Dave Witzel > wrote in
46.128:

> thousands of beers they've had over the years. Ratebeer is set up
> to encourage "ticking", and threads in their forums/groups of them
> at beer events tend to foster that mindset.

I don't know that I'd agree with the "set up to encourage" part. I don't
think RB *or* BA are encouraging anything beyond enjoyment of beer and
the rating hobby itself. At least for RB, I can say that the people who
run the site don't do anything to promote a particular rating style,
ticking or otherwise. If the *member* discussions in the forums give you
that impression, that's not the same thing. If the plethora of stats on
RB give you that impression, I would disagree as I happen to know the
guys who put all those lists together are simply stat geeks and just
enjoy that stuff for the sake of it...if that has resulted in lower-
quality ratings for the pursuit of collecting stats, that was certainly
not the intent.

> Of course not all prolific reviewers are tickers, but when one has
> seen, firsthand, the ticking ways, it's harder to take the site
> seriously. And I kind of *like* Ratebeer.

I've seen the "ticking ways" first hand quite often, and with some
exceptions I can't say I have a particularly bad impression of it. You
learn to ignore some raters who don't put in the effort. But I don't
really think small-ish samples are the main problem...it's raters who
don't pay attention or take much time to study the beer (or are very
easily swayed by hype or others' opinions). And bigger samples aren't
going to help folks like that.

> by, well, what you said plus the difficulty in obtaining the beer.

That's often short-lived, though. It's happened dozens of times where
some beer gets some wild attention at first, and as more people make the
effort to find/try the beer, the ratings moderate. But then again, often
this results in a new favorite that lasts a long time.

But why is this a bad thing? To me it seems perfectly normal that if
someone uncovers a local gem, the collective would want to try it. This
effect can bring a lot of attention to a particular brewery or beer,
increasing sales and perhaps even a little press. Certainly, Dark Lord
might have always sold out in one day even if RB or BA hadn't existed,
but then again maybe not. Or take Duck-Rabbit Baltic Porter...this one
has gotten high ratings from lots of experienced beer hounds from all
over Europe, a beer from a small town in North Carolina that they might
never have even known about if it hadn't been for this "herd" effect.

As for the bias for "any special beer" from breweries that are well-loved
already, yeah...a few of those irritate me as well (not going to name
breweries here). Que sera...

> any set of rankings will always always always need to be taken with
> a big ol' salt lick.

That's true for any medium, and I'm in full agreement there. I think the
main thing one has to keep in mind about both sites' ratings is that they
are by "amateurs", for "amateurs". The majority of both sites'
membership are just ordinary folks who happen to like beer a lot.
There's a few commercial brewers, many homebrewers, and even a few beer
judges, but for the most part it's just a mish-mash of the beer-focused
consumer demographic. My "top 50" certainly looks very little like the
RB or BA "top 50", but I'm ok with that. 'Cause sometimes those top 50
beers actually ARE pretty freakin' good, and I'd probably never have
known about them otherwise.

Cheers,
Ern