We had a laugh at that yesterday. “Your upload may have been successful.” - how reassuring!
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Hehe, I was referring to Untappd.
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I did send an update for a pic on RB. A tap handle pic >a pic of the brewery Growler. We’ll see how that goes.
There’s a simple explanation, which makes this article pointless: RB and UT are two completely different kinds of beer rating. UT is the quick one, only one figure for the score and only a few words description, if at all. RB is the detailed, more time consuming one, five figures for the score and a min description length. You can’t compare this 1:1 if you don’t at least include the motivation of the rater.
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UT allows 110 characters of text per rate, which is more than enough for me considering I don’t have to include any commentary on appearance since I can include a photo with every rating now. This is what I mean by a MUCH better/easier user experience for me, and I am what you would call a “serious rater” in that I write notes on every beer I have.
I will grant you that UT allows beer drinkers to make whichever choice appeals to them as far as keeping track of their beers. Heck, all you have to do is hit the “check in” button and you’re done if that’s what you want. I personally have no problem with that, as I’ve never cared about what others do with this hobby; it’s for their pleasure so who am I to judge?
And whatever effect this may have on the database will be mitigated by the sheer quantity of input per beer. We at RB have historically stylized ourselves as being the more serious or more mature beer hobbyists and we have always been proud of our accurate and meaningful database. Well sorry everyone, but those days are done. The RateBeer database is a fucking hollow joke compared to what it once was. It was the one thing that kept me anchored here (along with the community), but it is no longer even a factor for me. Now it is 100% about my user experience and about access to current meaningful information. UnTappd crushes this site on both counts.
*edited for grammar and structure
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I’ll pay someone to transfer my RB rates to Untappd. Ballpark rates are fine (as close as it can be with Untappd’s scale), no text. Message me if interested and price.
50 dollars, no deadline though. I’ll need your account password on both sites of course.
I’m pretty amazed they haven’t made an import function yet. Talk about a way to drive the final nail into the coffin.
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Of course they could have changed their minds over the years, but I remember earlier on the people behind Untappd made it clear they preferred that people to “live rate” their ratings. One benefit to only encouraging live-rates is that there is the assumption that if someone is drinking something at a certain place that it’s actually available there that very minute. Of course deep down I don’t think they’d care where or how data arrives on their site, so long as people are using their app.
On the flip side, if you’re an “Untappd Supporter” (For 5 dollars a month or 50 dollars a year!!! 
), you can export your data and “use it any way you want.” I’d totally encourage Ratebeer to devise an automated tool to import whatever export of data you get from Untappd into RB. Of course with Unappd, you’d be dealing with annual vintages, and name mismatches, but I’m sure you could get 80-90% of the way there. After the import, provide a summary spreadsheet with any reviews that didn’t get imported.
I don’t know what kind of use that would get, but I know a number of RB users that are still active in the RB community but primarily review on Untappd. This feature might coax the users back one day by eliminating the headache of manually importing their ratings one by one. It could also allow people to “live rate” on Untappd, but then import their Untappd ratings as ticks/full reviews.
Heck, I might even be interested in doing that at least once just so I can catch the Untappd beer entries over the years that I know I’ve made that I totally missed importing into RB.
Of course all this assumes that Untappd doesn’t have any caveats with their “use it any way you want” statement.
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It’s been often requested on all sides (RB, BA and UT) to be able to import/export from/to any of these site, the problem is all three sites have varying naming standards, particularly with regards to collaborations, vintages etc. and so being able to automatically match up such entries would be nigh on impossible - at least, that was the reason none of the three sites ever developed such a tool.
I don’t think it would be too hard to to develop but I imagine it would require a lot of manual labour for each user to match, and so people just can’t be bothered trying to write such tools. For me it’s too late, I already did it manually. I’d actually be quite envious if someone developed a tool to do it automatically now!
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Ya I’m too deep in the RB game now to back out. Like an abusive relationship, haha
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I find it humorous in the article that the author doesn’t understand the difference between a check-in for a beer and a rating.
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Didn’t read the article, but what’s the difference then? I thought check-in on Untappd was giving a beer a score without writing anything, like the tick function here. only there it counts to the score but here not and there are people advocating for the tick scores to count.
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I’m not trying to do anything malicious, just trying to not be dependent on this site. I’ve been here a little while and premium a few times but never found much value in it aside from exporting my list for safe keeping. I do feel like my rates are held hostage here so I feel some urgency to back them up.
Rating here used to be fun and I really looked forward to it but it’s become more of a chore for me the last couple years.
I do find it interesting that a few minutes after I made the post I received a message that said some or all of my rates don’t meet the requirements and are eligible for deletion. The note said they will convert them to ticks.
I don’t disagree with the message at all. My rates are pathetic and that’s mostly due to the Rates and Ticks being on separate lists. I didn’t see a way to auto-convert those myself. When I joined the site, the rating requirements were something along the lines of rate beers however you want, it’s fun and you do what you want to represent how you feel about the beer.
That position seems to have changed, and that’s fine but I don’t think this community want’s to accept that tons of people are drinking tons of beer. A closed beer community is an oxymoron to me.
Untappd is much less Facebook effect and much more Wikipedia effect. The database will grow and refine simply due to mass and high activity. Their services on brewer side is making things that much easier.
I almost feel like I’m talking about a different RateBeer all together. I assume there are still premium forums dedicated to porn?
For everyone EU based, this is why we got GDPR…
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Having the most check ins is cool and all, I use Untappd all the time.
The best way to help RB is to make RB Ratebeerian friendly; that’s something yet to be achieved since when? Right around the time of the investment I reckon.
BA can never compete with Untapped with ratings/check ins, like RB can’t, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Their site is stable as stable can get, new members are constantly flocking in(they’re taking advantage of the new members forum…get them talking and they are pretty much hooked), talking aboot what you’re drinking garners hundreds of posts. Lively. Vibrant. Informative discussions. That’s what spells success in my book. RB has always been aboot ratings and statistics, which is cool, but interactions amongst the members has always been a week point. I dare say sadly lacking.
Rant over.
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Yeah but then you have to tolerate the BA discourse. Which usually comes down to the same ten people telling you that this whole local beer thing is anarchist Tom foolery, and giving you various nerdy explanations of why the Brewers Association is evil, and the word “craft” should be abolished. I’d rather be on a site owned by ABI than put up with that. Really, I look to Reddit for beer discussions mostly.
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Everybody take a deep inhale, then exhale, then party on.
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Relax don’t worry and have a beer 
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Feels like this all may well be true. The only forum activity left is people complaining about the many not completely thought through changes and various bugs. Nobody has the motivation and passion left for gatherings.
You’d think someone would pick up on that and extend am olive branch to the people who actively participate to the site. Instead, we get an offer of “Numbers are great, how dare you criticise this site?!”
I’ve really tried and spent a lot of time in these forums to help and get them going, as I think the new forum is the only good change that has happened, although implementation was wonky. But there’s no payoff anymore. The people I’ve met on here aren’t all that active anymore. No real discussions apart from the airing of grievances. If untappd had a forum, I’d be long gone.
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