Rating System

recreation brewery

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Hi there. I think it would be beneficial to add some sort of scoring system to the publicly shared brews. Either solely by the creator themselves or by others who then attempt the brew as well, or both. Maybe a simple 0-10 scale or something. I know it gets a bit dicey when you let people start rating others recipe's, especially when so much of the outcome depends on the brewer's process, but even if I could just see what the brewer thought of his creation, it would help me wade through the multitude of recipes. I know it's recommended that only recipes be made public if they have actually been brewed and turn out well, but even in my own experience, there is a big difference between a good brew(6) and an outstanding one(9). Not to knock on anyone's brewing practices, but if I go searching for a recipe and find a fellow member who is consistently brewing, and brewing all grain, using starters and manipulating his water profile and he/she rates one of their creations highly, it would help me distinguish what recipes in the database I might try brewing. Even on the flipside, if you rated something poorly, it could help me stear away from something similar during recipe formulation? Maybe make it optional, or only available to members? Thanks for the consideration! jon-recreation brewery
 
A recipe rating system and a more integrated comments system are on our radar.

Agreed that a rating should only come from users who actually brewed the beer! Credible ratings is the whole point. Online ratings these days are not helpful without useful comments to back them up, and our system will be more about the comments than about a thumbs up thumbs down.

I can see this fitting into a release as we work towards group brewing, where users will be able to share aspects of their brew sessions with other users (and we could create a specific section for providing feedback after the brew is complete).
 
In the January release, we are adding an 'awards won' field to the recipe editor and allowing that as search filter option on the recipe search page. It is based on the honor system that people will only flag recipes that really are award winning. The recipe owner should back it up with evidence for the award using the URL or notes field.
 
I've been missing a rating system as well.

I think it could start as a simple system. But with time, maybe some more advanced weighting of the rating votes. For instance, people with a lot of experience (eg. a lot of brewsessions completed) would have more weight when rating recipes. And maybe other rules like that.

It is very easy to find homebrew recipes on the Web, but it is extremely difficult to know which ones are good and which ones are not. I haven't found many recipe sites with a proper rating system so far.

Of course, public voting systems on the net are always tricky and easy to manipulate, but if we are to trust a meritocratic system, it can be useful. ;)
 
Maybe a system that suggests beers to brew based on your rating just like Netflix does with movies ;)

Just kidding with this one. Rating is neat to have but the quality of ratings always depends on the quality of the input which can easily reduce its value for public recipes.

Kai
 
That's why we want to be careful and craft a quality system, not just another 5 star system where the average is 3 stars. In reality, how many beer recipes are truly excellent - 10%, 5%, perhaps even 1%?

No doubt big beers, with clever names and cool avatars, would get more likes. Have you seen?
http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/r ... s-mustache
That pic would sure get a lot of likes on facebook! But it doesn't tell us much about the recipe.

The award winning field is good because it gives a qualified 3rd party review of the recipe, which is hard to get, yet extremely valuable. It also avoids the problems of popular recipes being favored, and personal bias towards style. Person X hates dark beer, so subconsciously they won't ever give dark beers high ratings. I'd probably give NW style beers higher scores, because I'm from the NW. That is the netflix issue - sorting personal opinion from overall quality. This topic can get pretty academic.
 
If you stick to the "must have brewed it" rule, I think much of the preferred-style bias will go away.

The awards item is pretty good, but you're going to have even less hits, maybe 0.1%? Of course that's still good to have. Those recipes are proven to be good. But if I don't have access to all ingredients in that recipe, surely I'd like to find another, maybe similar, recipe with stuff I can get at my LHBS.

Of course the "must have brewed it" rule is also not flawless. Anyone can say they have brewed it just to manipulate the rating, but still, it will definitely make it harder.

I think there's a lot of fuzzy logic possibilities here. Besides giving more weight to those who have most brewsessions (as I suggested earlier), the system could also give more weight to people who have more score in their own recipes. ;)
 

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