Suggested Feature

I think it's a good idea. And may give those people that write those generic two-liners more of an incentive to put some thought into it (not that I can judge as I don't write reviews personally)

 

Some online recipe sites, as well as large retailers (amazon) have a feature like this where people can put a value to a review, and then those searching through reviews can sort by "most useful", least useful, etc.

I like that.

 

I don't see that simple "like" adds more value to the reviews, if only because it brings into the "like" judgement whether I personally like the author's writing style or not and what I know when I'm reading the review. There are some regular reviewers whose writing style is "keep it as simple and brief as possible" and there are others who have a reasonable flair for expressing themselves. But that's pretty much irrelevant to the qualiteis of the beer so would just create more noise in the system.

Furthermore, I've found for myself, whether I like a particular review or not also depends on where I am in understanding the beer. For example, if I'm evaluating whether I want to hunt for and try the beer (we buy a lot of beer a case at a time here in PA and for a variety of reasons single bottles are often hard to find and relatively expensive) there are some reviewers I find more valuable than others at predicting whether I'll enjoy the beer.

However, when I've done my own review or rating and want to see what some others have thought about the beer as a way of learning more about what I think of the beer. (e.g., "Oh, yeah, maybe I did/do taste that in there but couldn't recognize it. I'll make a point to try that beer again to see if I agree or not.") there's a different set of reviewers whose contributions are helpful and the two sets aren't identical.

Bottom line, sometimes a brief review with a few key words here and there is more valuable that a multi paragraph well-written essay. So "like" would mean different things with no way of sorting out the difference.

But, you'll also find there are some forum participants and users on this site who won't care one way or the other because they believe that the only people who use reviews are "sheeple" wanting someone else to tell them what they think and enjoy.

But at the end of the day, I think you'll also find eventually that the owners/operators of the site don't believe it useful to "like" reviews and have no plans to implement that feature.