Changes: Beer Hads, Full Reviews & Ratings

You can write as much as you want. Has to be MORE than 100 words.

 

I agree that the lists, rankings, and beer scores are a big part of it. However, I'd be willing to wager that the percentage of traffic devoted to reading individual written reviews is tiny.

People want scores, lists, compiled information.

 

Those are both great ideas.

Dope

 

Regarding the problem of users with all 1s or 5s, couldn't you compute a uDev score to evaluate which users you need to address? I would think you could average rDev^2 for each user and identify them almost instantly.

 

Keep had scores as a second rating to compare, I use for personal review/tracking. I like reading others full reviews AFTER I drink and check it to compare my own tastes. I do not feel I have the "expertise" to write a full review as I am still fairly new to the full craft beer experience and I believe that those that take the time to fully review will give a beer a more fair shake than someone ticking a box on a style the hate falsely lowering the score. No matter I will adapt and continue to love this site. Forums and others from the community provide so much info along with everything from BA that I will keep coming here daily to my favorite beer site. Looking forward to the app release!

 

I'm going to guess that most of the users that have the long list of 'hads' with a score of 1 were merely ticking the beers and not actually wanting to bring the overall score of the beer down.

I like the idea of others that perhaps the full review scores be weighted, so as to be worth more in the overall score.

Also, perhaps they can have 3 levels of tracking: Had (no score), Had (with score), and Review (with weighted score).

p.s. I'd hate to see my name show up on one of these witch-hunts, I'm trying to do good reviews! haha

 

I only use the had to rate beers. I won't feel confident until I've tried 500 or more before I can give a written review.

 

Maybe I missed this, but did not see any mention of it from the Bros. Why are there no brewery listings on the beerfly/places pages?

Example
http://beeradvocate.com/beerfly/city/65

 

I have another suggestion and some feedback on the changes.

SUGGESTION: Have you guys given any thought to segmenting by additional beer traits other than simply style? The biggie that jumps into my head is barrel-aged (or wood-aged) vs. non barrel aged. I find that BA, as a whole, seem to have a preference for barrel aged beers, so it "skews" the ratings/rankings (see Russian Imperial Stout Top Beers) I'm just as much of a barrel-aged beer fan as the next guy/gal, but it'd be nice to be able to sort or filter on this trait.

Anyone else have an opinion on this?

FEEDBACK: I like that your'e including all the ratings/hads but do find scrolling through the empty review list (no text for the hads) to be a bit annoying - glad a fix is planned for that. A sort/filter for overall score including vs. not including had's would be nice also. I agree with many posters that say a review is more thoughtful - as the reviews I've done are much more purposeful and thought out than my hads.

The Iphone app is also much welcomed, as I'm an avid Untappd user to keep track of beers I drink with a quick rating (although I don't like that it's only a 5 point scale, as I find a lot of beers I want to rate 3.5 or 4.5 (I think a 10 point scale [or five point with .5 increments] is perfect, BTW), and usually am not on my computer when I'm drinking. Not sure if I'd pull away from untappd, but would definitely give it a try as I like the wealth of thoughtful ratings BA has.

Cheers!

 

I agree with you on the users that have all '1' Had scores. Still, whether or not there's actual abusive intent going on, these ratings should not be counted (should not affect the overall score). You, on the other hand, do a stand-up job of giving accurate and widely-varied rating scores for both your 'Hads' and 'Reviews'.

And, I like the idea of three categories. Perhaps 'Had', 'Rated', and 'Reviewed'.

Cheers!

 

not to be hypercritical since i love this site, but...

...they are also going to put out a mobile app, and redesign the site, and...and...and...xmas of 2013 is coming eventually too. i guess i just don't understand why you'd put something half baked out there. this change essentially makes the reviews and scores useless until the additional "going to make it where's" are incorporated.

putting out a massive change without really getting any input from your core user base is suicide. why not create beta.beeradvocate.com and put these changes there first let the users hash things out and discuss before going live. i understand that this place isn't a democracy, but essentially 3 people are making drastic changes and decisions that affect the entire user base. what will end up happening is your user base will just dry up. like i mentioned in my last post...every change here results in losing long time contributors. we've seen what that did to the trading community, why do that to the review section of the site?

why not make hads just that...something you had that you didn't rate. if people want to tick something, let them tick it...but not rate it. if people want to review and score something, let them do that.

 

Noticed alot of hate for the new system on the front page, wanted to provide another view point.

I'm a fan of combining the Reviews/Hads. There's a time and a place for critically reviewing a beer, and usually when I'm drinking I'm hanging out with people at home or at a bar. Even though I'm surrounded by other beer nerd at all these places, It's not the place to constantly be on my phone taking notes, holding beer up to light and smelling tasting beer like a pretentious douche.

That and the fact that there are styles that I just do not know enough about some styles to give a good review... but I still want to track these beers. So I give them an overall had. I do put thought into it, and it's really nice that I now have them in the same place and can look at Top 100 lists and visually see how many I've had.

That being said, I do not think Hads should factor that highly into the beers overall score because many people do not put that much thought into it. I'm also not a fan of Hads showing up in the reviews section, but I can live with that.

TL;DR Fan of the new system, but the Hads should impact a beer's score that much.

 

Todd, are you saying that you're aware of the aforementioned users already? Consider my posted links above reports, but if they were already on your radar, then I'll need report no further. Are you saying that they have an allotted amount of time to revise or their 'Had' ratings will be purged?

 

From the sidebar on the reviewing form page:

All "5's" should be rare (ie. cannot improve anymore). Just keep that in mind.

Obviously taste is subjective, but clearly the Bros want to constrain subjective variation within some reasonable limits, limits dictated by norms of evaluation accepted on the site. Learning those norms of evaluation takes time and experience, and some dude rating the 3rd beer he's ever tried a 5 without anything substantive to say about that rating obviously is not the goal of beer reviewing here, and really doesn't help anyone looking at beer ratings.

 

anyone who takes the time to start typing up a review will not abandon that review and move onto a "had" if they missed the character limit. they'll add the extra characters.

 

We should just delete all users from this site that don't write reviews. I mean they don't contribute in any way, right??????

 

This recent change of delineating between Hads and Reviews on the beer tracking page is a step in the right direction.

 

There are extreme examples for sure, someone linked earlier to someone who rated all 1s, clearly these anomalies should be dealt with, but if someone wants to give Stone IPA a 5 because to them it is the best IPA in the world, who are we to say they are wrong?