Stayers and Leavers

Fark.com posted a link to one of BA's "best beers in the world" lists when I was like 18 or 19 (I'm almost 35 now). I clicked and found the content here interesting enough to register an account, but didn't really return to the site much until I started posting reviews on a regular basis a few years later (2010-11). Been here ever since.

 

Haven't been here that long but i stay for the people. I like the cellaring and breweriana forums. Its the community around the experiments, success, and failures that i enjoy the most.

 

I lurked for many years and joined in 2015. Like many leavers (I suspect). I was told by my physician not to drink alcohol when she first prescribed certain statin cholesterol meds. I had to wait on a liver test for a couple of months. During that period BA wasn't "fun" anymore. Then I discovered the world of non alcohol craft beers and I came to appreciate BA more then ever. After a recent blood test I was given the green light to drink alcohol again! But now I drink both non alcohol and alcohol beers. NA beers are an unexplored style and I have grown to enjoy reviewing them, if nothing else then to give them a fair review. Most reviewers compare them to "real" beers so the scores are lower. But there are a few gems out there and some hardworking brewer put the effort in to brewing it.

 

i come & go, keeps it interesting.

 

I was here under a different user name several years back. (The squirrel bottle was the last big thing I remember before I left)

I left primarily for two reasons. I substantially cut down on drinking for health reasons, and the beers I had easy access to started tasting samey. I didn't have the time, patients or money to trade.

After I began gaming with a new group of friends, and after my overall heath improved, I started getting back into it.

 

I'm a newer member than many of my co-contributors here on Beer Advocate and as such am still pretty low in the rankings with barely over 200 karma. Every time I post a new review, I look at the people just above me in the rankings and have noted an interesting pattern.

I see many who only stopped contributing a few months ago, not even a year and their karma is already deleted. I wonder how many people have left because they didn't want to become a slave to their karma score.

As for myself, I want to keep contributing so I can work my way up the rankings as a contributor, even if it means having to claw my way past one non contributing member after another.

 

Okay, so where did the karma go? I've seen many contributors who haven't contributed for months and they have 0 karma although they still have hundreds, if not thousands of reviews posted?

 

Oh, okay. So when you did the reset everyone's karma went to zero despite previous reviews with no update to replace said karma.

If that's the case I misread the situation and please disregard my previous post with my apologies.

 

Another 10 year member who can't remember what led him here. So much great information, and the site fuels my obsessive streak. Am on here (most) every day and there is always something new and interesting. A lot of knowledgable and amusing people post here. Wish I'd found it back in 1996. A big thanks to the bros and their hardworking staff.

 

Currently on Year 9 of activity here.

One word: knowledge. That's how it started out- as a noob homebrewer, I wanted to go out and try new beers in order to figure out what styles I liked and should aspire to brew. So it was homebrewtalk and BA, but BA was more dynamic in that there was far more information about commercial beer and bars/breweries. I've given up on homebrewing, but this spawned a new interest in visiting new beer-centric places and thoughtfully drinking new beers on a regular basis. Even now, I'll still go to the Places tab if I'm traveling somewhere to find out what bars/breweries/bottle shops are good in a particular area- both foreign and domestic (East Asia and Europe mainly).

In keeping with the word "knowledge", I try to give back when I can, namely places and beer reviews. There was a time period of about 1-2 years where I got absolutely sick of having to add new beers to the BA database on a regular basis, but I'm over it now. I used to write far more thorough beer reviews, but with two little ones around now, my alone time has become more compressed so to speak. So I've kept it simple and Untappd helps with that.

Ultimately, now that I've moved to the PNW from the Great Lakes area, the PNW subforum is where I spend most of my time, because there is still so much new beer to discover in this part of the country. There's a lot of good people in that subforum and I'd love to have a beer with them when this pandemic is over. I have no idea how @John_M is drinking at a different bar/brewery every day, but maybe I'll get to that point once the kids are old enough.

Finally, Remainers vs Leavers. As important as "knowledge" is and still is, the community was huge to my diving further into this beer drinking hobby. I've met a plethora of fantastic people that I still talk to on a daily basis on other platforms, have met and hung out with at many different beer events (DLD and GTMW being the big ones) and would not hesitate to call a number of these folks some of the best friends I've ever had. For complicated reasons, many of these folks were purged from this site years back and moved to other different forums. I think that was a huge mistake because those who were purged are still heavily active in beer/mead/whiskey on other forums/formats and I think we as a beer community are less well off for it. It seems though that there are plenty of new beer drinkers joining the BA ranks regularly, but the loss of so many early 2010's members definitely set back BA for a long while- even if it made the moderators' daily work that much easier.

 

I joined in 2014 at a suggestion from a member. He was also the guy that introduced me to good beer.
I stay because of the interactions with people, BAs are so giving with their knowledge, talents and stories. I consider some on this site my best friends I've never met. It's not just about the beer, the beer its just one thing we all have in common. Cheers.

 

For what it's worth, I've never met you, but I like you and I enjoy your posts.
The person that PMed you is compensating for the lack of something in their life. Some one saying that would have shaken most anyone F' them.

 

@mickyge @micada I believe I remember this coming up some time ago and thought it was a stupid, cruel attack. Usually when I see this it is some horribly insecure person spreading their misery around
We're all here trying to be liked,even my dog is trying to be liked here. Its great that we are trying too hard because there's a lot of places where people are trying too hard to make things miserable

 

" near-unique" is a great turn of phrase. It can be either a subtle rebuke or a budding praise. I love it! It reminds me of Graham Greene.

 

Well said, Cheers.

 

It's a fantastic resource of brew knowledge. That said a search for specific brews
easily brings you here; that and a no-nonsense rating system that is
easily understandable and approachable. That hooked me, and seeing
how my tastes rank amongst the more educated is also a good thing!

Cheers

 

I haven't been here that long, only a few years, but, I love beer. Truly.
BA is a way for me to learn more about beer, and I've learned a lot since I've been here.
Sometimes BA is a part of my daily routine, and sometimes I'm a little busy.
The people here are knowledgeable and welcoming.
The web site works pretty damn well. My friends are all on Untapped, and they all say, "BA is too nerdy!" But I think BA is just the right amount of nerdy for me.
I'll be staying.