This page could be called an FAQ, but since nobody's ever actually asked any questions, there aren't any that are frequently asked. So, you can view this as a pre-emptive FAQ if you want. Hopefully you might have been considering asking some of these.
General stuff
How does this site make money?
It doesn't, because that's not why we do it. The developers (more like developer in
reality) and the keen pub visitors do this because they like going to pubs and stuff.
We might stick some adverts up at some point in the future. If we do, they'll be
unobtrusive text ads or Amazon links for things you might find interesting. Any
cash we make from such adverts will be put straight in to making the site better.
Logging in
Why do I have to log in?
You don't, unless you want to add stuff, post comments, rate stuff, etc. We make
you log in and register in the hope that the guide won't get filled with as much
junk that way. Hopefully that will work. Logging in also lets us build up a
picture of what pubs you like, so we can try to work out which pubs are similar.
If I get an account, how do I know you won't bombard me with junk
and give my email address to Nigerians who need help moving some money?
Well, I suppose you don't know that for sure. But I'd be really annoyed if someone
did that with my email address, so you'll have to trust me. Hope that's OK for you.
That pretty much sums up my privacy policy.
Why do you use cookies?
Because they're a very simple way of maintaining your login. The only other method
is to pass special values around in URLs, and that makes sending links to friends
(etc.) a hassle.
What do you store in the cookies?
We store a few things:
- If you log in we store your user number
- If you change the map size we store that
- If you start planning a crawl we store it
Note that the maps come from Google, who might well set a cookie of their own.
Comments
Who writes this rubbish? It's all wrong.
All the comments are written by users. You can see who wrote it, and if you're logged in
you can see their email address if they've agreed to that. If you disagree with a
comment, then why not write your own?
Do you edit comments?
No. It would take ages. We might remove some comments if they're utterly irrelevant
or just illegal.
Why didn't my comment appear straight away?
It probably got hit by one of our filters. For example, comments with a lot of
swearing get filtered. If this happens, the comments go in to a queue for somebody
to look at. That should happen quite promptly.
Can you remove an offensive comment?
It rather depends on what way it's offensive. If you don't like the language somebody's
used in a comment, then we probably won't do anything, unless it's really bad. This is a
pub guide after all, so we rather assume you're used to such language. If you believe a
comment's illegal in some way, then please
let us know.
What's the syntax for formatted comments?
We use a form of BB Code. It's a bit like HTML, except it uses [square brackets] rather
than <angle brackets>. Tags have to nest correctly, just like HTML. The supported
tags are:
[strong]or[b]- Bold text.
[em]or[i]- Emphasised (italic) text.
[u]- Underlined text.
[quote]- A quotation.
[block]A different style of quotation.
[list]or[ul]- An unnumbered list. Use " * " to separate entries.
[ol]- A numbered list. Use " * " to start each entry.
Closing tags are the same, but with / in front, e.g. [/strong].
Tags have to nest correctly. That is, [b][i]Text[/i][/b] is fine, but
[b][i]Text[/b][/i] is not.
In addition to these, we also support an easy way to link to pubs. Type [pub=id], replacing id with the ID for the pub in question. You can find this ID from the address for the pub page. If you want to link to another page, just type the URL - note that we do restrict what you can put in the URL to protect users.
The rating system
I think the rating for my (least) favourite pub is wrong
You'd better add your own rating then - all the ratings are contributed by users.
How are the overall ratings calculated?
Each rating gets a particular weighting factor. Newer ratings are treated as slightly
more important, to allow for the fact that pubs change. So, if you revisit a pub you
might want to re-rate it to indicate that you still think the same thing about it. Also,
users who contribute more to the site get to speak slightly louder than other users.
We're still tweaking this system, so if you've got any thoughts on this, we'd
love to hear them.
How do I contribute a rating?
You need to be logged in to rate pubs. After that, select one of the options near
the top of the pub viewing page. You can change your rating at any time.
Why is a highly-rated pub not on the front page?
Pubs can only appear on the front page if they've received more than a certain
number of ratings. This is to stop a pub with a single "Excellent" rating
shooting straight to the top of the table.
Accessibility
Your site doesn't work with my browser/screen reader
If that's the case, please
let us know.
We do our best to make the page work in all browsers and also look good in modern browsers.
The Google Map stuff doesn't work in my browser
We don't have much control over the Google Map stuff. Nearly all the work behind
that is from Google. If the normal Google Maps site
works in your browser but this site doesn't then please
let us know.