BeerAdvocate User Awards

Then there's funniest, snarkiest, most likely to secede (must be from South Carolina), most polite, gruffiest, silliest, most severe, best redresser, and most precise. Anyway, I vote for @cavedave as most balanced.

 

Agreed on all counts.

Imperial Poobah just sounds like a bad muddertrucker, which is what it should convey.

 

What about double dry hopped imperial poo bah?

 

Ditto from me on This

 

As far as the Silver, gold, etc, that can stay in the regular system of accruing points. Say every 5000 points above poobah gets you a Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum, with Platinum being the highest possible level.

I'm talking about a special title, to be conferred upon a very limited group. It would take years to get to the levels of respect needed to even begin to be considered. Posting a lot, giving and receiving lots of Likes, reviews, none of that matters. It should not be a popularity contest among the regular users. Have a committee of Jason, Todd, and 10 or so of the staff, mods, and, maybe, one user talk it out and confer the Imperial Poobah status.

IMHO, to even be considered for ImpPoobah, would require a minimum of 12 years on the site, and a solid history of contributing items of substance. They could have a bare minimum of points, zero reviews, they wouldn't wouldn't have to post in every thread, WBAYDN, NBS, or be a trader. Just a solid, reliable, respected, trustworthy contributor. JK is the epitome of what I'm championing here.

Having a poll or a write-in just turns it into a high-school popularity contest. Leave the existing Karma system as-is, add a few new levels, sure. But there needs to be a way of recognizing the best contributors, apart from peer pressure.

 

Imperial Poobahs do not succumb to trends, fads, and folly. That's what makes them Imperial.

 

Wet hopped poo bah?

 

Once upon a time, "Like Farming" was a real thing here. People would post many small posts in a single thread (which in itself earned points) and all their friends would Like every post. Peoples scores would go up a lot, daily. Without any real contributions to the discourse at hand. Which is why Karma was done away with for a while. After much crying and gnashing of teeth (and folks leaving the site because they couldn't 'play the game' anymore), Karma was brought back, with different metrics, and slower growth rates, and still people game the system. Look at this list https://www.beeradvocate.com/members/?sort=points and note how many folks are near the top after relatively short periods of time, and relatively few reviews. It even says on the Karma page that "Reviewing beers is the best way to accrue points."

There can be multiple different things here: We can have a public vote for for individuals. The staff can accumulate the annual data, and recognize those that post, review, add beers, etc the most. And there can be special recognition for a very, very few of the best contributors. Giving a rare title to one, does not effect anybody elses position on the list, and need not even need to boost their point total. It would be a stand-alone reward for longtime, meaningful contributions.

 

Most of us mostly post drivel/opinions/dog pictures/random stuff. The same stuff everybody else is posting. Pretty much just like having a conversation in a bar, not a ton of creativity or originality there either. But, at both the physical and on-line bars, there is the occasional person who adds a unique view, who has actual, verifiable things to say. Who enlightens while entertaining. Who can be counted on to be reliable. Those are the folks we tend to seek out, because they're interesting, and relatively rare. Those are the folks who should be in the discussion for a limited title. Not those who post pics of the awesome dinner they made, or links to their favorite songs, or even who has the bestest doggo (spoiler, they all do!)

It's a simple fact that people, much like beers, are mostly average. Especially on a niche site like this, where we're on because of a common interest. Most of us are pretty similar, overall, and I think those few truly exceptional folks we have should be recognized. If a given individual can't see anothers exceptionalism, well, shrug. But we must know that the exceptional do walk among us.

 

I'm good with whatever as long a holiday badges come back.

 

I never said a single, just a very limited number. This is like talking about baseball. I'm active on a very Sabre/modern metrics blog, even though I'm not a numbers cruncher. The amount of esoteric criteria they use is mindboggling. But, I still like reading it, and talking about. What the Sabre folks have come to accept, often grudgingly, is that sometimes the "Eye Test" is just as good as the most advanced metric available. No one seriously disputes that Mike Trout is currently the best baseball player on the planet. The numbers back this up, but all ya need to do is watch him for a few games.

Well, The Eye Test applies here even more, because there is no way to quantify a users value, beyond Likes, Adds, Reviews, etc. To continue the baseball analogy, those would be considered "Old School Stats", but there are no Sabremetrics to use as a counterpoint in something as ephemeral as posting on a beer website.

You say you can see several potential Imperial Poobahs, and I can see only a couple. That's the thing about the eye test: either someone is so blantantly obvious of deserving the award, or they are not. There is no close, maybe, or almost.

 

Well, maybe you haven't been around long enough, as you suggest. Not for me to say. I do agree that being very new to this or any site probably puts someone at a disadvantage in a discussion such as this one.

So it probably seems obvious to some of us why JK is singularly exceptional. Being obvious to us "old timers" without us being able to express well what is behind our feelings could be creating confusion.

Perhaps things could be cleared up for all of us if you tell us who are these members you consider singularly qualified for Imperial Poobah (or better name for it), and what are the qualifications you use to make your choice(s)?

 

Some good discussions defending different points of view above. To me it can be simplified as follows: Are we trying to identify and recognize the person(s) who make the biggest contribution to BA the website, or to BA users? I think this is key because they are not necessarily the same person or same criteria. Presumably, BA staff have already identified who they think is most valuable to the site via their awarding of Karma Points, at least according to the cryptic descriptions of why Karma points get awarded. However, to me as a USER, my values may not be the same as the BA staff, therefore, to me, I think there is room for a "People's Choice" type of recognition for members whom other members want to hold up as shining examples of what makes the use of this site useful/fun/addicting. No way do I believe the recognition should be based purely on quantitative metrics. Even if we believe no one games the system to generate more "points", the value of all reviews, posts, etc. is very clearly not equal. I support a personal, although admittedly highly subjective, nomination of people who we think make this site what it is. Sure, everyone will have different personal criteria, but in the end, the consensus will end up identifying the person/people who make the biggest positive impact to most users. After the nominations are closed, then staff could summarize quantitative metrics for each nominee just to add one more consideration or dimension in the selection process to help generate an overall picture of the nominee's involvement in BA.

 

I'm totally missing something here....why is having a list of 100 names that various people want to recognize a problem? In the end it is highly likely that only a couple of names will float to the top of the list by virtue of having been nominated most often. We already see one name frequently showing up in the above discussions. I think it is awesome that there could actually be 100 people that users think make highly valuable contributions to the success of this site.