I am seeing ticks outnumber reviews by margins of 2:1 to 4:1.
Both on RB and BA.
I reckon that the trend is to put up a score, selfishly, vs sharing the the true thoughts on beers that could be helpful for others considering trying the beer.
How do we counteract that trend? BA gives extra Karma points for full fledged reviews. RB does…what?
I’ve been a member of Untappd for 6years but I gotta say. Thanks for accommodating to the lazy fuckers out there! You’ve done the beer drinkers out there a great service!
I think a lot of people have changed their drinking habits to make reviews less useful for themselves. I like new things but I’m pleased to return to many hundreds of beers, so I’d like to have my reviews to look at. I think many people now try lots of things but have only a handful of beers they ever intend to return to. They can remember what they are and for all the others a score will suffice.
In a world where major tech companies have woken up to the fact that quality > quantity and have shifted their missions and goaling to accommodate this fact, Ratebeer is moving in the exact opposite direction, not only chasing quantity as its sole metric but dramatically dropping the rate of existing quality content participation in the process.
And all this in a world where the quantity-based competition has already left Ratebeer so far in the dust that they couldn’t ever even dream of catching up, and so should have worked towards preserving and empowering the quality-based identity that the site had so long been known for.
Well said. It would be quite an coincidence, if this wasn’t forced by ABInbev here (although, of course, we were told that won’t happen…). Quantity > quality is the philosophy that made them so big.
RateBeer used to be the place for decent reviews and decent discussions. We all know that it isn’t any more, and that it’s not going to go back to that unless something significant happens.
There is the option to create a new place for us to meet up and talk, or to do a user take-over, and everyone chip in to buy the place off Joe. But, I think Joe is quite happy with the way things are going, so he’s unlikely to want to sell out. And it’s easier to talk about setting up a new website than it is to actually do it. So I think we have to accept that the RateBeer we knew and loved is gone, and just take from it what we can. It still serves a useful purpose. I like the immediacy and breadth of UT (it has far more active beers and reviews that we do), but I don’t like its superficiality, so I aint going there. And I tried BA years ago and didn’t like the atmosphere. I have considered switching over there, but it’s too much of a hassle moving my 6,000 ratings.
