So I’ve checked and seems RB entry was created in August and I’ve noticed a lot of users with low number of rates rating this beer 4.5+. Most of those users stopped rating after February but some of them started to be active just recently. And guess what? They sure like their Nomada beers around New Year.
And guess what - if you type Papaya Crush into Untappd you’ll be taken to Papaya Rye. And Nomada manages their brewery on Untappd. Is it possible that Papaya Rye was created just to pick up RB Award? Seems possible, but a longshot.
So lets stay on Mediterranean, but move a bit eastern. Do you know who makes the best IPA in the world? Apparently it’s the Greeks.
Like Joe keeps repeating, many more beers produced every year, and in more remote locations, therefore more ratings distribution.
It’s no longer a war only between Westvleteren and Dark Lord.
Without looking at those specific cases that will be dealt with by local admins, keep also in mind that in some beer starving locations drinkers can more easily be impressed.
Changing the number of ratings an individual user needs for their rating to count to something greater than 10 has been suggested to the site owner in the past. This would probably take care of most of these instances were a handful of people sign up to try and falsely inflate ratings. This change was never made, and I doubt this is something that will ever change.
For now, we have to accept that a small number of users can sign up, rate a new beer they like very high, and that beer will then show up as one of the best beers on the site.
If these were the newbie users which are impressed with new beers or styles I wouldn’t mention this.
Apparently we have sleepers which activate just before RB Awards to boost beers from certain brewery.
From what I’ve heard admins knew about Papaya Rye case. I didn’t want to bring it up last year because it’s one beer, who cares. But seems to me it’s becoming a trend and I don’t like it at all.
About the two Greek beers that you mentioned @Iznogud, they were released in November and December so these two examples do not fall under the “sleepers which activate just before RB Awards to boost beers”. The beers are good, you can see some ratings from people out of Greece with many ratings. The very high scores of the most of the Greek raters are mostly because the most of them have not tried many other great beers.
The same applies for the most of the Greek people that rated the two world class venues that @WingmanWillis mentioned.
Hopefully we will make the best impy in the world yes!! But it will be a future beer… Not the one you mentioned @Iznogud
Really I have no problem with inexperienced users rating beers that high. I don’t even have a problem with homerism. Happens in Croatia as well. If someone becomes a contributing RB user because he had a great beer - no one happier than me.
What bothers me are the people who only bother to register and rate 10/20/30 or even 50 beers, among them certain breweries very high and then don’t log on for the next half of year or a whole year or ever. Do I have to explain to you what happens when people from Balkans get a feeling they can exploit the system? And that will happen, I know several brewers here whowon’t have problem adopting boost ratings system.
Do you think that in Spain drinkers can more easily be impressed with the medium-high level of Spanish beers?
or could be the friends/relatives/users that are linked to Olut (bar joined to Nomada) and Nomada Brewing whose every year are increasing its ratings
This is an idea, maybe the solution but I do not know where, I read that for the moment this is not possible.
Why a rating written of an user of 50 ratings has the same value than other coming from an user with +5000 ratings?
Of course it’s possible. Right now a rater needs 10 ratings for their rating to count towards the score. Wherever that number is in the code, change it to 100.
This will never actually change because it’s not something the powers-that-be really care about.
Do you really think that changing from 10 to 100 would change the attitude of these “users”? They only need a few minutes to reach 100 ratings to avoid this
@fatphil1 yes I was talking about the users. The users did not rate those beers in November and December because they wanted to boost the beers for RB awards (most of those users probably dont know about the awards) but because they were released in this period.
Here I disagreed only in the part that those Greek raters rated the two beers in November and December in order to boost the scores for the RB best awards. Maybe some of them will login again when a new beer from that brewery will be released… but they are “helping” the brewery in general, not for the RB awards.
I don’t like this either, I just wanted to say that those 2 beers are good.
hahaha that would be fun!! finally we will be able to trade some local beers for good stuff
Holy shit - have you seen the ratings distribution of one of those really high raters? Nearly a third of his ratings are 5.0, and his median rating is 4.3!
(And the other high rater on average scores things 0.47 higher than its average.)
The error bars for this beer don’t even fit within the 0.5-5.0 range, it’s a joke.
Having said that, ISO!
The best smoked beer in the world has 4 ratings, all local. Not saying those ratings are boosted, I know most of the raters and am 100% certain they are legit, just observing that barrier of entry into consideration is pretty low.
What the hell!? I thought I was a generous rater but this guy is taking things to a whole new level.
Also you must have noticed how proportional the distribution is? It’s like he purposely rates in such a way that each score has the same number of beers, increasing slightly every few increments. For example 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 and 0.9 all have 25 ratings. 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 all have 26 ratings… and so on. The cynic in me wants to cry “rating manipulation” here but I suppose there is no proof. Oddly enough his ratings are all very lengthy, I don’t speak French and Google Translate is a bit shit so I’m not sure how valid the content is but if you ignore the scores it seems to all be quite legitimate. One of the strangest raters I’ve ever seen.
But it will be a future beer… Not the one you mentioned 
