Questions: (1) If ratebeer could add one MAJOR feature set, or change the site in some MAJOR way in order to modernize, improve itself?
Ideas:
Feed based: with an infinitely scrolling home page of recent activities and photos, notifications of latest releases, of recommendations to beer offers online and new beers on tap near you, brewer activity by brewers you follow,
More picture based: larger, better quality images, more images for each place, brewer, beer, user, and with tagging of people, brewers, places in photos
More Place-based: better place functions, better mapping, check-ins, whatâs on tap, offline maps,
Social-integration: better integrate with
Local Experts: get the latest ratings, suggestions, from people in your area or for places to where you plan to travel. Highlight local expert in your local feed and in Places section
This should have been done with the main page a long time ago instead of having a static main page like we have right now (and not updated âŠstill best 2018?). MY LOCAL, NEW RELEASES and FEED pages are the only things I take a look constantly apart from my own (still outdated) PROFILE pages
UT is there for this. The only thing you can really do is finally have 2 image set for the place pages like it was intended to 2 years ago⊠(brewer logo + background place picture in the Place pages)
This is probably what could have saved the website if it has been updated a few years ago. Many ideas were introduced and debated, checks the posts in the feedback section.
Again, this should be part of a complete Feed-Main ratebeer page experience. But probably not the main thing to update since we are so few right nowâŠ
But as always, we would prefer that you fix whatâs broken first and that you port old pages to new format everywhere on the site before adding new featuresâŠplease!
I donât think itâd add more folks but would make some of us happy Who are here. to have more maps with a few more countries broken into âstatesâ
As many have echoed for years now, if you could do one thing, itâs fix the many bugs, dysfunctionalities, and inconsistencies on the website that have persisted for years â which is what has largely been responsible for the many departures of ratebeerians and will doubtless cause more to leave. Please do not add more features before fixing the persisting problems.
I can only comment as a non-premium member that joined just over 2 months ago and therefore donât really know the history.
The site is like a maze, and every other day I notice a link that is broken, is for premium members despite not being marked with a âPâ, and other times I find some interesting stats Iâm allowed to view. Its marvellously chaotic but not necessary user friendly. Therefore I think any major project should be in a general tidy up before new features are added.
Also I think you need to sell the premium membership better. Iâm a bit of a stat nerd particularly in how I compare to others but at just 150 reviews what incentive do I have to upgrade when there are some reasonable lists I can already access, particularly with user beer ratings over 100 viewable? There maybe be good reasons but Iâm not getting that from the list of benefits.
On a positive note this site is about rating beers properly with the use of words and therefore is far superior to Untapped. Even the piss-take reviews are comedy gold you cant get elsewhere. I therefore already feel I have a vested interest in helping to keep this site going.
Of all those things, seeing tap lists / availability would be the most useful to me. Mapping might also be cool (post pandemic anywayâŠ) especially better filters/customization/searching options on map.
Everything on that list is optional to me vs. making the existing stuff work properly. (e.g. Site still frequently logs me out when Iâm trying to admin or access my own page.)
âFeedâ - honestly i hate this. Iâd much prefer being able to click on a specific friend and see what they are up to vs. a scrolling list of âstuffâ. Most peoples feeds will be so full it becomes useless (IMHO). On Untappd I barely look at that feed for exactly this reason. If you are friends with more than like 3 prodigious raters itâs too much to keep up with.
Latest releases / tap lists - how are these being updated? We donât currently have a user base that is sufficient to update these based on ratings entered. Would tap lists come directly from venues?
Have 150 friends on untappd, some heavy tickers and have no problem following the feed. However it can get quite busy from time to time. Maybe being able to group rates from a friend in last x hours? And being able expand them like some kind of list if you please. Maybe that would work.
My current perception is that can releases are so rapid no one can keep up. At best brewers are using facebook. Good luck with that mishmosh. Tasting rooms/brewpubs are either using something that works well, like untappd, or doing their own thing - which may or may not be timely. Restaurant/bars seem to have varying ways of mixing up their menus in awkward ways. An universal field theory seems out of reach in this area.
I think giving urls to taplist pages, and asking regional admins to update links every so often is the best way to go. Or letting users update the links.
I suppose it would be more fair to say that itâs not that I canât keep up with it so much as I donât want to. Your grouping suggestion is a good one.
Very few places update their information on ratebeer, almost none. I have updated hundreds of beer menus for places. I didnât care if it was an untappd link, beer menu link, taphunter link, or other link. Really the only thing I cared about is if the taplist was relatively up to date because if I am thinking about going some where, it might determine where I go based on the tap list.
I have already been doing this. There are a bunch of tap list links from untappd for places that have up to date tap lists, so we know what a place has on tap. I donât limit to untappd however I put any mostly update tap lists under the beer menu for the place.
Your grouping suggestion is a good one.
