BeerBorg

like I've been slimed on. I stop'd by the old MrB ghost town and saw a couple newbies were not getting the great answers I used to give. So I got long winded and gave a couple of them answers. Probably the first time I've been on there in many months, please forgive me. Now I feel like I need to take a shower again, but with an SOS pad. For those of you that have not been back or by there in a while, it is still just as eff'd up as it was when most of us left there although some of the oldies are still there, posting every once in a while.

I know what you are saying, I go there every few days to see if it has got any better/ like it was, and it has not. I would still go there if it was good and still come here too like when louie first started this as a place we could all chat. But this turned into a much better atmosfear and a better place to talk beer and everything else.

FrozenInTime wrote:like I've been slimed on. I stop'd by the old MrB ghost town and saw a couple newbies were not getting the great answers I used to give. So I got long winded and gave a couple of them answers. Probably the first time I've been on there in many months, please forgive me. Now I feel like I need to take a shower again, but with an SOS pad. For those of you that have not been back or by there in a while, it is still just as eff'd up as it was when most of us left there although some of the oldies are still there, posting every once in a while.

The heart and soul of the Borg as we knew it has been transplanted here and that forum will never be what it once was. It was the people and culture that was created by those people that kept that forum strong. Once Mr. Beer made the change to the site that prevented people from using it the way the culture had been formed there was nothing left to hold it together there.

LouieMacGoo wrote:

FrozenInTime wrote:like I've been slimed on. I stop'd by the old MrB ghost town and saw a couple newbies were not getting the great answers I used to give. So I got long winded and gave a couple of them answers. Probably the first time I've been on there in many months, please forgive me. Now I feel like I need to take a shower again, but with an SOS pad. For those of you that have not been back or by there in a while, it is still just as eff'd up as it was when most of us left there although some of the oldies are still there, posting every once in a while.

The heart and soul of the Borg as we knew it has been transplanted here and that forum will never be what it once was. It was the people and culture that was created by those people that kept that forum strong. Once Mr. Beer made the change to the site that prevented people from using it the way the culture had been formed there was nothing left to hold it together there.

I know I shouldn't, but I do feel sorry for the noobs that pop in over there and can't get any help, or takes forever to get help. The noobs don't know any-better, don't know how they eff'd up the forum, so they are left in a void as such. I have noticed that with the lack of traffic, even the noobs don't ask many questions. Sure hate to see all the new brewers get depressed with the typical first batch of seriously lacking beer and just quit, unlike in the past where we could guide them in the right direction. I guess what I care about are the noobs, for I sure don't care about Coopers. That's why I did put in a plug for here in one of my answers. Still, I must admit if it were not for the *old* un-eff'd up forum over there, I would have never continued brewing myself. I agree the heart and soul of that place is now here.

I can never say this enough, Thank you a million times over for this site!

I'd probably log in there and answer a question or two if my account worked. But it does not, they 'eff'd it up somehow during the change over. It might be because I never updated my email address to match - out of principle, I do not and will not use my "real" email address on any message board, and I would never tie my message board email address to my customer email address. It's just bad practice, bad security, bad news. I thought it would just mess up my post count, which I could give a crap about. But noooooo.

I'm not going to make a new one that matches my customer email, and I cant' reset my password on the old one, nothing works.

It's not worth my time to call them and try to sort things.

I kept checking it about every other day but then just got tired of it. The only questions I felt I was qualified to answer were already answered and those that weren't answered, weren't ones I could answer anyway. Every now and then I accidently go there when I click the wrong bookmark in my "Bookmarks" tab but don't usually stick around to read posts.

Louie said it best. What makes any message board work is the people involved, and the dynamic they put together via their individual chemistry.

I view the MB community during my time there as sort taking a bell curve shape. For me, it peaked two or three years ago. Then some people who were very active and lent their unique personalities to the group fell away for one reason or another. Then Eric G. left to build his own microbrewery, and then the Coopers takeover occurred, and the underpinnings of the group's personality and ability to express that personality took a nosedive. Unfortunately, the powers that be didn't care to fix that.

The nice thing about this site is the relatively hands-off approach Leigh has taken. I'm sure if someone threatened someone else, or hacked them, or trolled them, appropriate action would be taken. But the Administration's trust of us has been rewarded, I feel. We're allowed to be who we are , do what we do , and everything works out.

I feel sorry for any new guys on MrB too. They won't get the information they need, nor the social experience that makes a forum fun. And the is THE Nicest Forum. Any experienced brewer that still visits MrB is being kind to the readers, and promoting good brewing.

I never could understand why MR B went and stopped the free 24/7 tech support.............. US the BORG.

Like FIT I had got several nasty emails about posting links. I would post there to help noobs but have been banned for life

I go there about once a month to see what's up, and the answer is usually "not much."

Not only has the heart and soul been cut out of the forum--the user base--but the look-and-feel of it is horrible. It screams "we feel obligated to have a forum, but don't care about it at all, so we got the cheapest, crappiest software we could."

If I were a newb exploring that forum, I'd run elsewhere very quickly. Sadly, a Google search would probably lead me to the Fans forum, and I'm not a big fan of the look-and-feel of that interface, either.

I'm just glad I came along when I did (early 2011)!

I agree that if I was new and had just come across that forum, I don't think I would have even bothered joining. I was fortunate enough to find it just prior to the buyout so it was still a great place of welcoming and easy to use. With the way things are there now, they may as well shut it down and just offer a few links to say here and other popular forums where discussion happens.

One of the things that I have found interesting about that whole forum fiasco is that Mr. Beer also owns MrBeerFans.com and has pretty much left that untouched. I'm not quite sure what to make of that other then they were really wanting to integrate the community.mrbeer.com into their retail, online sales and it just went horribly wrong and alienated a lot of the people that made that forum what it was. I have to say that if it weren't for that forum when I first started I might not have continued brewing and would not have ended up where I am now.

I am still working to evangelize this forum and let people know that we are here, so we can have that flow of new brewers coming in. We have been able to garner some but as we all know it has been a trickle. With some of the things that I hope will go into place (outside of the forum) in the next few weeks I'm hoping that we will see an influx of members over the holidays from both BrewDemon and other places as well.

LouieMacGoo wrote:I have to say that if it weren't for that forum when I first started I might not have continued brewing and would not have ended up where I am now.

You mean, in charge of us, the collective, the Borg, our home and sanctuary. Well in that case Thank You MrBeer. Oh, and you to Leigh.

AHH...........................Man............................... MR B has reinstated me Now I can not say I was banned.

Like a lot of us here I would have quit if it was not for the great people that make up the BORG. The most important thing the BORG taught me was not to follow MR B directions but to slow down. Use DME instead of booster, how to use hops and grains. Now I do brew up some mighty fine suds. I can't wait to be able to drink them

Speaking of the forum teaching us not to follow MB's instructions, I must say I was somewhat surprised that after the buyout they didn't bother to fix their instructions with all the things suggested by users in the forum. They just kept their same lame instructions which have failed some customers and in probably more ways than one, was the reason they never bothered to continue homebrewing.