Changes: Beer Hads, Full Reviews & Ratings

I think if there was a way to filter ratings by year, or batch preferably, it would make comparing seasonal releases much easier and more effective.

 

I'm a ticker who has loved the "Had" function for personal tracking. However, merging Hads with Reviews to influence a beer's score is not a good move. Beer scores and place scores should be based on written reviews, 250 character minimum. The old "Hads" had its own overall average. All was fine. Please go back to the previous setup.

 

I don't know if this has been suggested, but it would be great to be able to add beer without doing a full review. I frequently encounter new beers at local breweries, but I usually only do full reviews at home and had beers I try when I'm out. This means that often these beers never get added since I'm one of the only BAs in the area who obsessively reviews. I saw earlier that you were only going to allow users with a certain number of reviews add beers, so that should make it safe to also allow them to add with a had rather than a full review.

 

Well done Bros! I can understand the criticism of these changes, but was honestly was a little worried that this site was becoming obsolete. The inclusion of easy ratings that actually count is a step forward in the expansion and survival of this site, there's no doubt of that.

I'll look forward to a larger database with allowing tickers to add new beers. These are people that don't want to spend the time reviewing, but still have valid opinions and can really help the site by adding more obscure beers with ease. (Or so is my understanding of including hads, please correct me if I'm wrong). This was a major concern of mine giving only people that take the time to write full reviews the right to add new beers

My only thoughts would be to first, require a minimum number of hads (or reviews) before a user's data is applied to the database. Preferably with varied ratings if it's possible to automatically check for that (to avoid all 5's or 1's ...or even 5's and 1's only).

Second, giving a little more weight to full reviews over hads would balance out the concerns over thoughtless hads. It seems that someone doing a full review will usually put a little more consideration into the numbers, and a few tickers will put in very little consideration. Maybe a 25% advantage to reviews over hads?

Overall though, thank you for considering the future of this site and having the courage to make these big changes. I don't doubt that everyone involved is running on little sleep right now. Hope you're drinking something nice, you guys deserve it!

 

Thank you,

Before I join BA, I had already reviewed 1500 beers in notes and it is just too daunting to add all those beers. Especially since my tastes have matured/changed and I don't necessarily want to write a review that I don't agree with now and don't really want/or am able to revisit.

 

Hads really shouldn't weigh as much as reviews, honestly. Like I said, someone reviewing a beer and all its aspects will be much more honest about the rating. Maybe include the "Had" number separately. Have the Review Average and the Had Average for every brew, instead of jamming them together. Keep your lists based on reviews.

 

I've previously only used BA to track beers I've had and to discover new beers. I chose BA because overall I felt like reviewers knew and CARED about beer and the quality of their reviews. While the existing quality reviews won't go away, and I'm sure many reviewers will continue to post here, I feel as if the overall quality of the site decreased greatly with the recent changes. With a 100 character minimum, the cumulative quality of the reviews WILL decrease. Going back to why I chose BA, I felt as if the beer scores were the most accurate on the web. There are very few experts here but there are many many smart and passionate reviewers--the ones who made this site what it is. I care about beer, but obviously not enough for me to put in the effort to craft hundreds of reviews. This website is a body of quality beer minds, an that's why I trust the reviews and scores so much.

Now, while numbers or reviews will increase, it will be impossibly for the cumulative quality to increase. More importantly, the faith I had in scores / ratings is gone. Will I still turn to BA for information? Yes. But I believe if no change occurs (and I am optimistic about the new design and app), the quality and accuracy of this site will decrease. I try to take time with my Hads scores, but I don't trust myself enough yet to review here, lest it spoil the quality. Now, it doesn't matter what I do, because the quality has already been spoiled. I loved BA for what it was, and I know I'm going to stick with it, but right now I'm struggling to show any love.

 

Agree with this one hundred percent. I've been coming to BA to use reviews and ratings to make smart buying decisions. I can't afford to buy beer on any given day, and I like to try new things. So, I'd routinely come to BA when I'm at the store, and check the reviews and ratings. They were always quality, and the ratings seemed to match the reviews. That's changing before my eyes.

 

+Everyone That IS Dissatisfied With The Change

I know I am a new 'member' here (even though I have been using the site for roughly 2 years now), so what I have to say may hold little weight with you, but I think you could tweak things to satisfy both camps of people (those happy with the update and those upset about it). Personally for me, and it seems from this forum as well, one of the great benefits that BeerAdvocate brings to the community is the ability to search for beers you haven't had, read quality evaluations of the beer (not just a meaningless number) so that you can decide if it's something you might like, and keep track for your own personal record (whatever your reasons may be).

1. I think the reviews are more important and hold more weight than just a simple rating, therefore it should be the default. Make the "Hads" an option but not the default (you've already made it an option to hide them so why not just switch it to make the people unhappy about this satisfied).
2. There is plenty of room in the accumulated score section at the top to have a number for "Reviewed" and a separate number for "Hads", again why not make both camps happy. Plus the user gets more info, which is why they are coming to the page in the first place. Let them decide which to put more weight on.
*The next two are sort of separate from the debate that people are bring up, but I think could make the overall experience even better.
3. I think there should be an option to rate a review/reviewer based on if you thought what they wrote was "Insightful" or if it was "Not Helpful" (or report someone for clearly being negligent). This way you not only encourage better reviews but you also create a system where the better reviews can be brought to the top (Top Reviews), and the ones where people clearly did the minimum or just did a lousy job will be pushed to the bottom.
4. Make the default page show the highest rated review show on the top, then go into the most current reviews. If the user decides he/she wants to only look at the highest rated reviews then they can toggle the "Top Reviews", if they want to read the most current reviews then they simply continue scrolling, and if they want to also look at the "Hads" ratings then they can hit the "Show Hads".


http://i.imgur.com/nn5FJ.jpg?1


http://imgur.com/n4q6W

Maybe I've wasted my time here and will be written off, but I read through almost all of this thread and really think you could fix the problems a lot of the members are addressing without also alienating the users your attempting to bring into the fold (as I completely understand your intentions were to make the site work for more people). You and your brother have done great work, and the fact that you are getting criticism is a testament to that...if it wasn't important to them they wouldn't bother. Keep it up, happy to have a place to geek out at. Thank you sir!

 

This is awesome. I hope this doesn't get lost because it's on page 7 of the thread. I know that soon we'll have a redesigned site and an app, but the bros should still see the diagram you created.

 

i dont have time to read this whole thread, but im drinking a 2008 smuttynose imperial stout and wondering with this whole new system how the whole idea of vintages gets put into place? obviously i would rate this 2008 bottle differently than a fresh one. i understand that i should write a full review and put "2008 vintage" right in the review, but i am just curious if you guys thought about that aspect? keep up the good work!

 

Maybe treat Hads and Reviews unequally? Say, something like the BCS football rankings (oh, they worked so well this year....). Have Reviews count for 90% of the overall score, with Hads adding the other 10%

 

Thanks a solid idea. I'll trust the review score over the two click score any day of the week.

 

all i know is that backing up my reviews during a "hiatus" from the site proved to be valuable even while on good behavior since i lost about 50 "duplicate" reviews with these changes. i just wish that instead of zapping reviews in favor of the most recent, it would've been great to merge the text as my more recent reviews of a beer in a different format always reference a my previous experiences and tend to carry much less details than my first impressions (which are now gone).

i'm sure i'll adjust and hope that the end product of these changes is a positive one and kudos to the todd for dealing with our bitching and moaning and giving us the ability to filter out those silly hads reviews (would be great if we could filter out the ratings too, but i'll take what i can get). a very wise man once said "affraid of money, love and change" -- i just wish there was some heads up instead of waking up to see the sun is now purple.

i definitely agree with you that someone who takes the time to talk about why they rated a beer in a certain way holds WAY more value to me than a "had" that someone enters 13 beers in with one eye closed so they can see their phone somewhat clearly, to tick off that they have indeed "had" a beer. certainly a lot of the people coming out saying how their hads were totally bogus and all the people pointing out the blind "1"s and the like is an indication of the validity of "hads" in general (although i'm sure some people used the "hads" system as it was intended, clearly this is not as consistent as with reviews).

i'm going to play the wait and see game and continue to capture my reviews locally as well as on BA...but as someone who has worked in the software industry for over 10 years...i know what happens to software based products that are driven by the vision of few that are too close to the product as opposed to letting the voice of the customer drive evolution. i'd point to some relevant examples, but they are pretty much universally out of business.

 

your "had" score is a great contribution and no one is saying that it is not, but it is just a number. there is no context. suppose you hate hoppy IPAs and you go to a local pub and try their new hoppy IPA...you hate hops and you give it a 2 and no commentary. this will likely turn people off from wanting to try it. they have no idea that you rated it a 2 because you don't like hoppy beers...based on your 2, just sounds like the beer isn't good.

i imagine that although scores are a helpful tool in deciding what beer to try, the text that people write about the beer is even more helpful. reviews were always the thing that set BA apart from the others and in my opinion, the reason why BA is the most used. Ratebeer and untappd are great for tickers...you even get awards for ticking. to me, the advantage of "Hads" in conjunction with reviews on BA was to alert me what a trading partner might have tried already.

you are 100% that people use BA to figure out what they might want to try and without a review, it is just a number. numbers don't tell me what is good or bad for my taste buds...commentary does.

 

I am a crazy beer fanatic and I admit I am too lazy to write a full review. Mostly because my palate changes on a regular basis. I am an advocate user of the "Had" system (for mostly personal reasons), however I am skeptical on this effecting the rating of the beer overall. This has to be a separate rating system such as the bro's rating. All need to be taken with a grain of salt from the end user.