ISO:FT Board: "whales" only?

One of the main reasons comments were disabled was because the mods felt that people posting on trades bumped them to the top and pushed other offers to the 2nd or 3rd page so the mods even agree that after the first page, there are much less views. I'm not saying that nobody ever looks past page 1 but you're crazy if you don't think the views plummet. I've seen my own posts get a 200+ views on page 1 and then a maybe 10-20 after being pumped to page 2. Some of that may be because the people who wanted to view it already did but it's also in large part because its not front and center. This is also the reason we can only post the same ISO:FT once in 3 days. The mods even agree that this is a factor.

 

the problem is that on any given day now, new FT:ISO posts are on page 5-6 after the same number of hours. that's fucking ridiculous.

I don't know why I care, I have 0% use for FT:ISO at this point. No comments sealed that for me.

 

Aside from it being easier for us to mod (though I was, amd still am, against disabling *all* replies), I can now scan the first 5-6 pages in < 5 minutes.

Of course, I'm over the ticking thing and usually search for the few beers I'm interested in trying.

Need anything Mark?

 

Haha...

I, for one, love seeing all those 0's in the replies column.

We always saw the same dozen, or so, narcissistic Jedi traders constantly chiming in - telling us all trades must meet THEIR approval.
And now it's driving them NUTS that their precious opinions have been silenced.
I wonder how they're all coping with the withdrawals?

And all of the sudden you have 0% use...hmmm, now that's a coincidence

As it has been mentioned before me, WELL SAID.

But you're not buying a house, you're just trading beer (don't you remember... it's just beer?).
Pretty bad analogy, IMO

 

I had a BA send me a message on a recent trade telling me I could NEVER come close to my ISO for my FT. I knew it was a reach, but I also had a decent, fairly hard to get "whale" to trade. Fast forward a week, and I see this dude posting my ISO beer up for trade. Clearly he had other motives for his comment. And had he been able to comment publicly on my post, it may have discouraged the trade that I did in fact close. So I appreciate the lack of ability for arrogant "you'll never close that" comments on trade posts. It IS JUST beer; and if I have one of something you want, and you have something I want, and we both feel it's worth it, then it's a good trade. Period. Whale or shelf turd- it's all just delicious beer.

 

no I'm good Kevin (psst, new Maiden soon!!!)

 

Or if he posted his comment publicly, someone else might have chimed in that his comment was off base with (for example) links to recent offers identical to yours that had closed, reassuring you and any potential trading partners that what you were proposing was very reasonable.

People will say things in private that they would never say (or at least never be able to get away with saying) in public.

 

Agreed. Without any discussion I think the posts have lost a lot of value. There's a lot of trades I want to post but am a bit unsure of, and would like to openly discuss them like the old days. I find myself taking those trades elsewhere, despite really enjoying the community here.

Seems like accepting some threadshitting was a small price to pay for lively discussion. Not to mention, sometimes threadshitting is a good thing, I've seen some ridiculous offers since comments were turned off.

I understand the mods position: it was too much work. Maybe we could just agree that it's ok if they don't work so hard to delete all the bad comments? Just accept a few bad comments as a necessary evil to discussion?

 

I love how you can pick out the people in this thread that were huge threadshitters ha-ha.

 

So if it's the same dozen or so people threadshitting all the time, wouldn't it make sense for the Mods to give them warnings or ban their rights to post if they continue that trend? You can be for or against replies, that's your opinion and that's fine but I'm of the opinion that a few bad users shouldn't affect everyone else that uses the replies for constructive reasons.

My god, I can't even make an analogy here without someone judging and calling me out. Ok, how about this, it would be like when I got to a beer store to buy beer, there are prices listed, I don't just walk up to the cashier or owner and hand him as much money as I think the beer is worth. Then If that beer isn't worth what I thought and the owner wants to sell it for more, he doesn't say it's not enough or how much more money I'd need to add, he just stares as me waiting for me to make a better offer. I make a better offer, the best offer I can afford and it's still not enough. Then I have to either pay more than I can afford just to get that beer and know the price, or I have to leave and I just wasted my time shopping for something I can't afford.

I know you'll tell me how horrible the analogy is again but they're both beer so oh well.

 

I guess I might've made too general of a remark there.
There were TONS of thread shitters out there, so it was really only a matter of time until the replies got the axe.

The dozen or so (conservatively) Jedi traders I was referring to are the ones who come off very narcissistic; always feeling a need to play the Godfather role on every big trade.

Sorry, didn't mean to sound as if I was "calling you out", but just giving my feedback (that is allowed here, right?) on the comparison you made.

I would bet that if you were buying a house, you would probably trust a licensed Realtor for advice.
You wouldn't ask a bunch of people on an internet site, who may or may not have ulterior motives in their opinions and suggestions on how you should invest your money in the housing market.

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@maximum12, Sorry to have joined in the derailment of the topic of your OP.

I suppose that it was predestined to happen, with the recent changes affecting all the big players.
I'm basically out of that game however (senior - retirement tour), which probably has more than a little to do with my stand.

 

sounds good.

haha.

already have it.

 

I agree with the observation that the trade forum has become a place almost exclusively for whales. I used to peruse them daily and would find a trade post every few days that I would consider messaging upon. This is how almost all of my trades came to be and I think that I got some very fair trades done.

I will also admit that my last few trade posts were of the whale hunting style. I'm not ashamed of looking for specific, hard to get beers (VBDL, SR71), as I offered what I though might merit them. I didn't get any messages, so no harm, no foul.

It is discouraging to try to trade right now, mainly because if you're not offering something huge, there is little interest. The no comments change has made it easy to scan 4-5 pages of the forum very quickly.

All in all, I really miss the days when people were easy to work with and had good communication skills on the trades forums. Not to call out anyone specifically, but there has been an influx of people to the beer scene only willing to drink and discuss the hardest to get beers, and it has really taken a toll on the beer community as a whole.

 

Honestly even though a vast majority of the ISO:FT board is whale-related, i've still been able to get some good shelf stuff that i don't see in my distro for local shelf and brewery release only beers. I've traded for multiple cases of creature comforts athena a couple times now and will probably continue to do so until i either burn out, find something local i like comparably, or catch hell from my wife for spending too much money.

 

I'm still here if you end up with extra SP stuff this dude is so easy to work with. Great trader.

 

I understand and sympathize with this sentiment, but in my opinion, there is still some small value in getting flamed, or knowing there is potential for getting flamed if you post a ridiculous offer. I've never done that (not sure if I ever even replied to a trade thread except maybe to ask a clarifying question), and there's no accounting for asshats, but the threat of public shaming can have a positive impact towards self-policing. I'm still not sure where I fall on the comments/no-comments argument, overall, but I do think the trend towards exclusively whale/FotM-hunting has been accelerated by the change.

Inability to comment reduces the public repercussions for posting ridiculous ISOs, reduces information traders can use about closed trades (misinformation about claimed closes being an entirely different issue), and provides more incentive for running silent auctions. It pushes good traders even further towards operating exclusively through Got/Want/FT lists, which requires greater effort and sophistication, which raises the barrier to entry for new traders who could make positive contributions to the community. The flood of unrealistic ISO and "BM for ratios" threads doesn't make it harder to use the search function, but it does have a psychological impact on many, giving the impression that there's little to no likelihood that someone's really going to bite on their non-whale, non-flavor-of-the-month.

There are pros and cons both for replies, absolutely, but I think of replies as creating more signal-to-noise ratio within threads; not having replies has resulted in a greater signal-to-noise ratio of threads worth looking at. I personally find the former a more manageable problem than the latter, because it provides greater transparency and more actionable information. It does require more moderation and more self-policing, but it also has greater potential to result in a productive and positive trading community that people want to take part in and grow.

 

I disagree.

On anonymous internet boads where there is no accountability, flaming serves no purpose but to encourage trolls. It makes everyone miserable and then we have to act.

The acceleration to whale trading is due to the explosion of craft beer and the pathetic "me first, max my value" attitude the comes with the commercialization, popularity and acceptance of beer (especially beers perceived as "whales") as a commodity by the community. All tickers and seekers of rarez bear some responsibility. There are no more or fewer posts of this nature since the change. Trust me, I sift throughfsr more ISOs than most people

I prefer replies, but the community has shown it can't play by simple rules. The trolls and value maximizers dominate the discussion. As a result, the community loses out on whatever benefits replies offer. Maybe things will change for the better, but for now, this decision holds.

 

I don't disagree with anything you've said. That's why I limited my comment to saying it has "some small value." It's not much, but what value it has here, in this context, derives from the fact that we have anonymity but are still ostensibly trying to get something from the board. Namely, trades, which can be driven somewhat by reputation. There has been plenty of commentary in this thread about people not responding to posts with implied auctions, and I believe there have been similar past threads where people talked about not trading with others who kept making dumb or trollish replies.

By that mechanism, reputation for being a troll can make trades less likely to close, so there is some small punishment for bad behavior. If there are a lot of people trolling who aren't still trying to trade, or if they all have their own little troll trading circles, that's a bigger problem and where moderation is needed or privileges should be revoked. It can still easily get out of hand to where self-policing fails and the demand for moderation is outstripped by the sheer number of idiots, and that seems to be just what happened to prompt the change to no-replies. I understand that too much is too much, so I get the need to try a change in tactics. Kudos for being one of the mods sifting through the sea of malarkey.

 

A thought, FWIW: One way to increase accountability might be to collect and display city for each user, along with state. People will be less likely to behave badly if they know others from their local community (who they very well may encounter in person at a local event) might be watching, and others will be more likely to help police if the reputation of their local community is on the line.