Xmas Comes Early for BeerAdvocate.com! (Server Upgrades)

I like cheese.

Yee-ha. I'm getting a pony for Christmas.

Hey, dumbass. This is usenet, not your site. You may want to communicate with your members there, unless all your upgrading indicates that your current infrastructure has gone to shit so much to the point that you can't actually send out broadcast emails on your own site.

But I'm sure your little minions will continue to give you the ball-washing you so deeply crave.

-Steve

Aw, don't be so hard on them. After all, they managed to put out a magazine 11 times last year. Never mind that each month it arrived at their ballwashers' doorsteps weeks after the cover date -- always blaming the postal service or the printer, not their own incompetence. They deserve the one-month break they proclaimed they need. I mean, all the successful magazines took a month off after (almost) a whole year of existence, right?

Witzel

So, I'm a "ballwasher" because I'm an active member of BA? The hatred for BA here bewilders me. If you folks don't like the infrequent posts that show up here, why don't you just killfile them and spare people who participate in BA *and* Alt.beer/RFDB the sophomoric insults.

No, Bill, you're not. At least as far as I know. You don't strike me as the sycophantic type.

I cannot say the same for many other BA people I've run across.

It's not so much directed at BA as it's directed at a couple related things:

The Goat Brothers

Anyone who uses the newsgroups to promote their commercial ventures without also being an active contributor to the groups.

The only thing either Alstrom contributes anymore to either rfdb or alt.beer is spam like this, or the occasional "wow, this place sucks" comments. I have no problem with contributors occasionally pointing out business stuff; I have a problem with posters who do nothing but shill.

The other thing relates to longstanding issues many of us had with the Alstroms that date way back before I believe you started posting on the groups. Including, but not limited to, signing up newsgroup users for the newsletter that preceeded the BA site, and refusing for weeks to unsubscribe people who protested the unsolicited email. Add in their charming personalities, and the animosity some of the old-timers have might make a little more sense.

I have nothing against BA the site. It fills a valuable niche, and I think the Alstroms do a fine job with it. I've never denied or begrudged them that. I just have an issue with their constant need to have everyone like them, which to me is shown by posting irrelevant material such as this on usenet. Tell me, how many other web sites come around here to let us know updates on their maintenance?

-Steve

Right, I haven't been lurking here too long but the OP never mentioned anything about beer. Just servers and data bases. Then again, they did say bottleneck and that made me want a beer. CHEERS

"Bill Becker" wrote on 21 Dec 2007:

If you were around in earlier times, you'd see plenty of "sophomoric insults" trotted out by none other than the Alstroms. It was about the highest level of contribution they ever sent to any of the beer newsgroups.

The "ballwashers" comment is directed solely at those subscribers to the magazine who, no matter what stupidity comes out of the owners' mouths, reply with a "great idea!" or "how do I renew for LIFE?" or "whatever you say is the Right and True way of beer!"

"Ballwashers" is also directed at the braindead who easily outnumber the thoughtful, reasonably-intelligent users of BA. It is not directed at people who have something useful to say on the site, and use whatever features happen to be on BA. Well, at least those features that work; in a fit of paranoia, the Brothers Goat decided to handle all administrative tasks themselves, leading to a huge backlog on new places to add, loads of duplicate beer listings, and the like throughout last year. Naturally, any questions as to why this was so were met with contemptuous responses, then the threads deleted. Sometimes the users were deleted too.

If BA were run by people like, for example, you, it would be a much better site. People with some perspective, a working tongue, and the ability to handle criticism without purging any back-talk and thoughts deemed too controversial (read: got under your skin) would do wonders for the management of BA. Of course, that will never happen.

Witzel