Originally posted by Iznogud
That being said I disagree with rating being dumbed down to a single number. Not sure how is this going to play out and what’s the big plan or goal. However I have a feeling RB is hopping on a train trying to compete with Untappd but in the process throwing away data which gives RB edge over other apps instead of making it easier to enter that data. I may be wrong, maybe the plan is different and we don’t see the whole picture. If it’s about simplifying things as much as possible please keep in mind that RB way of rating has also educational purpose and learns newbies to think about whatever beer is in front of them. Untappd doesn’t work that way and it would be shame if RB lost this on it’s way to get fresh blood.
Well said! The rating concept of RB was the thing that made me think about what I’m drinking in the first place, apart from "It’s good/bad". It’s what made me want to dive deeper into learning to distinguish different aromas, or the difference between aroma and taste. Sure, it’s work, but it’s rewarding. The slider, while practical, offers no incentive in such direction. It’s more casual, so just what’s wanted by the people who decide which direction this community has to go. Whoever that is. |
I don’t understand what the app currently offers that I can’t get on the mobile version of the website. |
Watch this turn into another 40-page thread where the complaints of dedicated users that have bought Premium membership for years get completely ignored.
Joe’s arrogance alone whilst dismissing my points about the importance of keeping your core users happy is reason enough to not renew my donation, let alone continue contributing to a database like this for free. People like me (and that includes people that are admins, have been admins, have rated five times more than I have, or dedicate swathes of their own free time without compensation to improve this website’s darabase) should not be dismissed just because Joe thinks he knows how to do user research.
Beyond that, any ratings that come from this bizarre choice to allow arbitrary 0-5 ratings means that this website will become clogged with data points that are not in any way comparable; simplified in-app ratings are more likely to tend towards the extremes, rather than established mean scores.
I encourage anyone that agrees with this approach to give the lowest possible rating to the app in the applicable place. The kinds of people that are drawn to RateBeer as opposed to the competition are coming here precisely because they want a more detailed experience, not because they want to use an inferior version of Untappd.
A RateBeer app should allow RateBeer users to rate beers on RateBeer. This app does not allow that. |
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Originally posted by blipp
I don’t understand what the app currently offers that I can’t get on the mobile version of the website.
There is nothing to understand. |
Let’s fix it until it’s (both) are broken. 
I can’t address the mobile, but the computer website is now crap. |
Originally posted by blipp
I don’t understand what the app currently offers that I can’t get on the mobile version of the website.
This is where I am on it as well. If there’s no ability to input attributes, there’s no reason for me to use the app for rating. I already try and sync my ratings with untappd for looking up things while I’m out (though I’ve got a backlog of about 6k to add there, but it’s up to date on stuff from the last couple years), as that’s generally much faster than the RB mobile website, which I use to rate live sometimes. If the app doesn’t do either of those things better than what I currently have, there’s no need for me to switch over.
Hopefully it eventually gets there.
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Well, the score slider is pretty cool. Good work whoever built that.
That’s about all the positive feedback I can give. Beyond that... yikes. People want to complain about the lack of attribute ratings are missing the forest for the trees. Try to use this in a real world setting and realize how quickly you’ll be returning to mobile web. Search is worse than ever; you can’t enter new beers; you can’t navigate to brewery pages; you can’t get cursory information at a glance in search results (or in any view, for that matter). What use case is this app even for? It’s not good for festival rating, because of unreliable search and the inability to enter beers. It’s not good for brewpub rating, because you can’t go to the brewery page. It’s not good for at-home rating, because you can’t put in any details. It’s not good for checking up on what you’ve rated, because the information is so sloppily presented. It’s not good for travel rating, since it requires an internet connection. And it’s certainly not good for new users, since it appears your ratings are entering an abyss when you put them in here, with no real feedback or indication of the greater whole that is Ratebeer. Or badges.
When designing a mobile app to compete with your biggest competitor, you have to use as the core basis for your design: what are we going to do 100% better then them? How are we going to entice users to choose Us over Them? What are their core strengths, and what will we do to also succeed in those? In this new app’s case, the answer appears to be "absolutely nothing" for all of the above. The only real advantage RB has these days over Untappd is the accuracy and cleanliness of the database, but that strength is never leveraged here, especially with a search engine straight out of 1995 (no non-consecutive strings? really?). Fast is only good if it works.
So, you aren’t getting any new users with this. You offer nothing to "mid" users to entice them away from Untappd. And you are actively pushing away the resolute few hardcore raters who remain. Bad juju.
I do hope this app can gain closer parity to the website at some point—and, of course, leverage the strengths of native apps that websites can’t do—but, considering how long it took just to get this demo, I don’t remain hopeful. |
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The weird thing is that ratings through the app now show up in the kast of ratings a person had entered, but lots of them give an internal server error when I click on them |
iOS users may still use the rather nice BeerBuddy app while waiting for a working official app. |
The way I see it, I’ve used untappd as a placeholder when I am out to assign a score, then when I have time I type the rating over here. Now I can assign it an accurate RB score, and it keeps a placeholder. Then when I have time I can give it a rating. Obviously there are still a lot of limitations, as others have pointed out. But at least I have been able to stop using untappd (for beers which are already on RB). |
