I’m not being a flag waver for Untappd (although I do use it a fair bit these days) but you probably wouldn’t have to load all your old stuff to use it on the go to avoid grabbing beers you’d had before. A lot of the beers you rated in the past won’t be around any more - I doubt that festival special I had at St Albans beer festival in 2005 will be on Untappd and the chances of ever seeing it again are zero. You can always keep a full record of all your beers in a spreadsheet, or whatever, that you mainly access and update at home. I, personally, need to do that anyway because not everything I’ve had is in, or eligible for, RateBeer (bearing in mind I have beers in my personal list going back to the 70s) so I can’t use it as a full record.
What Untappd is far better than RateBeer for - at the moment at least - is quickly ticking beers at a beer festival. If you go to a festlval like Nottingham, a large proportion of the 1200+ the beers are new and/or obscure so not on RateBeer and it would be quite impractical to add all those as you go. Jan & I still have beers from last years Nottingham festival that we haven’t got round to adding yet. With Untappd, it’s almost certain that someone will have added a beer before you get to it. However, when I say Untappd IS better for quick ticking at festivals, in practice what I mean is that it WOULD be if I’d yet had a phone with a battery that lasted a full day at a festival!
For me, at least, it’s not a simple question of RateBeer or Untappd or some other solution, because they all have elements that you don’t get from the others.
This raises the old chestnut of who and what RateBeer reviews are for. For beers with lots of ratings, the numbers are just contributing a fraction to the overall mass and don’t really add much unless they’re way out of kilter with the norm. In those cases it might be useful to get an idea of why that individual felt the beer was significantly better, or worse, than the norm. Otherwise, how many detailed and well-written reviews do you need? And how many will you read? I suspect most people, if they’re regular RateBeer users, will gravitate towards reviews from raters that they know & trust anyway.
For beers with few ratings, the words and numbers have more significance. I long ago realised I didn’t have the time or inclination to transform all my scribbled notes into something more cogent. I thought I might restrict that to beers with no/few ratings and those where my views were out of step with the masses. But I found I didn’t have time for that either.
And, of course, for those who just want to use RateBeer as their own record, for their own purposes, the wider value is irrelevant.
100% true. People dropping real high scores on really mediocre beer too. Call us snobs, but that’s why I joined this site in 2012. As someone coming from drinking almost exclusively Molson Canadian, I didn’t know shit about other styles. The longtime users here really helped me decide what to get at the store by making their ratings so detailed. It’s pretty fucking sad to see where this site is headed, as the 22-year old kid who doesn’t know shit about how different styles are supposed to taste won’t have the same luxury I did. So thank you to longtime users who helped me develop a palate and are planning to leave.
Wow! Thanks for all of this. This helps a great deal. In order to get this data in a form that’s more complete and better quality, I’m going to send out a survey to power users today. This is going to help me catalog feeling and get the right work done.
To explain, I am running in a direction I know we need to keep RateBeer growing and going, and we often have bugs in new development so I’ve been more heads down in meetings, planning and development there than monitoring the community. Last year I was able to attack the bug log easily as it was often in pages that Mike or I created. Many of the bugs now are in a new code base, so I’ll need to get that sorted out with new developers.
For Me, paying the premium was a moral thing, it helped the site. Issues with RB in the past were annoying, sometimes bloody annoying, but in the end we accepted this. It was a site run by volunteer admins and guys with IT knowledge. Guys who not only rated and loved beers like us, but also loved Ratebeer.
I now have no issues not paying a premium.
We have a site that has had a significant monetary boost and salaried tech team. Yet the ROI seems terrible.
Those people who had previously given years of their spare time freely to improve and keep the site running have been disrespected and left out of the loop.
For us non admin users, who have added beers across the world and contributed a lot of effort into our reviews (whether shit or Nobel Peace Prize standard). We have been palpably and frequently ignored in an effort to dumb down the site (something which joet promised me wouldn’t happen on his watch). We have pretty much unaminously asked for certain things which have fallen on deaf ears. We have pointed out major flaws in the new developments and get a response about Lingonberries now being searchable. Fucking wow. All to what end? Higher footfall with little viable input?
Ratebeer is dying and Joet is leading the death dance.
As each day goes by I feel I am getting closer to leaving. If it wasn’t for the fact of the time needed to transfer my ratings and the great guys on here I would have left months ago.
Please include more than just power users. What even is your cutoff point for who is classed as a power user? I’ve never received any kind of survey from you so I know I’m not one. I average around 100 rates a month at the moment, that’s more than 3 a day, and I rate every day. Isn’t my, and people in similar position to mine’s, feedback worthwhile too? I think we’re using the website enough to be well aware of current and potential issues with it.
Also there’s still a fair few bugs you haven’t even acknowledged yet. Should I spam feedback every day until you do? Should I publicly post an all-encompassing thread here on the forums? What’s the best way to proceed?
It will be a very sad week if a mass exodus does happen. Ive been a member of RB before Untappd - since 2013 - and while i prefer the social aspect of checking beers in on UT when out & about, and the ease & speed of entering a tick, RB for me just takes it to the next level for collating / viewing stats & being a part of a beer geek community; obsessed with more detailed ratings, regular tastings & meet-ups, trades & discussion.
THIS is what RateBeer should be known for. Not coming down to UT’s level. Almost every person i know on UT that ive mentioned RB to couldnt care less about writing a description of their beer, or viewing stats, or the community. They just wanna use it as a beer Instagram, upload a photo and get a few comments & likes.
RateBeer appeals to true geeks and this is its strength because no other site exists (apart from BA) that caters for them in the same way.
Not that i care much about being a “power user” or not, but i havent gotten any survey mail today either.
While i dont care about the personal “power user” title, i do care alot about the site and the community, and i hate to watch it go south at the speed we see atm.
“To explain” you say. Well explain it then! You don’t explain anything here. In which direction? Where are we going? Explain what you want to do and what you see the site become!
Would have liked the survey too, how many Power Users are there? What’s the criteria to define this?! And how many users are included / respected ?! Ignorant attitude, to ignore the vote and opinion of other regular / premium users.
I got it too. 3 questions with no option to provide detailed feedback on each thing. The questions were stuff that’s already been covered in this and other threads and joet already acknowledged, so all in all not helpful in the slightest sadly. Unless there’s going to be some followup?
