{"id":3620,"date":"2012-03-06T23:17:15","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T03:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=3620"},"modified":"2012-03-06T23:17:15","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T03:17:15","slug":"jason-and-todd-alstroms-join-the-discussion-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/03\/06\/jason-and-todd-alstroms-join-the-discussion-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 Jason and Todd Alstr\u00f6m&#8217;s &#8220;Join the Discussion!&#8221; Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>via the <a href=\"http:\/\/beeradvocate.com\/mag\/\">March 2012 issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Join the Discussion!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s be honest. Lately, there&#8217;s been a lot of negativity in the beer world. Much of this is due to the vocal minority distracting \u00a0communities like BeerAdvocate.com and others. With their strong and frequently exercised voices, their din can often discourage others and make it difficult for more positive feedback to be heard. Pair that with the freedom to spew anonymous nonsense on the internet, and it can be brutal. And it gives the rest of us beer geeks a bad rap.<\/p>\n<p>Time and time again, we&#8217;ve heard from both consumers and brewers alike: &#8220;I don&#8217;t get involved in discussion because of all of the negativity.&#8221; And we think that sucks. We need more voices in the discussion. Consumers, brewers and everyone else in the industry. We need all of you to be heard!<\/p>\n<p>Here are some simple tips:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t be shy. You&#8217;re online. Engage people. Ask a question. Post an opinion. Reply to someone.<\/li>\n<li>Change the tide. Tired of negative posts? Post something fun, positive or thought provoking that rises above the BS. The general mood of an online community is often dictated by its users.<\/li>\n<li>Ignore the negativity. Block it out. Don&#8217;t respond.<\/li>\n<li>And if you can&#8217;t resist replying, don&#8217;t be antagonistic.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s beer. Relax!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard for me to not take this as a response to my post last month. I posted an article entitled: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/02\/09\/beeradvocate-com-and-how-a-community-site-should-be-operated\/\">BeerAdvocate.com and How a Community Site Should be Operated<\/a>&#8221; and it received over 5,000 views in the last 30 days with most of the traffic coming from private messages on Beer Advocate followed by Google.com searches and finally online mail clients like Gmail and Yahoo! mail. Not only was this a sticky post the resonated with current and former Beer Advocate users. It was also a post that inspired those users to share the post with others.<\/p>\n<p>To my thoughts about this post being about me, the Bros would probably say, &#8220;Don&#8217;t flatter yourself!&#8221; and they are right. In fact, there are dozens of tweets and posts each month from BA users made anonymously around the Internet venting about how poorly the BA forum is operated because they&#8217;re too afraid to post with their real names in fear of their account being removed. Anonymity stems from two angles and each of them come down to fear. There&#8217;s fear of what you saying will have an affect in some way on your real identity such as job loss, embarrassment or your words affecting something of yours.<\/p>\n<p>The readers of this blog know I hate <a href=\"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/?s=anonymity\">anonymity<\/a>. It&#8217;s something that should be abolished and we should be handed out national ID cards that link usernames to our real identities so we are held accountable for our actions. It&#8217;s why I posted the above linked post on this blog while my BA username was &#8220;AdamJackson&#8221; and was quickly deleted after I posted it. I believe in attaching my name to things because standing up for what is right is bullshit if you do it behind a mask.<\/p>\n<p>So, the letter wasn&#8217;t for me and I&#8217;m fine with that. I&#8217;m a nobody. However, I see some very big holes in the letter written for this month&#8217;s BA Magazine. As always, I write this with little distaste, anger or conflicts. I write this as a person who has managed communities for the past 10 years and cares deeply about how the Alstr\u00f6m brothers are piece by piece destroying the community that pays their bills.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Much of this is due to the vocal minority distracting \u00a0communities like BeerAdvocate.com and others<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What &#8220;others&#8221;? are you speaking of? If you truly believed in a free-flow of information in the beer world with true beer advocacy, you&#8217;d mention your competition. Other players in the Beer community welcome talk about Beer Advocate and link to BA on many occasions if the time is right and it&#8217;s necessary. However, you never acknowledge &#8220;others&#8221; and remove posts to your site that reference &#8220;others&#8221;. I believe this statement was written so you didn&#8217;t sound like a complainer for having very vocal users on your site because I&#8217;ve spent significant time in the last month on &#8220;others&#8221; and found there is no vocal minority causing any distractions.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>their din can often discourage others and make it difficult for more positive feedback to be heard<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Outside of BeerAdvocate.com, sure. This sort of talk can discourage and dampen the mood of the beer community. However, in the 25 days I was a member of BeerAdvocate, I never saw a negative tone from a vocal minority work to din the community. This is because any hint of criticisms from the longest and most loyal users was quickly removed and the user punished in a very severe manner. You see a lot of these posts but most of us don&#8217;t. All we hear is whispers about people that got banned and it&#8217;s a mystery as to why.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Pair that with the freedom to spew anonymous nonsense on the internet, and it can be brutal<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Integrate Facebook Connect into BeerAdvocate.com. Moderation efforts would drop considerably. As for anonymous chatter on the web, this comes with the territory. If no one hates you, you&#8217;re doing something wrong. If you guys are able to work on BA full time and pay bills, there will always be people who bitch like me. However, ignoring this feedback is incorrect. You don&#8217;t have to take everyone&#8217;s advice but hearing people out is good since your income lives and dies by the community that logs into BA each day.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Don&#8217;t be shy. You&#8217;re online. Engage people. Ask a question. Post an opinion. Reply to someone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As long as the engagement is in line with very tight and undocumented laws imposed by 3 people with no professional experience in community management outside of BA.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Change the tide. Tired of negative posts? Post something fun, positive or thought provoking that rises above the BS.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I did that once as documented in my last post about BA. I replied to a shrinking threaded conversation because it was late, we were all drunk and having fun. I was banned for a day and called &#8220;childish&#8221; by Todd.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And if you can&#8217;t resist replying, don&#8217;t be antagonistic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>&#8220;Antagonistic: Def. Showing or feeling active opposition or hostility toward someone or something.&#8221;<\/em> I&#8217;m pretty sure calling my actions childish in public was an antagonistic move on your part. I&#8217;m over it but if I wasn&#8217;t so accustomed to anonymous haters online, I would have taken a lot more offense to your statement. Breaking one of your own rules is deeply discouraging because how can you expect others to take this up?<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>As I said in my last post, it&#8217;s NOT an easy job running a community site. The response to my post in delivering very open and honest critiques that were published with my full first and last name from the Brothers was to permanently delete my account and IP ban me from the site forever. Your decision to do that was one I will never forget was the most poor way to handle a paying member who posted legit criticisms with feedback on how to handle things better. You saw a book on community management on the bookshelf that listed you as a poor example with feedback and your response was to light the entire book shelf on fire. To handle things this way is childish. Call me antagonistic if you&#8217;d like and ask me to ignore your negativity toward my very open and sincere feedback and ban my account after asking me to not be shy and actively engage with the community and this shows you are handling things in an entirely hypocritical way.<\/p>\n<p>I would love to consult with you guys unpaid in order to set things straight. You don&#8217;t have to apply anything I tell you but I believe your actions are putting huge cracks in the community and I&#8217;d like to help. I don&#8217;t want my account back but I truly believe in BA as a beer advocacy site that does great things for the beer community. Maybe you can prove to us that you believe in the voices of users despite how critical their feedback might be. If you no longer care about those voices, then maybe it&#8217;s time to pass the company on to a team who isn&#8217;t so cynical, angry and defensive about a website.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s beer. Relax!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Exactly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"via the March 2012 issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine: Join the Discussion! Let&#8217;s be honest. 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It's unfortunate that\u00a0Adrian Grenier of Entourage is a friend of one of my best friends but I just can't hold back. I'm not going to say anything bad but the reviews do speak for themselves on RateBeer and BeerAdvocate. Watching the introduction video to this beer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Beer News&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Beer News","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/beer\/beer-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Sieglerchurchkey","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adam-jackson.net\/beer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/sieglerchurchkey.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":486,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/07\/17\/hill-farmstead-ebay-and-rumors\/","url_meta":{"origin":3620,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 Hill Farmstead, eBay and Rumors","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't whip out the soap box often. In fact, I haven't done a post like this since April 25th when I came clean about selling beer on eBay, squashed rumors and attempted unsuccessfully to bring the conversation full circle that we are the problem for inflated demand for \"rare\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;My Thoughts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"My Thoughts","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/my-thoughts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"IMG 2101","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adam-jackson.net\/beer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/IMG_2101.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adam-jackson.net\/beer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/IMG_2101.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adam-jackson.net\/beer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/IMG_2101.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3560,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/02\/09\/beeradvocate-com-and-how-a-community-site-should-be-operated\/","url_meta":{"origin":3620,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 BeerAdvocate.com and How a Community Site Should be Operated","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"February 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"When you are operating a website that enables communication between users, there are a lot of very important considerations to make such as how much you provide to the user. 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