I finally gave in

…and started putting ratings on Untappd. I’m not leaving ratebeer or anything, but I needed somewhere to log vintage lambic, beers that pre-date this site and grote dorst and h.ertie uli blends. I’ll still put everything else here. I’m really not a fan of the Untappd interface and the lack of stats. It’s pretty lame, but it’ll have to do for those things I guess.

I did that as well, solely to rate homebrews and other unrateable things and stalk some friends.

I don’t like the interface either.

What could we learn from that? People put up with a shitty interface when the site as a whole is stable. Like with RB a year ago.

What is it wrong with Untappd’s interface? I mean, search works fine, rating a beer 5 seconds after you find it is working fine, you can see your friends’ score just fine.

Maybe “interface” wasn’t the right word. A few things I don’t like about Untappd personally:

  1. Can’t rate in .1s.
  2. Ratings don’t distinguish taste/nose/appearance etc.
  3. No personal stats that I can find. There’s a section for it if you pay, but it’s a bit pricey and I haven’t done it. So, don’t know if it is worth it.
  4. Badges are dumb. I rated 86 beers on there and have 82 badges. What’s the point?
  5. You can rate without noting anything. Not a fan of it.
  6. Doesn’t seem like you can search to see which of your friends have rated a certain beer without searching each friend separately.
  7. Stats. I’m listing it twice as it is the most important thing to me.
  8. I like the lists and rankings on Ratebeer that Untappd doesn’t have, so more stats.

Things I like about untappd:

  1. I can rate old lambic that predates ratebeer. I can rate things like Grote Dorst blends and h.ertie bottles. I collect old lambic and enjoy drinking and rating them.
  2. People actually enter beers into that database so I’m not adding a dozen beers onto the site after every tasting.
  3. That’s about it.
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Apart from the top-notch rating option (go there, sign up, search for beer, find it, rate it, add extras if you want, done), I find it a bit confusing, for example to edit a rate in the app. I took a view tries to find that option, and I still can’t remember how I got there. I also dislike that the app seems to have more useful functions than the website. Not being able to follow bars that haven’t been claimed (= haven’t bought in) makes the function useless for me, as no place around here uses it.
But I can absolutely live with all that, as I actually do want to learn the ways of the ticker. Because the rating option itself is almost spotless. It’s fast, the search just works, the database is vast. It’s easy to connect with friends and discuss beers they’ve just had. And there’s actually locals on there as well!

^This. Just having a numerical value rating doesn’t do much for me. Years later, it’s kind of worthless (“Well I see I gave this beer a 3.75, but I can’t remember anything about it”). And the badges are basically the “trophies for everybody” mindset - I’ve got 43 for 45 ticks.

agree with that, but main thing I use untappd for is the nearby activity in the mobile app, which shows what people are drinking nearby (this doesn’t seem to be available in the web version!) e.g this evening a new Kerb Edge food truck appeared serving beers in Darlington which popped up on untappd, and also there are some verified venues showing what they have available which is quite handy. I’m the only local activity on ratebeer so tend to already know what I’m drinking!