Changes: Beer Hads, Full Reviews & Ratings

Blog Discussion in 'BeerAdvocate Talk' started by Todd, Jan 8, 2013.

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  1. Bitterbill

    Bitterbill Grand High Pooh-Bah (6,772) Sep 14, 2002 Wyoming
    Pooh-Bah Society

    I reviewed 100 of the Beers of Fame and it now shows none and I lost +30 of my reviews. :slight_frown:
     
  2. FEUO

    FEUO Initiate (0) Jul 24, 2012 Canada (ON)

    So in summary, if you have a life your opinion doesn't matter. :stuck_out_tongue:
     
  3. Thorpe429

    Thorpe429 Grand Pooh-Bah (3,655) Aug 18, 2008 Illinois
    Pooh-Bah

    This might work if everyone reviewed like you do, but that's not the practice. Most of the reviews you see for an IPA fall along these lines:

    A: good straw/orange/copper color with a good head. Nice lacing.

    S: nice citrus and tropical hops with some pine.

    T: The hops really shine. Great orange and citrus. Tropical hops too.

    M: Light body with good bitterness.

    O: Very nice IPA with great drinkability. I'd have this again.

    Exactly how many of these reviews are really necessary? Does it really make someone's opinion more valid because they took 30 seconds to do that?

    I can see where having the text of the review matters if someone is way above or below the average, but even then, nothing requires a person to write why he or she really did or didn't like the beer.

    Overall, I'm very much in favor of the changes. It gives people plenty of options to participate. As much as I would have said reviews are better in the past, in reality reviews are only going to be quality if people actually want to write them, not just rack them up.

    With the new system, people can get their minimal thoughts in if they want, and then if someone wants to read a very thorough description of a beer, they can seek that out by browsing through for longer reviews, or seek out the reviews of those they trust. I see it as a win-win.
     
    joeseppy, Luk13, TomD and 7 others like this.
  4. Bitterbill

    Bitterbill Grand High Pooh-Bah (6,772) Sep 14, 2002 Wyoming
    Pooh-Bah Society

    No more dates for your reviews? I don't like the "one year ago".
     
  5. tectactoe

    tectactoe Initiate (0) Mar 20, 2012 Michigan
    Trader

    I am, however, pretty happy to see the new .25 increments for reviews. I know many people say "well how accurate can you really be?" but it's something I've always wanted. Sometimes a quality beer is slightly better than other beers which I've given a 4.5 to, but not quite deserving of a 5, etc.

    I'll have to go back through my reviews and adjust some of the ratings now, at least for the beers I've had recently. This'll give me something to do in my spare time now :wink: Besides drink, of course.
     
    chinchill and TheSixthRing like this.
  6. Derranged

    Derranged Initiate (0) Mar 7, 2010 New York

    I like the rating system that was around before the present one we have now. This new one sucks, no offense.
     
    imbrue001 likes this.
  7. Thehuntmaster

    Thehuntmaster Initiate (0) Sep 2, 2009 South Africa

    I don't like the idea of hads contributing to the overall score.
    In order to write a review you need to spend at least a little bit of time thinking about the beer and judging its characteristics and I think this leads to more accurate scoring. In particular if a review is nonsense and was written a drunk it can be reported and the score deleted.
    Hads on the other hand have no quality control. I could be paralytically drunk and have a swig of a beer and tick had. Hads also do not yield any sort of useful information - if I tick a beer and give it a 1, is it because it was bad, not to my tastes, off or because I am a troll who has it in for a particular brewery.

    Oh, but thanks to the bros for binging in the 0.25 increments :grinning:
     
    chinchill, Pelican5, cavedave and 2 others like this.
  8. rlee1390

    rlee1390 Initiate (0) Mar 6, 2010 Indiana

    Are you planning on doing anything to the Beers of Fame list? Adding the hads turned these into very similar lists.
     
    dbrauneis likes this.
  9. Hanzo

    Hanzo Initiate (0) Feb 27, 2012 Virginia

    So basically unless you put in the time on a lengthy review your opinion shouldn't matter?
     
    PopnLoads, Photekut, fredmugs and 8 others like this.
  10. xnicknj

    xnicknj Initiate (0) May 25, 2009 Pennsylvania

    Q: Can we sort/filter by Full Reviews or Hads?
    Not yet, but we plan on adding it.

    for this - will we be able to filter our own reviews and hads? i really don't like having all this mashed together on my profile, since now i have no idea how many actual reviews i've done. i go back and review some of my hads (usually after trying a beer more than once or twice), but i can't really keep track of this if they're all in one giant list.
     
  11. drabmuh

    drabmuh Initiate (0) Feb 7, 2004 Maryland

    What happened to the blue vs red pens next to the beers? Are these coming back?
     
  12. zstef99

    zstef99 Initiate (0) Dec 25, 2008 New York

    I just spot checked a couple of beers that I happened to remember the previous scores on, and in both cases the rating increased by two points once the hads were factored in. I'm wondering if this will be a trend, as people who take the time to review a beer are more likely to be critical than those who are simply marking it as had.

    Todd, did you research this effect prior to implementing the change? If so, did you find that there was, on average, an increase in scores once hads were added?
     
    TomD likes this.
  13. doppelmeup

    doppelmeup Initiate (0) Dec 20, 2005 North Carolina

    I like the idea of the "Had" option to be shown on my personal page, however I find it useless when displayed on the actual beer review page. For me, the benefit of BA reviews is that I can find the beer and read about how other people describe the brews. The text ratings are much more valuable then simply seeing a number. I agree that we should be able to filter out the "Hads" from the "Reviews". Moving forward, I think you will be getting less and less reviews and many more "Hads", which will ultimately make the site pointless as a reference site. IMO.
     
  14. Treebs

    Treebs Initiate (0) Apr 18, 2011 Illinois

    Definitely not a fan of including "hads". All the beer pages seem much more cluttered now and the overall design seems to have taken a step back. Including them with the beer reviews doesn't add any positive value. Plus it allows for trolls as well. You can get a group of people to torpedo a beers score very easily now, or you can have a group greatly increase the overall score to hype their own beer for trading purposes.

    And as mentioned before it is not showing a beer as reviewed anymore.
     
    buffs9, yemenmocha, cavedave and 4 others like this.
  15. xnicknj

    xnicknj Initiate (0) May 25, 2009 Pennsylvania

    this as well. makes it pretty difficult to scroll through a list and remember what you have or havent reviewed.
     
  16. Thorpe429

    Thorpe429 Grand Pooh-Bah (3,655) Aug 18, 2008 Illinois
    Pooh-Bah

    Given the dramatic rise in number of reviews for a lot of beers, is this also a time to consider changing the minimum number for the Top 100 lists from 10 up to 50 or 100, or will the increases in number of reviews across all beers make it even more unlikely that a beer with 10 reviews/hads will be on the Top 100 list, best American Wild list, etc?
     
    yemenmocha and duceswild like this.
  17. Onenote81

    Onenote81 Initiate (0) May 27, 2008 North Carolina

    Agreed. No sense in even having the "pens" when they don't change color when you've reviewed it [ie. Place reviews - they haven't shown blue in the 4+ years I've been on this site].

    Also, noticed that many reviews have been purged - so no more repeat reviews of beers (on-tap, bottle, cask, etc.) Too bad.
     
  18. FEUO

    FEUO Initiate (0) Jul 24, 2012 Canada (ON)

    Perhaps instead of perpetually whining about change, maybe someone could additionally suggest a better idea or a way of tweaking this one.
    My recommendation: separate review ratings.
    There is the BA Score and The Bros score. Why not call out 2 values in the BA score? One for full reviews, the other for "ticked" reviews. Then maybe a discussion about an overall weighted score may be considerable (per an earlier suggestion).
     
  19. abraxel

    abraxel Initiate (0) Aug 28, 2009 Michigan

    I'm okay with including Hads in the final score, but I don't like the 100-character minimum. That's really short. There's (ironically) much to be said for brevity, but I don't think you can write a good, 100-character review (unless you're quite a skilled writer, which I'm not, and few people are).

    I chose a review of mine in which I didn't have much to say (thinking it would be easier to condense) and tried to edit it down to the best 100-character review I could:
    Though it has the basic description of the beer, that seems like a pretty worthless review to me, besides almost sounding like a haiku. If you don't want to put much thought into it, that's what Hads are for!


    Edit: Also, does anyone else see a "Delete Your Review" link on every single review? On my own reviews I see both "Delete Your Review" and "Edit Your Review", but the delete link is on everyone else's too. I haven't tried clicking it yet...
     
    thehyperduck, Auror and ehammond1 like this.
  20. Sludgeman

    Sludgeman Grand Pooh-Bah (3,282) Aug 17, 2012 District of Columbia
    Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    Sounds as if the Bros provide separate scores for Reviews and Hads and then maybe a combined score that it might satisfy many concerns.
     
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