Adding Old Geek Notes & Ratings

People add older notes/ratings to the site all the time. Especially people coming over from RateBeer or Untappd. I just recommend adding the original date and maybe even "From old notes..." or something along those lines.

 

BA guidelines frown on writing a review from memory, but as Todd pointed out, going from your notes is totally different and totally fine.

Think of it this way. BA is a site with two different functions: social media (thread engagement, WBAYDN?, etc.), and database. It would be improper to hop on WBAYDN? and share your thoughts on a beer from 10 years ago as if you were drinking it right now (much like how, on Untappd, you wouldn't "check in" to a location you aren't actually at, because what's the point?), but it's entirely proper to ensure our database is as up-to-date and comprehensive as possible.

While that makes sense, I will slightly disagree, as many users here take the opposite approach: they don't pay much attention to ratings, but they read the reviews. Further, if you clarify that a review is from a while ago, that might help trend whether or not a beer has changed over time (which gives context to the ratings). It wouldn't help you, necessarily, but it may well help someone else.

The ratings, in some ways, can be less reliable than the reviews. "Utterly mediocre. They can do so much better. Drain poured halfway through. 4.0 / 4.0 / 4.0 / 4.0 / 4.0." And that's not an exaggeration; it may even accidentally be an actual quite.

As for the karma question, you can see your points breakdown - and from there, you can see that karma is awarded for both ratings and full reviews. So if you only do ratings, you'll get karma, but if you do full reviews, you'll get karma for that. So no one is forced to write a review just to "farm" karma, so to speak; if they provide ratings, they're still helping to contribute to the site.