New BA Score, Histograms & More Updates (Part Two)

Blog Discussion in 'BeerAdvocate Talk' started by Todd, Sep 29, 2017.

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  1. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    On September 19th we made some significant updates to the rating system. I won't rehash the thread, but rather let you know that @Mike and I purposely refrained from replying to allow everyone to provide their uninterrupted feedback and discussions amongst other users.

    Your Feedback Was Heard
    After a follow-up call this morning, Mike and I have applied the following updates:

    BA Score
    It's now simply the beer, brewer, or place's 1-5 average across all ratings. No points, percentiles, or letter grades. Just the raw average, like it was back in the old-school BA days.

    A BA Score (average) is given to anything with more than one rating to provide more data, however, the threshold and algorithm for our top lists remains unchanged.

    Liked Is Gone
    As is any redundant data under beer or place stats except for the number of ratings that appears under the BA Score for quick reference. It's much cleaner now.

    As for the percentage of users who rated the item with a 3.75 or higher, we realized that that was basically us still trying to force a threshold of what's good. Instead, we're going to present the raw data, tell a more complete story, and allow you to decide if a beer or place is something that you might like or not.

    Histograms
    Have been added to all beer and place pages. You can now geek out over the rating distribution for the dataset and get a much better overview of where ratings land and your rating lands in comparison. It's something we've always wanted to do, and your feedback pushed us to do it now. Big props for Mike for banging this out like a ninja! They're not perfect, and we'll be working on improving them.

    That's it for now, and you can learn more about our ratings here: https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/beeradvocate-ratings-explained.184726/

    Thanks again to everyone who gave us their constructive feedback to work with. Seriously. You're all awesome. And we hope that you're as stoked as we are about these updates.

    Cheers!
     
    #1 Todd, Sep 29, 2017
    Strix, JFresh21, harrisjohnson and 60 others like this.
  2. FBarber

    FBarber Grand High Pooh-Bah (7,325) Mar 5, 2016 Illinois
    Mod Team BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Thanks for listening to the feedback and taking it into account! Definitely like the changes made and the histogram is really interesting. Looking forward to perusing through this more later.
     
    #2 FBarber, Sep 29, 2017
    JFresh21, RachelKaiser, DarthVorador and 9 others like this.
  3. jmdrpi

    jmdrpi Grand High Pooh-Bah (8,989) Dec 11, 2008 Pennsylvania
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah

    Upon quick review, this is much better, thanks for listening to the feedback!
     
    #3 jmdrpi, Sep 29, 2017
    DarthVorador, Lucular, meefmoff and 7 others like this.
  4. cjgiant

    cjgiant Grand High Pooh-Bah (6,584) Jul 13, 2013 District of Columbia
    Society Pooh-Bah

    Niice!! There's more slicing and dicing for individuals that I would like, but that's a different thread. I didn't mind the %age, but I also like this update and will thoroughly geek out on the histograms at some point, I am sure.
     
    #4 cjgiant, Sep 29, 2017
    Mike and Todd like this.
  5. anfield86

    anfield86 Pooh-Bah (2,606) Nov 21, 2006 New Jersey
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    I definitely prefer this update over the last one. Good stuff. Hopefully there will be a feature to expand/minimize the histogram for better page viewing.
     
    #5 anfield86, Sep 29, 2017
    NickSMpls, Mike, wes008 and 3 others like this.
  6. thebeers

    thebeers Grand Pooh-Bah (5,837) Sep 10, 2014 Pennsylvania
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    I'll join the chorus: this is a lot more useful. Cheers!
     
    #6 thebeers, Sep 29, 2017
    Lucular, Mike, anfield86 and 2 others like this.
  7. ovaltine

    ovaltine Grand High Pooh-Bah (6,787) Apr 6, 2010 Indiana
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    I will admit, I got wood - on a plane - when I saw the "Beer Stats" portion (especially the ranking) and the histogram.
     
    #7 ovaltine, Sep 29, 2017
    HopsAreDaMan, Mike and Todd like this.
  8. wes008

    wes008 Initiate (0) Mar 1, 2017 Pennsylvania

    I appreciate the score change! The weighted out of 100 score that was originally in place was slightly misleading, and the percentage score of recent times was also not a good metric, since that percentage did not indicate a beer's overall ranking (A beer that had 4s across the board could earn a 100%, while a beer that had lots of 5s but a few bad scores would slip out of that tier).
     
    #8 wes008, Sep 29, 2017
    Todd and Mike like this.
  9. dbrauneis

    dbrauneis Grand High Pooh-Bah (8,071) Dec 8, 2007 North Carolina
    Mod Team BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Thanks for listening to the feedback and I'm quite pleased with the changes/additions (so far)... Only small piece of feedback is that I would love to see the histogram be a bit smaller/not take up as much screen real estate with the ability to open it larger in a popup/new window for more detail.
     
    #9 dbrauneis, Sep 29, 2017
    cjgiant, Lucular, SLeffler27 and 11 others like this.
  10. Lone_Freighter

    Lone_Freighter Initiate (0) Jun 4, 2017 Vermont

    Oh wow! Those histograms! Wow and a half! My mouth has dropped to the floor on this! I'm not even sure by saying "fantastic job" would be deserving enough. That is some fine work there at the Bros and Mike. :beers:
     
    #10 Lone_Freighter, Sep 29, 2017
    Lucular, meefmoff, VABA and 4 others like this.
  11. cryptichead

    cryptichead Grand Pooh-Bah (4,857) Jul 3, 2014 Illinois
    Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Really appreciate Beer Advocate asking, listening, and following through on our feedback! You guys make us feel like real stakeholders in the site.

    These are great changes! Looking forward to more data-centric updates with 4.0!
     
    #11 cryptichead, Sep 29, 2017
    Lucular, Ranbot, meefmoff and 7 others like this.
  12. bobhits

    bobhits Maven (1,498) Oct 31, 2006 Ohio

    Can I just say I love and I mean LOVE the histogram. It is perfect for giving a user a feeling about a beer, and even better instantly lets you know if it is a polarizing beer that you may love or hate. I'll have to check out some beers and get a better feel, but the overall changes are outstanding.

    I tend to be neutral or somewhat negative on the rating changes. I think you've gotten a few changes right and a few were rather well not so great (the 3.75), but I think you've really done a great job here.

    So thank you from all of us BA's. I'm sure there's room to improve and I'm sure there might be a step back before a step forward, but I think this is a big win for the community.
     
    #12 bobhits, Sep 29, 2017
    Mikexw, Todd, Mike and 1 other person like this.
  13. Phoodcritic

    Phoodcritic Pooh-Bah (2,082) Jul 3, 2014 Michigan
    Pooh-Bah

    I like the revisions and the histograms! I'd just like to clarify: the values displayed in the histograms are the low ends of each bar's range, not the midpoint, right? In other words, the bar representing a score of 4, for example, is the count of scores for the range 4.0 to 4.24 and not 3.875 to 4.125. It's more common to use midpoints in histograms, I believe.
     
    #13 Phoodcritic, Sep 29, 2017
    Todd, FBarber and Mike like this.
  14. TheDoctor

    TheDoctor Grand Pooh-Bah (3,484) Mar 7, 2013 Canada (QC)
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Good work guys, it is looking pretty slick from what I've looked at so far.
     
    #14 TheDoctor, Sep 29, 2017
    VABA, Todd, Mike and 1 other person like this.
  15. johnInLA

    johnInLA Pooh-Bah (2,350) Jun 12, 2005 California
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Wow! Much Better! :slight_smile:
     
    #15 johnInLA, Sep 30, 2017
    Lone_Freighter, Todd and Mike like this.
  16. Sheppard

    Sheppard Grand Pooh-Bah (3,516) Mar 16, 2013 Massachusetts
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    The Histograms are really cool to look at and examine.
     
    #16 Sheppard, Sep 30, 2017
    woodchipper, Mike, Todd and 2 others like this.
  17. impending

    impending Pooh-Bah (2,695) Mar 12, 2010 California
    Pooh-Bah

    the histogram told me in a split second 12 people rated Westvleteren 12 a 1
    so I had to know and now I do
    15 people rated Rochefort 10 a 1
    jd
     
    #17 impending, Sep 30, 2017
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  18. Bitterbill

    Bitterbill Grand High Pooh-Bah (7,036) Sep 14, 2002 Wyoming
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah

    Constant changing and evolving. To me, that's a sign of a thriving community. Keep it up!
     
    #18 Bitterbill, Sep 30, 2017
    meefmoff, Mike and Todd like this.
  19. guzzleacoldone

    guzzleacoldone Pooh-Bah (1,898) Feb 3, 2007 Ohio
    Society Pooh-Bah

    Bravo, I was liking the percentage of users who rated 3.75 or higher but can understand why it's now gone.

    Love the histogram.

    Well done.
     
    #19 guzzleacoldone, Sep 30, 2017
    Mike, Todd and Lone_Freighter like this.
  20. Zorro

    Zorro Grand Pooh-Bah (3,258) Dec 25, 2003 California
    Pooh-Bah

    The Histograms are the best new feature.
     
    #20 Zorro, Sep 30, 2017
    Lucular, Mike, Sheppard and 1 other person like this.
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