Why don’t we just list every effin’ pub in London?

There aren’t many other cities - if any - with the breadth of pubs London has. Ergo, it should not surprise that London has exhaustive coverage.

And the Places section does point you to the best places: note how when you go to the Greater London Beer Destinations sub-section, the highest rated places appear highest on the list. If that isn’t pointing drinkers to the best pubs, then I don’t know what would.

And I would say the majority of visitors to London would like to know what their local options are, in addition to what the best pubs are. You can’t always travel across the city to have a pint.

I agree some places in the London section push the definition of ’good beer destination’, but if there is an informative review of the place then that is helpful.

I think we need a stricter policy with entering places but the question is important, there is no need for the pub with a full on assault by the blandest breweries going in the database. This is the issue which I think Gazza is getting at. I also think that if you just look at the top places then London has more choice and diversity than most major cities. This is good.

Originally posted by yespr
Bullocks question Gazza. Counter question which other town in Europe has that many peeps living in it? Bigger and bolder, needs more places. Thats London today. Leighton has the answer, coming from abroad I really want to know what is in my area instead of spendng one or two hours on the tube before getting there

As Places descends into ’some place I had a beer I quite liked’ and beer listings become ’its on a festival list but no-ones rated it yet’, maybe you can understand why I don’t see this site as a go-to for recommendations anymore. Sad but true.

Anyone who only uses Places to decide where to go for a beer is not doing themselves a favour. Part of the fun of going to visit a city is in planning where to visit, and if you use just one source, be it BITE, the GBG or Places, then you’re limiting yourself. Anyone who is so seriously short of time that they only have time to look at Places must expect they are likely to end up missing out on some good pubs.

To be honest I don’t use GBG anymore - haven’t done so for years as the selection of pubs is very random. Nor do I use Places as the selection is even more random.

I do like BITE and other pub listing sites, such as Fancy a Pint, as they are more comprehensive, and the comments give you a fair idea of what the pub is like. The people who write the entries do not need to be beer experts nor prize winning journalists to give you a flavour of what the pub is like, especially when you get several comments. Added to the regular pub listing sites are the local sites, sometimes by CAMRA, sometimes by ordinary pub going folks. I will use Ian’s pub site for pubs in Kent. It’s not a CAMRA site - it’s one by and for ordinary pub loving people.

I have always though that Places would have been better if it had been allowed to be comprehensive (like our beer listing), but Oakes had a different view. The admins spent years reluctantly carrying out his philosophy of only listing "the best" (but exactly whose best was never clear - it seemed to come down to personal judgement), and deleting various pub listings. I think most admins gave up on the deletions a while ago (I certainly did!), and that’s why the listings are perhaps starting to become more comprehensive.

If it does change so that Places becomes a comprehensive listing the same as the beer database I’ll be interested. But until then I’ll continue to ignore it, and use the other sites.

I go the other way. I want every place listed so I can look at the scoring system and instantly know whether it is worth bothering with or not.

By the same argument why do we bother listing shit beers on Ratebeer? We do it so that the information is out there and those on the site can know what to try, what to avoid etc.

The value of Places used to be reviews by people I could trust, rather than reviews by regulars / licensees. I trust good people to find the good pubs and report back. Yes, I’ll cross-check with other sites - I’ll ask Twitter before I look anywhere else - but the great thing about ratebeer was that Places were the best of the best.

Originally posted by haddonsman
The value of Places used to be reviews by people I could trust, rather than reviews by regulars / licensees. I trust good people to find the good pubs and report back. Yes, I’ll cross-check with other sites - I’ll ask Twitter before I look anywhere else - but the great thing about ratebeer was that Places were the best of the best.

Back in the day when we started putting in UK places, I think many of us agreed that there could be a distinction between what you would put in a "brew tour" and what would be listed for rating.

London *is* one of the most touristed cities in the world, and it is also one of the places with the most pubs. (Compare, e.g., Paris or Amsterdam, which get many tourists but don’t have the same culture.) From the perspective of someone visiting for the first time, it is overwhelming and difficult to sort out whether a historic pub that you’ve heard about is worth it. So you look it up...and what, there’s no entry at all? Does that mean it is really bad or just not good enough to make a Top 20 list?

When you’re a visitor to London, it is far more helpful to know that the pub close to where you’ll be staying is rated at 60%--but there’s one at 90% a little further on--rather than knowing that there’s that great pub and then this pub with no entry whatsoever. Having more data, even if it rates poorly, is simply more helpful.

(And, do you realize that even though the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is rated just #58 in London, it is still at 76%? That’s a very reasonable score for many cities. And why? Because it is one totally cool place to visit, a celebration of the history of drinking beer, even if the beer they serve there is rather pedestrian. So cool, in fact, that this summer Steve insisted on us walking a block or two out of our way to find it.)