State of the Forum AddressThis is something that the management here would like to do from time to time. We want to let everyone know what's going on, give you some feedback about how things are going, hear feedback from you about ideas we have and just generally build a stronger community by keeping the lines of communication open. Today is our 1
st weekiversary and I thought this would be an appropriate time to bring everybody up to speed.
A Big Thanks to Our MembershipFirst I would like to say thanks to the members that followed us here. We were a little nervous (well I was anyway) that we'd throw a party and nobody would show up. In reality the opposite happened. We had nearly 100 people sign up in the first few hours after we came on line and there were well over 100 after the first full day. Right now we're approaching 300 strong and still growing. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the Brewboard's thousands of members but keep in mind that this represents nearly all of the
active membership at the Brewboard.You guys have also put your money where your mouse is by supporting the Patron sponsorship. For those who are not aware, upgrading to Patron status gets you some additional benefits, including more PM space, the ability to attach files to posts and other features. Please see
this to learn more about becoming a Brew Brothers patron. To put this in concrete terms, we have already paid for the next nine months of hosting after only one week. However as we continue to grow these costs may also rise, so this is subject to change.The fact that so many of our friends made the transition with us says a few things. First, it says that we have a real community here that is independent of where the site is hosted or who it's affiliated with. It says that you cared about each other enough to come here and start over completely from scratch. It also says that you trust us to run this place the way it should be run. We thank you for that faith in us from the bottoms of our hearts.Give yourselves a standing O.
Our VisionFirst and foremost, this is an online community forum created by brewers and winemakers for brewers and winemakers. Our primary mission is to create an environment so that brewers and winemakers can share their knowledge, expertise and techniques for the betterment of the community as a whole.One of the problems that was beginning to surface at the other place is the community was becoming fractured. More and more it was becoming brewers vs. PHers vs. moderators. We have a very strong desire to not let that happen this time. We want to build one big community that includes everybody, not 3 or 4 smaller, distinct ones. I've seen some encouraging early signs of this already. Some of the
PH regulars have suddenly gotten re-energized about brewing and are spending more time in the brewing forums than they used to. I've also seen a few of the brewers stopping into the
PH. I would love to see a lot more of this. So if you're a brewer that has never (or rarely) ventured into the Public House, I urge you to stick your head in there from time to time and say hi. I know that the zombies in the
PH can seem like a bunch of crazed maniacs and there's a reason for that. They are. But they are also the nicest, funniest people you'll ever meet. They are as much of a community as the brewers, if not more. So I'm asking for some bridge-building from both sides.
New StandardsTo that end, one of the most important changes you'll see between this site and the old one is that we need to tighten up our standards of acceptable content. The old
PH was becoming too crude and rough for some people. We are all adults so some amount of adult content and behavior is acceptable. Where we will draw the line is between risqué and raunchy. Here are a few examples of what we consider raunchy: nudity/see-through clothing, butt floss, bouncy/jiggly animated GIFs, images depicting/suggesting sexual activity (including animations), most of Carlin's 7 words. These things don't belong on a site that is supposed to be about making beer. Regarding language, the occasional shit or piss is not going to cause anybody to bat an eyelash. But from a body-of-work perspective, if you're constantly using crude language, we're going to ask you to rein it in a little. We are not prudes but we also don't want to be bombarded by an avalanche of crude behavior every time we visit the Public House.A major change in the policies centers around group buys. Group buys created an awkward situation for HBA/AB and so the organization of them in the open forum was prohibited. Here, we have no homebrew shop affiliation so you guys are welcome to organize all the group buys that you want.Another problem from the GB is that at times there seemed to be an arms race to see who could push the limits the farthest without getting suspended. We will be looking for this type of behavior and will try to stop it before it starts. However we also ask the membership here to simply avoid that one-upsmanship. Also, since we're promoting this as a community, please help us keep the place clean by reporting posts that you feel may violate the rules. The mods can't read every single post and so we rely on the members to help us out. We're asking everyone to please take some ownership in the place.I'm happy to say that most members have embraced these new standards of behavior. Some however are still sorting it out. That's ok. We realize that an adjustment is necessary and we are not handing out suspensions during this transition period, only verbal warnings. At some point however, everyone is going to have to get on board with the new rules. We didn't put these rules in place to be assholes. They're for the good of the community as a whole. The sooner we accept the new reality, the better off we'll all be.If you feel that you can't go on living without viewing or posting content of the type that is prohibited here, you're in luck. There's a home for you at
The Lifeboat. (See below)
The LifeboatThe Lifeboat is a site that BigBossMan started up a while back so that Brewboarders would have a place to go during the times when the board was down. With all the "maintenance" that has been going on lately, The Lifeboat's membership has skyrocketed. I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly thank BBM for his kindness, support and generosity. We see this site and The Lifeboat almost as partners. As long as you play nice with others, almost anything goes at The Lifeboat. So it offers us a pressure relief valve and an outlet for those that don't feel comfortable with the tighter restrictions on this forum.Standing O for Marc.
Current StatusWe were trying to get the board set up and online as quickly as possible so as to fill the void left by the Brewboard's disappearance. Therefore many things were left undone when we first opened the doors. I'm happy to report that most of these have been addressed at least to some extent. Some things are still a work in progress however and that's going to remain the case for a while. Here's a list of some things that we've been able to accomplish so far:
[*]Forum Organization - We've set this board up slightly different from the Brewboard. For one thing, we've created a Bulletin Board group that contains the Events & Announcements, Classifieds and Group Buy forums. Other than that things should look pretty familiar. One thing that we heard consistently from the members at the Brewboard is that they liked the consolidated format rather than the "forum sprawl" that characterize some sites. So we intend to keep that concept in place. We may add new forums as needs arise but we tend to resist that. If there is a real, legitimate need to add a new forum, we will do so but it's going to require some pretty good justification.[*]Patron Sponsors - Discussed earlier, this is a way to help keep the site running and also get some additional features.[*]Policies - We opened the doors without an official Code of Conduct. I can report that we have rectified that situation and the link to our policies is posted on the banner at the top of the page. And it didn't take us weeks to agree on the wording. 
[*]Smilies - We installed most of the emoticons that you were used to back at the old place, plus some new ones.[*]FAQ - Work is progressing on the FAQ Forum but it's slow going right now. We have the FAQs from the old board but to use them we need permission from the authors. If you wrote a FAQ for the old board and you'd like to give us permission to use it, please PM me. If you'd like to write a new FAQ, please PM me. If you know someone who isn't on this forum (yet) but wrote a FAQ for the old one, please get in touch with them and ask them to send me permission to use it, if they're willing.[*]Thread Ratings - We've enabled thread ratings (star ratings) in all forums. At the moment they aren't used for anything but some day they might be used as the criteria for pruning the database or archiving important threads. So go ahead and get in the habit of rating threads. Keep in mind that what you're rating is the quality of the thread, not whether you agree with what it says (except for reviews - see below).[*]Review Forum - We're trying something new. Instead of a poll in the reviews, we're going to try using the thread rating. In this case, you're not rating the thread itself, rather you're rating the item that's being reviewed. [*]Glitches - There were the usual assortment of goobers on start-up but we've fixed problems in the RSS feed, thread subscriptions and permissions in various forums. If anybody discovers a problem, please report it to us in the Brew Brothers Info forum.[/list]The BrewboardHopefully this is the last time I will have to address this subject. In the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of harsh words exchanged between the members of this site (along with the Lifeboat) and the Brewboard. There's been a lot more drama than is warranted over some internet forums. I urge everyone here to put this episode behind you. That chapter is closed and we now begin a new one that we hope will be better. Let's move on; we have better things to talk about.I know that many of you have no plans to ever return to the green board. However I also know that there are those that do wish to maintain your relationships with the fine folks at that site. We do not see ourselves in competition with our former home. We simply have a difference of opinion and therefore are offering this forum as an alternative. We welcome those who wish to share some time with us here, whether you are a member of the Brewboard or not.Plans for the FutureOne thing that we want to make clear is that we are not in this to make a profit. You guys have been extremely generous so far. Be assured that all of the money that we collect above and beyond operating costs will be rolled back into the community somehow. We are looking at adding some new features to the board (see below) and if anything is left over after that, we'll find a way to pay it back. Here are a few of the ideas we have for moving forward:[*]Right now we're being hosted by Invision, which is the company that makes the forum software that we use and the cost of the software is included in the hosting fees. Eventually if traffic continues to pick up, we'll need to move the board over to a virtual server. This means that we'll need to purchase our own copy of the Invision Power Board software. This is a one-time cost of $150 plus $50/yr. for maintenance. Most of this has already been paid for by a generous donation from the Lifeboat.[*]Invision Power also has blog & photo gallery software that integrates with the forums. We are contemplating adding these new features should we have a projected surplus. However we need for you to tell us if you feel it would be a useful addition. We'd rather spend the money elsewhere if this is not going to get used.[*]There's been some discussion of having t-shirts printed, with profit from the sales of the shirts going to support the board. However, that is complicated by the fact that the Blues Brothers image is protected, and we'd prefer not to get ourselves in legal trouble. We're considering making our own image, involving a few of the moderators, shades, fedoras, and some beer, but we're going to need some assistance both with putting the image together and getting the shirts printed. One other major concern is printing costs - we've yet to find a low volume printer that can do it for less than $25-30 a shirt.[*]We are talking about also adding a chat component to the system. If we do, it will mostly be for the purpose of bringing in "guest speakers" the way we used to do during the "Ale Era". There are a number of problems to be worked out before this happens however so it's not high up on the priority list at the moment.[*]We have heard requests for a dark blue skin. It was in our plans all along to do this and it's still on our to-do list. However, this theme works just fine for now and so adding a new one is not a high priority. It's also a royal pain right in the butt to create a new skin. So we'll get around to it at some point but it's not going to happen in the near future. Note that when we do add a blue skin, this one will not go away. We will just add an additional option. We've also heard requests for a dark green skin and.....well, no. 
[*]At the Brewboard, we managed to generate a little income through Google Ads. Near the end, we removed them because they were something of a conflict of interest for the ownership. That situation doesn't exist here so we are considering using them to help offset the cost. We are also looking into the idea of not displaying Google Ads for Patron members.[/list]We'd love to hear some feedback from the members about the above ideas, good, bad or otherwise. Of course we always want to hear from you about other ideas that maybe we haven't thought of.Big FinishI'll leave everyone with this thought. Who owns this board? Scott's name is on the hosting agreement so in that sense he is the owner but that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm really asking is, "Who has a stake in seeing this board be successful?" Everyone here came here for a reason. You want to be here. So I submit to you that we are all owners of this board. We are all stakeholders in this little enterprise. We all benefit from this board being here and we would all be a little bit sadder if it didn't exist. Thus I think we all bear some responsibility for insuring that it succeeds.How many times did you hear at the old place, "This is Jess' house, he just lets us visit.", or words to that effect? Well, that's not the case here. This is not my house. This is not Scott's house. This is your house. Please treat it with respect.That's all I have to say. Now I'll open the floor up to questions.
