Threadshitting - A civil discussion…

I was reading the Beatification thread in this forum this morning and came upon a long-winded response. I rolled my eyes and thought, "Well, someone sure liked to hear himself type last night." The post turned out to be mine.

 

In my opinion replies that even suggest the beers being offered are not sufficient to get the beers being sought is threadshitting. If your intentions are really good you can message them privately with your unsolicited feedback.

Pretty much all "informational" replies are from people who have an interest in the beer being sought, it has NOTHING to do with helping anyone.

 

Completely agree with you there...just don't listen to the people telling you not to do it, who cares what they think. If you are in fact thread shitting your post will get nuked and you'll get a warning. Did it get nuked? no, Did you get a warning? I hope not. That "thread shitting" you did was actually useful information that could keep a few n00bs that were thinking about making the same stupid offer from making it just because they came in to see if it got done yet ended up with info that tells them this isn't a fair trade if they can read between the lines.

 

I haven't read through the whole thread, and I've never traded, so take my comments for what you will:

Starting at the root of the issue, why are "stupid" FT:ISOs a problem? Someone who doesn't like the proposed terms doesn't have to trade. Yet, these posts do clutter the trade forums without a realistic possibility of getting done. The biggest problem, then, is one of decreased efficiency.

Does threadshitting help? Does it improve the flow of information so as to remove clutter and improve the percent of posts that have a legitimate chance of happening? I think that it can definitely do so. But then the question is at what cost? Is it worth restricting the original poster's freedom? Is it worth potential hits to the morale of the BA community (if these would even ocur) and/or to new users?

The answers to those questions are above my paygrade as a newcomer to both BA and trading. But that seems to me to be the proper framing of the issue.

 

Nice of you to complain about that again. I wasn't trying to prevent the spread of knowledge. You could have just as easily started a thread in the Trading General Help section to inform everyone that Vanilla BCS was retired and Coffee and Bramble BCS were not. What was different about this situation, though, was that it looked like you were trying to dissuade anyone from making a Vanilla BCS for Coffee BCS or Bramble BCS trade. It looked an awful lot like a passive aggressive way of threadshitting, which is not cool and not helpful to the community.

As you can see, other people agree with me on this.

 

But private messages don't accomplish the community education aspect.

And even if you think the people doing it are smug assholes, the key question is the overall impact on the community, not whether the "educator" is [being a] douchebag.

 

I've yet to hear a single valid argument for threadshitting.

"Helping out a new BA" is a garbage response. You want to know what helps a new BA realize his/her offer was off base? The crickets he/she hears after posting an ISO:FT.

I've always thought threadshitting was mostly for 2 reasons. People think it's fun and people want to dictate the value of a beer.

 

If people used the trading help forum, then we wouldn't have ridiculous trade offers plaguing the ISO forum.

 

New BAs don't know the typical response rate on a "good" ISO:FT.

 

ISO: Vanilla BCS, FT: Coffee BCS or Bramble BCS

^^^ That is not a ridiculous trade offer. Is it possible it didn't get done? Sure. However, I have seen people post pictures of 12+ Vanilla BCS bottles in their cellars. Those people might have missed out on this year's Coffee and Bramble and would love to make that trade. If he had said something like ISO: Vanilla BCS, FT: one bottle of regular BCS, then maybe it would have warranted a message explaining why it was a bad offer.

 

Crickets may be useful a lot of the time, but what about the many fair offers that don't get done for various other reasons? Plus, crickets for 100 different users with similar offers is a lot louder than getting some research from threads bearing discussion.

 

I also wanna say that there's different "thread shitting" that comes out on different occasions. Most of the one being done in the thread that spawned this thread is the type that isn't fair to the thread. A simple fact checking response would've been good enough.

The type of "thread shitting" that is actually useful though is when someone points out facts like bottle numbers, retired vs currently in rotation and retired for how long. This is information that can be written right on the thread so other newbies may learn a little while it still allows the people "thinking" about doing the trade and the trader making the offer to decide whether its a fair trade for them or not. I find it funny and sad at the same time that someone feels the need to say "I don't mean to thread shit but..." when all they're doing is providing facts about a beer. Lets face it, n00bs have no idea about this information if they're searching for a beer that got released before they got here and a lot of people are too lazy to search for the info themselves and some n00bs might not know how to search for it/what to look for even if they tried. Helpful posts are being called thread shitting nowadays and people wonder why the trade forums are like they are? It is exactly those types of posts that allowed me to get my bearings in the trading forum when I was a n00b and I'm sure that some of you that voted no on here if you think back to when you started out, you'll remember that the case is the same for you.

 

Someone with 12+ Vanilla BCS and a willingness to trade some for Bramble and Coffee BCS is not going to be dissuaded from making the trade based on my original post.

 

Not ridiculous by any means but please tell me how his stating facts about the beers in question is thread shitting. He's not throwing his opinion out there, he just felt the need to say I don't mean to thread shit but because people seem to attack even the "thread shitters" that are actually just being helpfull.

If his post had read you know this is never gonna happen right because of A,B,C I'd say you're right. I fail to see how stating facts about all the beers in question doesn't allow someone interested in making an offer to make their own decision on whether the trade is fair or not.

 

So why don't we close down the trade help forum? The bros created it for just that reason.

Again it comes back to the fact that basically every reply comes from people who have an interest in the beers involved. They want what they have to be worth more. So regardless what anyone claims about helping people and new traders and such, that is almost never their intention. They care about pumping up their own beer. If everyone wants to start doing that, I'll go ahead and join the party and shit on low offers for beer I own.

 

It might have been an innocent attempt to be helpful, but it also might have been an attempt to affect the perceived value of the beers in question. For instance, what if DavoleBomb was just about to post a thread like "FT: Vanilla BCS, ISO: 2 Bramble BCS's". It would be in his own interest to drop hints in other threads that Vanilla is worth more than just one Bramble. I realize that that is a far fetched hypothetical, but it's still an example of why comments like that should stay out of the ISO:FT posts. If you want to post facts and have back and forth discussions about the trade value of particular beers, then there is a forum dedicated to exactly that purpose: the Beer Trading General/Help section.

 

They're a problem because it tightens supply by having traders that still go to releases and buy a ton of the beers thinking I'm gonna trade them but then they're unreasonable about their trade offer because they think those stupid FT:ISOs are getting done. Part of the problem with the new releases is people that are actually willing to trade their bottles but won't because their perceived value is wrong, directly or indirectly because of the trade forum. So instead of having a bunch of reasonable traders like we used to, the forums seem to be full of newbies making unreasonable requests. Which as I've explained somewhere above is somewhere between not entirely their fault and not their fault at all. There is no Kelly blue book for beers so the trade forum used to be our blue book of sorts before the shit storm set in and took hold.

 

Created it for just what reason? I'm confused.

And posting directly in a thread would get the information across better than a thread in a different sub-forum, I'd think. I don't have a vested interest here, as I've never traded, but that's my impression.

Also, I'd like to see the proof for your last paragraph, because it seems at this point like pure speculation.

 

I think when the trade offer seems ridiculous from someone who should have or does have a good idea about trading then a "threadshitting" comment is fine. Not just a little off but way off. If its close or the trader is a noob to trading I will generally comment in a constructive manner.

To be honest I am way more annoyed by counter offers posted as a reply in the thread, or even worse a counter offer that is then followed up with BM me if interested. That is 100% BM worthy 100% of the time.