out on appreciation of all the beers by rating without reviewing.

2). I don't buy the idea that because this is a consumer oriented site we should not be using the scales and categories that are like those used in judging competitions if we want to review. Consumers need two things--reasonable information on which to base purchase decisions and self education. By not having careful reviews done by others to read I'll be losing out on an opportunity to learn from other more experienced and knowledgable consumers. Consumer Reports is a an invaluable source of reviews for being an informed consumer. While BA was never a site with professionals doing reviews this new system moves things more than one step away from being consumer oriented and towards being a social media popularity contest.

 

I've been following this thread and like what a lot of you have to say, it's been educational. I think the biggest problem with the old system is that a lot of people don't really understand how it works and/or won't take the time to use it. We live in a culture of immediate satisfaction. People want to enter a number plus a couple words and be done with it. That for them is how they want to interact with the beer.

Some people really like the old system and I can understand why. It's what's been used for a long time, they've reviewed often hundreds and sometimes thousands of beers there. Also it's a level playing field in which a beer can be judged on. This adds value to the ratings making them more reliable.

Some people don't want to be limited to the construct of the old rating system and that's also understandable. I also for one, wouldn't weigh the smell of a beer as 20% of the score. My enjoyment of a beer has more to do with taste, mouth feel, and price. Price often influences whether or not I'll buy a beer I like again. But price is maybe just one factor in the overall category which is weighed too low IMO.

I think one solution would be to just have two options for beer. When you look up a beer on BA, you have the option to rate or review it. The rating would be just a number assigned to the beer with the option of adding any "notes" at the bottom, with minimal or no character limit. The review would be just like the old review system. In this way you have the best of both worlds.

Lastly, perhaps some better educating on how the old review system works may cut down on people going back to adjust the numbers to meet the number they want it to be. I know I have been guilty of this. It had more to do with my lack of understanding of how the review system works than trying to get it to be closer with the rAvg of the beer.

 

Some background on this one…typically, I'll write reviews in my own shorthand on my phone or computer (with scores) and then copy/paste into the review box on my laptop. Then go through and flesh out the reviews into actual intelligible words and punctuation. Likely, I'm not the only one who does something like this. However...

DUE TO the requirement to enter a numerical score before being able to type the review, I placed a number in the box. Before I had done any/much re-writing of the text, I realized the numerical score in the box wasn't what I wanted. So I changed it. THAT POSTS THE REVIEW ONTO THE WEBSITE. EVEN THOUGH THE SUBMIT BUTTON WAS NOT PUSHED. After finishing the review, I reloaded the page to make sure everything had posted right. My review was not there…weird, right? After doing a bit of digging, I discovered it was buried since it had already received a "DOWN" vote, before I had even finished writing it.

I'm assuming b/c that review was largely unintelligible. Or someone didn't like what I was saying. Who knows. I don't bring this up b/c it particularly bothers me that I got a down-vote. I've been doing this long enough I don't much care what some anonymous BA user thinks of my review(s) for an unknown reason. BUT, I think it's a "feature" that should be changed - if I change my mind about what I want a score to be (that I was REQUIRED to enter first), why should it make a review-in-progress publicly visible?

Overall, though, having used it a few times now…the new review system isn't as onerous as I expected it to be. I do hope that the category score information will be brought back, if nothing else so I can at least have my data back. The only other suggestions I have would be PLEASE - an option to write the review in a separate page as it was before. Almost every time, I would try to remain intentionally ignorant of the average score before entering my own. An attempt to avoid any unintentional bias. Now it's stuck on the screen while I'm typing.

 

+1. It's the only way to be accurate. Memory doesn't do a brew justice and there's only one or two beers I've done that with.

 

for me, the new rating system is fine
I don't rate to style, I've always wanted more granularity, this does it

to toss thoughtfully considered data imagined by your most devout out the window without a peep
is a seriously inexcusable wtf are you thinking

I never look at hads, only reviews, I couldn't give a crap for a had
changing the minimum character count means I will now see hads with a few useless words attached

these are the kind of changes that inspire competition, when you become less special you become weaker

 

I love Sculpin, but it is not worthy of the last 3 "new school" reviews that all gave it a perfect score of 5.

I would post the link to the reviews but there is a bug on here that doesn't allow pasting of text into replies on iPads.

 

What's funny is after checking out the other site with measurements to it's reviews (ratebeer) I am now even more convinced that not only was this system superior, but vastly user friendly regardless of what so few seem to say.

Please bring it back or offer the option for the newbies who want it more cut and dry.

 

Amen, Brother rudzud! I have reviewed over 400 beers, which is a lot less than many on this site have reviewed. Yet this still means that I have put effort into a consistent rating system that I (obviously) enjoyed and intended to continue to use long into the future. I use this website because it gives me a convenient way to track why I liked or disliked a beer for my own purposes. Now I'll need to do my own math in order to remain consistent to all those legacy reviews to know how a new beer compares to others I've had. I am NOT happy with the change.

Right now I don't even know how to do that. I'm an engineer and can handle the math, but I need to know the equation before I can do the calculation. Does anyone know the weighting ratios that the old system used to compute the overall score?

 

Here you go, I think this is right.

 

At this point I just want my category ratings back. All of it.

I'm keeping consistency with my ratings using a spreadsheet that automatically spits out a final score based on the old weightings. So there's that- just adds an additional step, which I'm fine with.

Still loving the "ratings" of 1.13, 3.89, etc.. how this is supposed to make the site more useful, I'm not sure.

 

High resolution numbers are great when averaging statistics or backing them with a system that measures to a similar degree of precision. For example a gauge that increments from 1 to 5 in 0.01 increments would benefit from this. The problem is that unless people are manually calculating their scores somehow (which we can not verify) then the difference between 1.13 and 1.15 is arbitrary unless there is a clearly defined point to compare it against. The clearly defined points we have are 1 (awful) and 2 (poor). A person might consider "well it's better than awful but not quite poor" and give it a 1.5 or they might say "well it's slightly better than what I would consider halfway between awful and poor" and deliver a 1.75 rating. How is this person (without using any algorithm or averaging) able to discern that their opinion on a beer is 1.76 or 1.77? It is completely arbitrary. Couple that with the fact that the human palate, rating style, and individual beer preference are as varied as personalities, and you have complete havoc.

 

After almost 8 years and almost 1600 reviews, I think I am done reviewing. I was coming to the end anyways, but this change just made the decision easier. Since the Bros want ticks, I will not fight the system any longer and tick for awhile. Until the forums become completely unreadable, then I will just go to Untappd for my personal data collection. Became reacquainted with the app today and started the transition.

I fought the good fight when ticks started getting included into the beer score, but I got beaten down and had to surrender.

Take my reviews, they get panned
Take me where my words cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take my beers from me

 

Given in a thread down below this one in the list.

Here's the link:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/old-beer-rating-formula.203612/

 

Even if they are calculating the scores correctly they don't have a measuring device that justfies that level of numerical precision. That third digit is simply non-significant and most likely is allowed for the psychological effect it has for people who believe a 3.82 is somehow better or more accurate than a 3.81.

 

but there is a perspective where granularity is of great importance, extremely significant, as it allows you to set rankings in a more precise order, you can shuffle minorly

I rate each brew to stand alone, I may look at my saisons or simply my highest ranked
it is no surprise when I think, "nah, that's not better than that" and I switch the order thanks to granularity, this can be entertaining
this was not possible before as you can only arrange the prior value options so many ways, an order of magnitude has been added
jd

 

Great post by the way and agree, yet compared to the others which I checked and researched before making an easy decision to come here I would like to remain loyal because the system was so rich in reflecting individual parts and characteristics.

If I just ticked a beer it would take weeks of searching, and after so many a faulty memory would be adrift in the foam. I can not see any value without a review. Tastes change and prior ratings and tasting notes provide perspective. A good example would be Bornum Dubbel which USED to be refermented in the bottle and fantastic....now it is a shadow of it's former self and just a malty mess.

Imagine being 10 years old and writing a review on a film, say Yor Hunter from the Future, rated with specifics to plot cohesion, special effects, and dialogue, ect....now fast forward to your mid 40's, look at the notes and re-watch this hilarious catastrophe and review it again. The variables would change in every category to a (ahem) much lesser review, it may even move from category of science fiction classic to say a fruit and vegetable brew.....or comedy.

It is reflection I seek with commonality in variables that are not just a single number...not vanilla with no reason why.

 

That sorting is just fine as a form of entertainment and is a nice illustration of what I said above. You gain some personal satisfaction from doing that using the numbers because they apper to be different, but in a controlled testing situation your palate hasn't the ability to distinguish 0.00 from 0.01 or 81.87 from 81.86 as a regular, reliable difference. You could do exactly the same sorting you describe without using the extra digit, but you like having it there rather than not and that's just fine.

 

Just read that....so I suppose I get to pull out a calculator now? How efficient.

 

I won't bother to calculate. I intend to just eyeball the relative weights, keeping each category in mind. I have a review template because I write reviews off line and then copy paste. That way I have a backup.