NBSS - CAMRA beer scoring site

I have just been updating some Pubs Galore reviews and doing my CAMRA beer scoring to get up to date and the beer scoring site was driving me nuts. I have used it before with no problems.

It appears that if it cannot give you the pub to click on, it gives you a map. You then move the pointer thing to where the pub is. If you leave it in the city centre where it starts it puts unknown CAMRA in the town entered.

I couldn't be chewed to go looking round Sheffield streets to locate where the pubs were, so have put them all into the Cathedral, and that move is sufficient to get the site to enter Sheffield CAMRA. Naughty maybe, but if they really think after the last site where you could whip through the beer scoring that folk are going to want to mess with mapping it just won't work. I will now be finding some wierd and wonderful places for the CAMRA branches to find their pubs till they come up with something workable, or go back to what they had.

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Originally Posted by gillhalfpint

I have just been updating some Pubs Galore reviews and doing my CAMRA beer scoring to get up to date and the beer scoring site was driving me nuts. I have used it before with no problems.

It appears that if it cannot give you the pub to click on, it gives you a map. You then move the pointer thing to where the pub is. If you leave it in the city centre where it starts it puts unknown CAMRA in the town entered.

I couldn't be chewed to go looking round Sheffield streets to locate where the pubs were, so have put them all into the Cathedral, and that move is sufficient to get the site to enter Sheffield CAMRA. Naughty maybe, but if they really think after the last site where you could whip through the beer scoring that folk are going to want to mess with mapping it just won't work. I will now be finding some wierd and wonderful places for the CAMRA branches to find their pubs till they come up with something workable, or go back to what they had.

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I'm not currently a camra member but I do wonder sometimes ,have they got a clue?

What I cannot understand is why is it necessary for the visitor or beer drinker to locate the pub on the map. The old system worked without a map.

When my Sheffield scores get to the CAMRA designated person, he/she should know where the pubs are and map them if they want them. Why should I get a map showing the point in the centre, then I have to try to remember where I walked or caught a tram to and try to follow the route on a street map to locate the pub. OK I know the pubs in Sheffield (love 'em) but I still didn't fancy trying to work from the centre to find the street where the pub was.

I am going to dump all the pubs in one spot in the centre (be it town hall cathedral or police station etc)and let local CAMRA sort them out in the right place if they want them. Ray reckons it puts them on that new CAMRA pub site. Now there's a thought.

NBSS version 2 is designed to work with the WhatPub database; however as more than half of Camra branches haven't put any pub data on that site it's a bit dodgy. When the branches load up WhatPub NBSS might work better but the old system will not be coming back.

The old site was a bit of a nightmare if you had to extract statistics for your branch because the same pub appeared with as many different names as people had added and they appeared in different towns and even different counties due to the geographically challenged making a guess.

Stick with it Gill even though it's not so user friendly; every score counts and the system may become more important to GBG selection in the fullness of time.

It worked great for Derby. I only had to locate one pub out of the 8 I had been to. Sheffield and Birmingham were the problem ones. I will stick with it as long as I can just put the pub somewhere in the centre for the local branch to place as I do believe in NBSS and have done the scoring for the last 10 years.

I know what you mean about the old system. Many differently spelt names in lower and upper case for the same pub was a pain, and then there's the likes of Birmingham with 3 Shakespeare pubs that I know of.

It means that my putting the pub in the city centre really is naughty, but I am sorry, I am not prepared to spend ages trawling round streets. I spent ages trying to place Kelham I sland Tavern and in frustration I stuck it in the Cathedral along with the Fat Cat, and some others. Sheffield Tap went to the Station as I found that easily. When we do the crawl of East London on 18th, I will have fun placing those pubs if I have to map them.

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Originally Posted by gillhalfpint

When we do the crawl of East London on 18th, I will have fun placing those pubs if I have to map them.

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You will have to map them as the City and East London branch haven't loaded anything on whatPub yet. Stick 'em in the Tower.

I like your style on that one!!

I have had a response from feedback from WhatPub co-ordinator wanting to know the pubs I couldn't find. I gave him the list of Birmingham, Sheffield and a Derby pub. I also said when I do a city crawl I do not want to spend a night scoring pubs that used to take me half an hour, and that I didn't see why ordinary drinkers had to go traipsing round street maps to place their pubs when the local CAMRA person should be able to place them. I want to enjoy the drinking and spend enough time as it is with record keeping for me without having to get involved with doing the work for CAMRA too. Rant over .. .. .. I think.

I've had my say on this shambles already:

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All,

I've been seeing a fair few emails ping around regarding NBSSv2. As Pubs Officer (who has beer scoring and GBG selection bundled into the role) at Reading & Mid Berks I want to add my t'uppence worth. As someone else has stated, "I don’t want to denigrate the hard work of the volunteers who created the site and I understand the need to link to WhatPub and get a proper 'clean' list of pubs onto NBSS." So please take the comments below in a critically constructive manner.

* Adding a beer score not simple - too many clicks. Like so many technology developments, it has lots of features up front, which makes it look very complicated – certainly until you get used to it which could be enough to put people off the moment they enter. It also gives a one-step-at-a-time completion (clunky). Would rather have all the bits on screen and enter them in the boxes provided which is more intuitive to the less computer-literate (variations on this point was made by multiple people)

* No log out button. This is imperative for a secure website especially one that uses the same login details for the national site. A major issue as you get auto-logged in even after closing and re-entering a browser session. (Firefox)

* Main welcome screen does not shrink correctly in Firefox and the icons clutter over each other

* Poor layout - colours are stark and unfriendly. Lacks obvious conformity with the CAMRA brand, which could be confusing and makes the organisation look less professional.

* No names of scorers in the Pubs Officer csv download. As I am not autistic, I prefer names to numbers and I have no access to membership database to find out who these 'numbers' are but I know who my regular scorers are by name and whether they are 'harsh' or 'generous'. So why no name? This is not a data protection issue if that's the justification.

* A neighbouring branch have claimed one of our pubs! (Turners Arms in Mortimer!)

* Why is Youngs listed but not Wells & Youngs?!?

I do share the general concern that the lack of coverage will put off the less dedicated scorers. Whilst I can see both sides of the argument, I think the negatives outweigh the positives at present. There needs to be a more robust action plan in place than simply expecting disgruntled members to contact branches whose data is missing. They won't. If you think they will, you're naive. I've already had two regular scorers email to say they've given up on scoring places where no pubs are listed. And even if they did email - if the offending branch is the sort of place where they won't spend a couple of hours knocking up an Excel file for upload do you seriously think they're going to respond to emails complaining about it?

I appreciate that a lot of the above sounds negative but think of it as constructive criticism. We clearly needed an NBSS v.2 and I want it to succeed. However I am concerned that launching a buggy and incomplete system is rather at odds with the push to get people scoring. It alienates both the computer-illiterate and the computer-literate, both of whom tend to give up easily when faced with something they perceive not to be simple or buggy. I would also hazard a guess that most of the former are older members (who often score lots) and most of the latter younger members (who we want to get scoring).

As Pubs Officer for a branch that prides itself on having a robust system for selecting GBG pubs, I need as many scores as possible which means making the system to submit them kiddie-simple to use and fully populated.

Please feel free to challenge or correct anything I have said above

Cheers
Quinno

Quinten Taylor
Acting Branch Chair. Pubs Officer.
Reading & Mid Berks CAMRA

Someone from another branch has got the same issues as you Quinno. He has just told me that pubs won't go on WhatPub until a full survey form is competed. Beer scores will log against the pub on NBSS, but the CAMRA data collector cannot get hold of them for the branch until the pub goes onto WhatPub, and it's driving him nuts. I am wondering if that means branches like Birmingham and Sheffield who have not listed the pubs yet could find they have no NBSS scores to use when selecting the pubs for 2014 Good Beer Guide.

I have gone into the maps this morning and moved the pubs out of the cathedral etc into the proper place. It means using a pub site to find the address of those not in Good Beer Guide which is very time consuming, but I did it.

Another annoying bit is that when checking pubs I had located, the indicator was back to the city centre and not where I had placed and saved it, so until the pub goes onto WhatPub, every time I want to score it, I will have to map it again. A right pain in the proverbial.