Tighter Criteria for "beer centric" places?

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. Far too often tap numbers are padded with all too similar products. When I was in college in Lincoln Nebraska there was a misguided view that Old Chicago was a "beer bar" because of the large (albeit mediocre at best at the time) draft beer list. Up the street a few blocks there is a place called Yia Yia's that has +/-6 taps of really good craft and 250-ish craft/import bottles. Yia Yia's, in my opinion, was the only beer bar in town at the time. The beer scene in Lincoln has greatly changed in the past 10 years but Yia Yia's is still best without having a gaudy number of taps.

 

But wouldn't a review of a place that has 30 mediocre taps be something you would want to know about? If I read that in a review, I would know to stay away from that place.

 

So should we not review bad beers either? It's the same principle.

I understand what you're trying to say, that BA should only be promoting good establishments, but they're not really promoting anything. They're just providing a place for people to give their opinions on whether a beer or an establishment is good or bad.

 

We can concede to disagree, but yes. If they have anything resembling craft, they should be reviewed. If you only want to go to the best places, it's easy enough to filter and pick the top five or whatever in the area that work with your travel plans the same way you can filter beers by their reviews to find the best ones.

 

I can understand what mr mocha is saying, at least in metropolitan areas. But, when I'm stuck in a small town with few choices I would like to be able to know which is the best of my bad choices. If you search for Carlsbad, New Mexico absolutely nothing shows up. But there are a couple of restaurants that do serve craft beer, and a couple of the grocery stores have a reasonable selection of good beer, even though 75% of what they sell is macro, industrial beer.

 

Some previous discussion in this thread...

Imho, approving everything that comes in isn't going to encourage participation in reviewing places. More listings with no reviews for years on end just makes for more visual clutter and more "where do I go in ___" thread topics. Half the time places are submitted by PR firms and businesses looking for free advertising. Are BA's using the Places directory just to "know where to avoid"? No.

The core issue is making the navigation of the Places directory easier and more user-friendly (which i'm sure is being addressed in the redesign). Make it simpler and more intuitive, add helpful features like visual maps, links to beer lists, additional photos. Maybe jazz up the city guide pages with photos and top 10 lists. Making it easier to use will increase participation.

 

Which is the beauty of dedicated local Beerfly guides. Those who know the local scene well enough and are willing to investigate.

Observing the database over several years, activity isn't spurred by adding X amount of new listings (no matter how "worthy" they are).

 

Again this is great if you live in a place like Chicago with lots of choices, good, bad and great. But when I travel I'm usually in small towns so I'm forced to start a thread "where do I go in...?".
Several years ago I submitted a request to have a store listed on Beerfly, I just checked and there are still no places listed in Carlsbad NM. It's a tourist town, I'm sure many BA's have visited the famous Carlsbad Caverns, but according to BA there are no places to buy good beer in my town and that's just not true. It is true that there are no stores or bars that sell even 25% craft beer, but if you come here you can still find beers you'll like if you start a thread and ask a local.

 

It's facetious to assume the "approve only the best places" viewpoint. Even borderline places have a place in the database, just not everything. Much easier to waste someone's time with a random beer than taking the time to go somewhere at random based on a listing on the BA database.

Not that there's anything wrong with posting a regional forum topic... if there's nothing in the db for Carlsbad, now's the time to add something.

 

But it only works if it's approved, and the rules (last time I checked) only allow places that sell mostly craft. That doesn't happen in small town America where 90% of the people love their BMC

 

In terms of the seeming divergence between Mr. Ski and Mr. 077, I can see merit in both views. Frankly, the idea of imposing an objective standard of "worthiness" is likely a lesson in both futility and pointlessness. I will say, though, that some measure of due diligence ought to be taken by the editors.

I encountered such diligence when Mr. 077 was the (or at least one of the) old BeerFly guides for Chicagoland. On a few occasions, he discussed certain proposed additions to the database with me, both some that I wanted to add and some others had submitted. One way or another, the place was somehow checked out, be it in person, via phone, via e-mail, something. This, to me, seems necessary in order to ascertain just how relatively "worthy" a place is, as it places it in some form of context: physical (involving an actual visit or at least some understanding of the surrounding area), apparent (say, calling for a current/past/future tap/bottle list), or even just the word on the street from someone who may or may not be familiar with things. One way or another, a deeper image of the place is gained by the editor/guide, allowing for the vetting of "unworthy" or PR-firm-only-hyped places.

Despite the added effort this undoubtedly requires, it is better than just letting any place be added for the sake of it, and, though it still doesn't fully resolve any necessarily subjective issues of objective prerequisites, it helps with some form of filtering. I, for one, appreciated this sort of effort, even when it meant places I sorta kinda thought were "worthy" were excluded. At least I was given some rationale and came away with a firmer grasp of "worthiness".