Can’t rate a beer, I can see my account, BUT when I try to review a beer it asks for login, go to log in and it will not let me, but I can still see my stats and emails, doesn’t make sense. I’m pissed as I’m in Amsterdam and want to get logging.
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Hi Nick
Sorry you’re experiencing issues. We’ve solved many of these problems in the last day, as we debuted not only a new page but also a new server for serving beer pages. The issue is all about login. Some people have resolved by simply signing out of RateBeer from all their open browsers, not by closing them but by clicking the sign out link, and then signing back in. @services
Here’s the link
https://www.ratebeer.com/signout.asp
Joe
Prescience?
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About 7785 users received the updated page which was a small percentage of our daily visitors. Of those visitors, a minority percentage experienced issues with login and rating. For some of those affected users, the issue was resolved within 24 hours. For the large majority of the percentage experiencing issues, theirs were resolved within 48 hours. We did see small but measurable negative changes in sign in and rating volume Tuesday which rebounded Wednesday.
I apologize for any inconvenience. I do care about every single user experiencing problems and we’re working to fix every sign in issue. We’re also working to ensure major rollouts like this happen even more smoothly. The feedback here was helpful in getting us back on track. We’ll continue to monitor these issues and are smarter now about improving the quality of our future releases.
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I’m sorry about that. We’ve rolled out dozens of code updates this week, with many focused on solving the login/browser issues you’ve had. If you still have any unresolved issues, I’d like you to work directly with @services who is here to put a nail in your browser/login problems for good.
We’ve been able to work these out for many others, and want to make sure your experience here is more pleasant than it’s ever been.
Cheers
Joe
Some “problems” are relatively subtle. Couldn’t add new beer just now. Decided to use new browser page. While transferring info from “failure” I noticed:
5…2
was used for percent. Fail by extra period. Removed and original effort succeeded.
Related? I typed in 5 period period 2 and the post has 3 periods. :))
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Hi joet,
Will the beer tags add/edit function be restored? I saw no such features on the new page. The same goes for “I Am Drinking This Now!” button.
Thank you for your attention.
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That doesn’t answer my question Joe. I want to know where you are going with all this? What’s your roadmap? Are you getting value for money on the investment?
The technical issues aren’t the biggest problem for me, we have dealt with these before and i am sure most of the bugs will be ironed out eventually. What is a problem is the communication between YOU (I don’t give a shit about what these new ZX guys have to say) and US (your long suffering followers). Your response of go to @services with your problems, smacks full of call centre speach euphimisms for “go away and leave me alone” if that it so, just say so. When you do come to us for an opinion, it is after the fact and completely ignored if it doesn’t match what is already set in motion.
Users have been alienated by the segregation of “Power Users” and everyone else.
We bring up issues time and time again that concern us most, these are disregarded and the juggernaut of ill thought out and untested “improvements” are rolled out furthering the glitches on an already barely functional site.
You promised us the heavens and instead gave us @discobot.
I was one of your more vocal supporters during the ABinBev saga and now I feel let down.
Please, Joe communicate with us as Joe, not a corporate mannequin spouting out ABinBev speak and jargon. I just want to know if your heart is still in this and what you want.
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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
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Interesting. Yeah it shows three in my reply too. I can check error handling in adding a beer
I’m here every day, putting in more than normal work week hours, making fixes, working on future plans, helping with execution and communicating with my team and the community because I care deeply about where we are and where we’re going.
If you don’t see me on the forums, it’s most often because I’m deep into other issues. If there are problems you’re experiencing, it’s most often that time spent in the forums is time spent away from solving problems. My work at RateBeer has always been this way where I balance communication with plain old getting shit done. Coding is a bit like accounting, doing math, speed-completing crossword puzzles or playing chess, where chatting about what one is doing is not just a different activity, it’s a whole different part of one’s brain. I admire those who can do both at once. I’m just not like that.
I apologize if this has caused confusion or uncertainty. The site is still growing and our team is still quite small. We have an aggressive roadmap ahead of us and we have a lot of work to do, testing of that work, revision and more revision. It’s going to be a bumpy road, but we’re using methods that reduce the bumps considerably. With millions of visitors from now until late Summer, the forums (and my email, and our feedback, and my text messages) will continue to light up when some are experiencing problems. Believe me, that I have concern for everyone with a problem, and that I’m working to make everyone’s experience much better.
This is not something new since the investment. RateBeer has always been this way for me where I’m putting in lots of effort to make changes that are tweaked along the way. RateBeer is evolving faster now than it ever has been and I recognize that this period we’re going through now feels more uncomfortable because some aren’t seeing the same light at the end of the tunnel that I am. Because I’ve done this many times before, I know what’s up ahead and no amount of discussion or hand holding can make up for not having personally passed through this trough of sorrow. We’ll get there again.
tl;dnr: I know this period sucks and some people, good friends too, feel some uncertainty. Please hang tight. I’ve been through this before and we’ll get through it again with things brighter on the other side. Your patience will be rewarded.
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Sorry, about that. My greatest concern is solving your sign in issues so that you see your ratings on your search results page and that you can rate. @services handles those problems. If you’re all good now, or you still have issues, please let us know.
You should seriously consider sharing this with us on the forums (not in here, a new thread). Maybe not the whole thing if you have “secrets” you don’t want to share with competitors but at least a guideline of where things are headed.
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I’ve done this already, and the feedback was that what I shared was too vague and/or incomprehensible. It’s not the roadmap people want. It’s something else and we’ll get to what that is in the future through dialog. It’s exceptionally hard to describe to users something they can’t see. If I had a picture, people would understand but typically, people can’t envision what we’re planning without pictures. We are not building or even mocking up interfaces though until we hone the supporting technologies and conduct more user research to hone what we’re offering. Despite exciting advances happening near daily now, there’s still nothing to share that’s grokkable by someone outside the team. There’s also the important element of surprise and secrecy which will also help our long term success which makes putting out roadmaps publicly not only an exercise in frustration on both sides, but also something that’s bad for the company.
We’ll figure out what people feeling uncertainty want and need and go from there.
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Thanks Joe. If i didn’t care about Ratebeer so much I would just leave and not keep pushing you on this. It’s just more and more people are leaving and to be honest you are the only one who can stop that. I understand it’s a balance between sensitive information and keeping us informed on your direction. I guess i just need to know you still have your hand on the tiller and not some other noneity.
Ps. I haven’t unfriended you on facebook, I have just deleted my account because facebook was pissing me off. I don’t give a shit about Facebook and I can do that. Ratebeer is different.
Cheers
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Well thank you.
I know people leave RateBeer every day and that’s unfortunate. However we’ve been gaining far more new people every week than we’ve been losing for many many years. The last year, despite all the challenges, has been one of our better years for new users, and includes our all-time record month for most new users last July. We’ve also set monthly rating volume records (most ratings per month), twice.
Please don’t believe the gloom and doom trolls. They are far from accurate.
Thanks for sticking around. And seriously, if you have any sign on issues or don’t have them, please let us know! We are anxiously waiting on getting “ALL CLEAR” reports from people who’ve reported issues.
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Thanks for responding to that. I definitely feel the frustration from our side of things as users, but I can also see things from your point of view too, sometimes just your acknowledgement of issues like this gives a slight ease, it’s much better than ignoring entirely (and yes, I fully understand you can’t spend all your time on the forums so might miss some things). Like Sarky I complain and critique because I spend so much time here and care about the direction of the site. As I’ve said elsewhere I’m certainly sticking around for the time being, at least until my Premium expires, at that time we’ll see how things have progressed.
Hopefully I’ll still be here, looking like an idiot for worrying about the site burning to the ground when in fact things got better.
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Thanks a bunch for your concern and feedback. Your bug reporting is excellent and I appreciated it a great deal.
It’s probably a good idea for us to involve you more in user interviews and testing. I’ll be reaching out in the coming weeks.
cheers
I tried logging out completely and signing back in, as suggested. Also didn’t work, and now I can’t log in at all or see anything (at least before I could see my stuff, just couldn’t add or rate anything).
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@services, looks like we have a test subject!
Hopefully he can get you back on track, pronto. Thanks for reaching out.
