Posting reviews without text to back it up

Am I the only one who sees the irony in a young generation of people who basically have an opened portal to the internet in front of their faces constantly, and write on it constantly, and then complain how inconvenient and time consuming it is to write down what they are experiencing as they drink a beer?

 

No, not the only one!

 

In order to get good reviews, then (1) expectations must be set and (2) the process must be as friction-free as possible.

(1) If the forum posting at https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/how-to-review-a-beer.241156/ is the expectation, then this posting needs to be elevated out of forum obscurity to a position front and center on the home page.

(2) The UI should remind newbies of these expectations and also let experienced hands quickly tap in rating numbers and descriptions in seconds.

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TL;DR

(1) I have a spreadsheet (more than 600 single number reviews and simple notes) that I started a few years ago. It meets my personal needs to track beers that I want to buy again and others that I want to avoid. 1 means "pour this down the sink", 5 means "my mouth is doing a happy dance", and 3 means "average beer that I would consider ordering in a pub". After finding the posting above, it was easy to convert my existing reviews to "Overall" and add in columns for the other categories. But it would have been great to see this posting before I created the spreadsheet.

(2) Last year I spent 3 weeks in Belgium and Netherlands with a group of people who I had mostly just met. In that time I had about 20-30 beers that I have no record for because I was not about to stick my face into my internet portal while I was with the group. At 57 I was below average in age for the group, but not by much. Manners matter. If I could have entered each review in 30 seconds, then I'm sure that several others in the group would have been very interested instead of turned off. A thumb-wheel for each of the 5 numbers with a free-entry text box that also remembered my previous entries and let me select one of them, would have been friction-free enough to remain sociable.

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On topic

I appreciate any reviews. A bunch of bare number reviews show me an average trend. Well thought out text might be intimidating (I can't taste all those things in beer any more than I can in wine), but also lets me know if my tastes might be different from the reviewer.

No review or reviewer is pointless. One of my favorite movie reviewers had completely opposite taste to me: if he raved about it, I knew I would hate it, and vice versa.

 

Frankly, it's just a cop-out. I get a feeling people just want to be completionists and "pad their stats" so to speak. If you don't have time to write a "full review", don't! That's OK! The wonderful thing about BA is that there's a ton of ways to be a part of the community and contribute. Leaving a bunch of ratings so your beer count and beer karma go up is not one of them. As for "not knowing how to review". No one expects a 4 paragraph blog on each beer. No one is born an expert either. Just describe what you get from the beer and why you think it's "Just okay", "very good", "exceptional", etc. No one's looking for a Shakespearean piece on why Speedway Stout is the best thing ever. Literally anyone that's into this enough to take the time and create an account and log into a beer specific forum/website can do it.

Honestly? I don't think so. That's precisely what I don't like about Untappd. And one of the reasons scores there are just wild as hell. That it even gives you the option of "taster" as a serving option is ridiculous. You can't really explore or get to the bottom of a beer off of a 2 or 3 oz. pour. I'd rather people not enter anything at all. But then again, that's why it's so successful. It feeds into people's need to run up their numbers and get cool little badges and whatnot. "Let me go ahead and rate these 6 beers from this flight of 2 oz. tasters... Ding ding, that's 3 new badges, 4 new levels on this thing and that and 6 "new beers" for my total score".

 

As someone who belongs to that generation (I guess), I wish people would actually spend less time on their phones. If you don't have time, or don't want to seem out of place jotting down notes or being on your phone; just don't run into the internet to post about it! Enjoy the beer and be happy with that. Jumping into your phone while out with friends or going home after a night out and posting a bunch of "4/4/4/4/4" ratings on BA doesn't really help anyone.

 

It still counts towards your beer total, badges, etc. I doubt people care about actually scoring the beer and more about the "gamified" and social media aspects of beer drinking. I've personally never encountered any helpful, unrated notes like what you're pointing out (then again, I mostly use Untappd for beer menus and the occasional short review if I'm already in there) but that's actually very useful and I wish more people did that. Unfortunately that's the exception, not the rule. The ratings based off of tasters is far more pervasive.

And I agree. Which is why I never said that a poor review is better than or a substitute for a mere rating, both are equally worthless and I don't think any sane person would argue otherwise. And in my 7 years here I've come across some bad reviews but I think you would agree that ratings outnumber poorly written reviews by far. However badly put together a review is, by default it requires some more steps and time that just plucking a couple of 3.5s on a rating and calling it a day. So again, those bad reviews are the exception, not the rule.

 

Well for me it's not really a concern. I don't think I'd be in favor of BA allowing "check-in" type of things with no ratings or reviews at all. Untappd and BA, in my mind, are two very different platforms for very different things. I guess I just have some sort of misguided expectation from BA that if I go in to check out a beer I should have a little more to go on than a number and some random blurb like "Tastes awesome!! Beer #1,074" à la Untappd.

So while I would love for people that are participating in this forum to review, I understand not everyone can. The reason I jumped into this thread in the first place is because I just saw the "I don't have time/I don't know how to review" justification for why some don't review on BA when the obvious alternative for me is to just not review at all. If you're going to spend time doing something online, might as well invest the extra couple of minutes to make it something helpful for others or even for yourself as a beer drinker. If time limits you to a couple of numbers, just spend that time enjoying your beer or company instead. As for the "not knowing how to review", that's just BS. If you're enough into beer that you sought out a niche forum and consider yourself skilled/knowledgeable enough to assign number ratings; you most definitely have the qualifications to put down 4 or 5 coherent sentences as to why you put those numbers there.

I'm not really advocating for any changes in the review/rating system. And I'm not about to go into some rant on the virtues of reviewing beer. Honestly anything that needs to be said about that topic has been said here.

 

I always felt like BA was the more mature sibling vs the immature, annoying untappd. You love them both, but sometimes the baby gets more attention.

I default to ut if I'm just trying to check something in very quickly, to keep a tab/tick list, but if I want a serious conversation, or feel like a particular beer needs a full write-up (or want to read a write-up from someone else that's just as passionate as I), I come here.

Not to mention, I've made actual friends through this site, and BA has proven to be a community, and ut has yet to achieve that experience for me.

Both have their own respective places. Respect beer.

 

I was a prolific reviewer for many years but there was a point in time where something clicked in my brain and I personally felt it wasn’t worth it anymore. I still do ratings to participate and track my data in a less time consuming way.

 

As I'm feeling now I will only be reviewing in NBS, and having all my new beers in the future there too. My supply is and will be limited, so NBS must have priority. Soon I have rated those around 40 NA beers I've had before from the local shops, then I'll have another earlier 40 beers from online to rate. Then I may circulate those 80 beers without reviewing, like ever.

But let's see

 

I'm surprised that this debate/thread is still going on since Todd had said there will never be a requirement for reviews to be done. I'm not one who reads reviews or provides many Ratings, so it does not matter to me very much, but I especially see the point of you reviewers about a NEED for written text sometimes. It would be right to suggest at least a brief comment if someone gives a numerical rating below, let's say, 2.5 as a starting point. A pop-up box with any rating that low could say something like, "You have given an exceptionally low rating, so it would be great if you would provide a brief comment for your reason as a warning to those who rely upon these beer ratings."

 

Relatively new to the site and the craft scene in general, but have been drinking beer for nearly 40 years. As I'm trying new beers, I give the reviews at that time. I too, read some of the reviews and wonder, am I fucking ******ed, I don't even know what corriander or some of the smells/tastes I see listed even are. I have written reviews for all beers I have rated, but with some not drank in over 30 years, I go by the best of what I can recall. I know this is kind of unfair, but I know pretty much where the beer ranked among those I have tried.

When I am thinking about trying out a new beer, I go by the number ratings not the review anyway

 

@Roguer - you cited exactly what I like about Untappd - would love for BA to allow reviews without scoring. I try to ignore scoring and read certain members adjectives/descriptions. I would start tonight if I didn’t have to focus on a rank/score.

Has this option ever been considered for BA?

 

The option has been raised and discarded. The numbers have an important function for the site.

But you don't need to feel concern about assigning a score to the various aspects of what you think of a beer since the only part of that that really matters is that you are consistent with yourself. Also if you've ever looked at two other people and thought that one was more attractive than the other you've been rating/ranking without realizing it.

Check out the Beer 101 essay on reviewing and give it a try some time. Don't "publish" any reviews until you feel comfortable but with a little bit of practice it gets easier.

Edit: Plus I find that reviewing helps me better remember what I liked and didn't like about certain beers. Been saving money on not buying a 2nd bottle of one I didn't care for.

 

I understand the importance of the numbers but why not allow a review that has no rating and no impact on aggregate score?

I’m comfortable with my ability to rate based on style; I just don’t want to assign a value as there are always external variables involved and my number could fluctuate one experience vs another with same beer.

 

Why not? For that you'll have to ask the owners of the site.

On a consumer rating site there are always external variables involved and the number certainaly can fluctuate from one time to the next. The same is true of written descriptions. The numbers have an advantage in that one can look at numbers across several people and assume that some of the noise in the individual ratings gets canceled out.