Candid Dialogue About Moderation

As @Todd can attest, this is a long time coming and, aside from the addition of the alert option (best thing ever for wurst of the wurst mods like me), something I hope you all find helpful. If not, ask.

While we strive to act quickly, given the current scale of operations, sometimes we're slower than we might like to be and it takes time for us to align internally too.

That said, as you can see we *are* open to questions here or via BM.

I can't promise that you'll always get an answer that makes you happy (sorry, reality check), but we (in ISO:FT, especially me and @blue-dream) try to respond to all inquiries with something more than a boilerplate response.

 

Do people like you because of the service you provide or because you are the life of the party?

 

My comment ( though not spoken eloquently ) was directed at the OP, not to any of the mods so I am not sure it is a good example. If it were directed at a mod in this thread, I would have quoted them like above instead of replying to the thread OP in general.

I should have asked my serious question more nicely...
What I meant to say is that the OP seems to be a very polarizing personality across several sites.
People that facilitate trades with or through him seem to love him. People that see his trading as business transactions, etc. apparently do not like him.

I was wondering if he found more people like him only for the beer/service he can get them or if they like him on a personal level or for generosity, etc.

Why hate on Ratebeer like that? They seem like nice people too.
This post seems to attack a whole group of people.

About moderation, would my comment have been judged differently if the context was understood / IE it was not directed at a mod and had a valid question I am sure some people want to understand tied in with in?

It just seemed to me like any other semi-snarky comment that would get deleted if that was the feeling of the day.
Not anything over the top to be made an example of, but it isn't my site.

Cheers.

 

Also, is calling me a douche for my opinion any different than what I got a warning for?

 

When a post gets deleted, I just wish the OP would get a message stating why. A recent post about Tweets from Tony was deleted, and no reason given.

 

The person who wrote what got deleted should get a notice why.

 

I was just in contact with the OP and he said he didn't, which is why I asked it here.

 

Which forum was it in? @Todd might have to look i can only check the trading section.

 

The original post was reported since there's an existing thread already devoted to the larger topic:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...-virginia-for-its-east-coast-facility.217909/

The OP should have received an alert telling him this was a duplicate thread.

 

It was a different topic, regarding tony from lagunitas and his tweets about government subsidies (and the tweets were presumed to be about stones new richmond location). I don't think that was mentioned once at all inthe thread you pointed out above.

And as for being in contact with the op, he did not receive any alerts.

I was absolutely not a duplicate thread, but at the very least could have been merged with the current one since it did involved the new richmond brewery.

 

That's your opinion...I see it differently since there is discussion of the subsidy issue in the thread at hand and that's the gist of the complaints that "Tony" had on twitter. The OP's thread makes it clear he thinks it's about the new Stone brewery and the referenced thread is a promoted topic specifically to discuss that brewery.

A simple use of the search feature would have turned that up since the referenced thread is current in "Beer News" within the first four or five topics on the first page.

 

not specifically ISO/FT area but threads in general that are moderated & particularly those deleted, i think an improvement could be a moderator offering an (in thread) reminder/statement to the effect of - Guys & Gals, the topic seems to be drifting away - before blackholing an entire thread. i also suspect if this were done, in some cases it might be explained to the moderating body why something may be entirely relevant that they themselves didn't pick up on & haven't taken into account.

i've seen topics come up re: the cost of barrel aged beers where the discussion eventually gets down to the value of individual barrels, for example. a member will ask why would *barrel A* be more costly than a different brand's *barrel B* etc. many facts including actual industry documents disclosing loss factors (which affect costs) have been posted only to have the threads completely dumped. when you have a bunch of guys reply: "Gee i had no idea these factors existed; or their existence could be this extreme", it's obvious the information is probably of some *value*; even if those specific posts do not contain the word beer &/or the person making the determination doesn't recognize the connection/implications themselves.

in my view, those instances actually decrease some of the value i believe F2brewers is speaking of protecting. reason. those same conversations & inquiries reoccur infinitely. facts/contributing factors have been offered but deleted. when the subject resurfaces folks who can offer answers & introduce unforeseen/unaccounted for factors are unlikely to contribute based on prior actions/results. furthermore, deletion means the results can't be searched & referenced when the subject rebirths. this makes for an uninformed... or at the very least, a less informed audience.

 

As someone who has been here a few years I sometimes find myself repeating information posts I've made or seen made before, so I can sypathize with the concern you are raising. However, the flip side of that same coin is that I've seen topics come up e.g., Breweries using green glass for bottling and why breweries started to do it and/or persist in doing it where the answering and information is available in several existing but older threads on the topic of green glass bottles and/or skunking of beer. Yet it seems to need to be repeated anew every 6 mos. to a year. Similarly, I've lost track of the number of times jesskidden had needed to explain, (and I paraphrase): No, a skunked beer is a lightstruck beer and its not just UV light that can cause a beer to become lightstruck. (A point similar to that which is also made in one of the seldom read essays in Beer 101.) So it doesn't seem to matter if informative topics and posts get deleted or not.

This all leads me to suggest that the source of the problem you've identified is that there is a continuing flood of new blood on this site and unless there is some sort of required reading for those new to the site prior to making any post on any topic there will be repetition and folks saying they had no idea these factors existed regardless of thread and/or post deletion or of threads dying a natural death of old age.