Yeah, there could and should be switch for that. I would imagine that this would be easy to implement…it would be harder to design the creative part for badges/awards.
My advice would be: keep it interesting (and fun) by not overdoing it. When you get a badge for every two beers you rate or tick then it’s just annoying nonsense. Personally I don’t care about the awards either, but I did chase -when I started, like probably all of us did (or still do)- the beer styles. And while I don’t search for em very actively, I do like country ticking. States as well. So, since I presume most people are more interested in badges/awards than me, there is definitely a market for it so to speak. But as I said, if I get a notification every 2, 3 or 5 beers that “I have unlocked a new badge” or received an award, it gets annoying. When that notification system for awards still was in place -probably more than 5 years ago by now I guess- those messages I wouldn’t even open, they got deleted right away.
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Link tags to badges and add a tag classification by genre and then make badges for x number of tag claimed by genre: $$$
STRAWBERRY AFICIONADO (5 Strawberry tagged beer tasted)
ULTIMATE HOP HEAD (tasted 20 different Hops-genre tagged beer)
Limitless possibilities…
Totally agree in each point. I really have never understood why UT is so popular…
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It’s simple: It became popular because their phone App makes search really easy and allows a more social media feeling (users can post pics with their rating, others can Toast and comments), this is what most people like to do now… Badges are an additional feature that some people crave about but I don’t think it’s a major factor for the app to be so popular compared to the others points.
Ratebeer didn’t jumped on the bandwagon of mobile App when they were at their peak ten years ago and suffer greatly from it now.
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According to me, UT is a “foutoir” (french word for “bloody shambles”). Pics everywhere, a lots of rates without any comment or argumentation, tons of “earned blabla (level 10^6) badge” for EACH single post, and you scroll until the time of the end to try to find a constructed and consistant note - in vain. Plus poor statistics… It makes me think of snapshat. I’ve tried five times UT - and thought everytime it’s a real “foutoir” not serious. But indeed, UT gets more and more popular… Too bad for RB. A last point : whenever I taste a beer, I must be a minimal concentrate, which does not seem to be the case for everyone on UT… Sori brewery says: “Serious beer for not serious people.” That’s it! (“Not serious” doesn’t mean : “negligent”… There is a time for everything: 1) a time to appreciate at 100% a beer and focus on it (like when you make love with your partner); 2) a time to party without paying too much attention at what is in the glass. For me, RB is more the 1), UT more the 2).)
(It’s just my opinion! UT addicts: ne me jetez pas la pierre (don’t blame me).) 
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Not a fan of UT either because of that too…
However, if RB wants to implement a part of the Social part to be able to survive, I’d be okay with it as long as they keep Ratings and Activity/social media separated.
People could share which beer they are tasting (I’m Drinking This), Beer Spotting, and Check-Ins in place just like now but with added possibility for replys and adding pics, all in the Activity Section. If the person rates something however, it goes to the DB.
So in a beer/brewer/place page, you could have the ratings and infos by default just like now with a link to Recent Activity for that product (similar to UT but not in forefront, more like an extra)
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And in other news people are discussing if one or two 330 bottles are enough for 15-20 people grand tasting at RB gathering. That’s 5 hour 70 beer grand tasting we’re talking about.
Problem is Untappd did so many things right it’s difficult to implement those things without being a blatant copy cat.
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I haven’t read this entire thread but the what strikes me about untappd immediately is what appears to be a consensus that there is no bad beer. Garbage beers are scoring 3 plus. I have put in almost 200 ratings there and the rubes love everything they drink.
Ratebeer absolutely has raters with more skill and knowledge.
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Don’t get this.
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We’re talking about appreciating the beer 100%, but at the same time 0.165 dl is considered enough for a rate? 0.5 dl at the MBCC being shared between 5+ people on a 4 hour/100 rates sessions? Places being scored badly just because they don’t serve tasters or free samples? Come on…
@julesxxl seems like a fairly new user, but I’ve been around enough to see how it works. Let’s not mystify RB or think too highly of ourselves.
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True. (And Beeradvocate ratings are higher too than on RB.)
I’ve made a comparison with 5 beers that came in mind, which I consider do not serve the cause of real great beer.
There are undeniably more ratings on UT. But scores are quite different! 3/5 is indecent.
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New user… on RB… “On n’est pas sérieux quand on a 17 ans”, dixit Rimbaud. On RB, people seem to be older and more experienced :
If someone finds the same graphic for UT, I’m interested in…
As for small quantities in order to judge and appreciate… I know that wine and beer are not equivalent… but the greatest sommeliers can determine grape style, millésime, country/region, appellation within two sips (after considering both robe and bouquet). (Having been tasting wines for 20 years helped me to taste beers with more acuity (I suppose)… which is in general not possible when you are very young.)
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Yeah well guess what - here we don’t have greatest sommeliers in the world. And with quantities we’re talking about you don’t get the second sip (I’m not even sure you get the first one). Also I’d like to see greatest sommeliers going through hardcore 4-5 hour tasting session where you actually drink alcohol.
But I’ve seen all those arguments about tasting beer before and I wasn’t really talking about that. I was talking about appreciating beer. Would you say beer is really appreciated in the cases I’ve mentioned? What do you think the brewer would say?
Whole scoring system on untappd is shifted to the higher end. And I find it way better because it’s easier to find good beers, since good beers get way higher scores than here. Who cares about Heineken or Corona?
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It’s “for not so serious people”, and the word you missed out is very important. It clearly implies that you need to maintain a balance between the more serious and the less serious. At no point was a total lack of seriousness on the table.
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As the mathmo in the room, that jumps out to me as being illogical. The good beers are more squeezed together at the top end of the range on untapped, so it’s harder to separate the really great from the just great. (in the clearly-biased eyes of the self-selecting samples that have rated them, obviously.)
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At UT I’d expect really great to be 4.50+ and great around 4.25+.
On the other hand at RB beers tend to be pushed towards the average (because of the weighing system/low rates combo and raters traditionally giving lower scores and not using the whole scale).
So just to give example - for me avg system where good/very good/great/truly great works better as 3.75/4/4.25/4.5 than 3.65/3.75/3.95/4.1. And that’s for beers which have enough scores at RB, new beers mostly don’t so you can’t even detect new and great beers.
Wowow… You’re definitely right… Big, big, big mistake… 
The “so” was the most important! (And it reinforced what I wanted to explain.) I apologize…
Not really. There’s still a range of scores. Shit beers at the low end, good beers at the high end. The scale has 2 decimal points so even when beers generally fall between 3 and 5, there are still 200 points on the scale there. If you were to look at Ratebeers percentile score, you’d say 100 points is enough of a range to sort good from shit. Great=4.2-4.4 Really great=4.4-5.0. Having a different scale doesn’t necessarily make it wrong or worse
For the badge haters, completely true that they suck but they offer a revenue stream through advertising. Other options would be to try charge users a fee and then nobody pays it or sell to ABInvev and let the website turn to shit. It is just one click though. I found skipping the ‘add location info’ page on ratebeer just as annoying
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