MarkPrince Moderator Joined: 19 Dec 2001 Posts: 5,144 Location: Vancouver Expertise: Professional
Espresso: Frankenstein'ed LM Linea Grinder: Anfim Super Caimano Vac Pot: 1922 Silex Drip: Krups Moka Brew Roaster: Hottop
Posted Fri Nov 6, 2009, 10:51pm Subject: Re: Aeropress owner and CoffeeGeek.
You read what Jon wrote. If you take the time and effort to patiently debate someone, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, only to have that person come back and isolate on individual comments you make, and if you get a bit flippy, in isolated manners, with some of your responses, the moderators are most likely to not do anything.
If you want to be a dick, on the other hand, your time on CG will be very short. Is that plain enough?
MarkPrince Moderator Joined: 19 Dec 2001 Posts: 5,144 Location: Vancouver Expertise: Professional
Espresso: Frankenstein'ed LM Linea Grinder: Anfim Super Caimano Vac Pot: 1922 Silex Drip: Krups Moka Brew Roaster: Hottop
Posted Fri Nov 6, 2009, 11:01pm Subject: Re: Aeropress owner and CoffeeGeek.
SlowRain Said:
Saying "Your post is ignorant and absurd" is no different from saying "You are ignorant and absurd". I know you really want it to be different, but it isn't. I'd like you to walk up to Mike Tyson and tell him his clothes are girlish, then explain to him that saying his clothes are girlish is not the same as saying he is girlish. Let me know how you make out with that.
Walk up to anyone with serious aggression tendencies and if they happen to say "it's a lovely day" in the middle of a typhoon and you disagree by saying "that's crazy, it's horrible!", you'll probably be punched. Say the same thing to most reasonable people, and even if they still disagree with you, they won't turn around and call on the FriendlyPolice on you, or punch you in the mouth.
Debating, arguing, and even in some cases ridiculing the idea has never been banned on CoffeeGeek's forums when it happens between knowledgeable people. If someone says "espresso is brewed at 175F for the best taste", you can bet that comment is going to be challenged and called naive at best, and idiotic at worst. If you are someone who takes everything personally, I have no help for you. If you're someone who sees any contrarian opinion to your own as a personal attack, grow a thicker skin.
Now if you're someone who decides to provoke people with insults and slams against posted opinions and ideas just for the sake of doing so (ie, trollish behaviour), that will not be tolerated on this website. If you're someone who decides to be a pain in the ass simply because you want to prove a point with no relation to the discussion on hand, that too would fall into the trollish category, and you bet the moderators would be all over it.
In your case, you've been around for what, 1 year? You've missed all the "fun" in these threads if thats the case. We've tried our best to tell you what has been going down since 2005 and 2006, but if that doesn't matter to you, that's okay too. Just don't see it as a license to become an agitator or cause disruptions just for the sake of disruptions.
Posted Fri Nov 6, 2009, 11:10pm Subject: Re: Aeropress owner and CoffeeGeek.
MarkPrince Said:
If you are someone who takes everything personally, I have no help for you. If you're someone who sees any contrarian opinion to your own as a personal attack, grow a thicker skin.
alanfrew Senior Member Joined: 19 Dec 2001 Posts: 484 Location: Melbourne Expertise: Professional
Posted Sat Nov 7, 2009, 3:46am Subject: Re: Aeropress owner and CoffeeGeek.
May I give an "Industry Insider's" point of view to this debate, albeit an insider with a notorious disinclination to suffer fools gladly?
It's about time!
The Aeropress never has, doesn't now and never will produce anything approaching espresso.
The Aeropress is a marginal coffee brewer at best, requiring reduced extraction temperatures and ridiculous coffee quantities to achieve something approaching the North American ideal taste. Outside NA YMMV. The solitary Italian I tried it on described it as "bland and insipid", and we were using his coffee.
When it comes to espresso, Andy Schecter knows what he's talking about. So does Mark. Also Dan Kehn, Jim Schulman, Greg Scace, Marshall Fuss, Randy Glass, Barry Jarrett et Al. Particularly Al.
Alan Adler has ZERO espresso credibility; he's an inventor, not a barista, and AFAIK has never been involved with any part of the espresso coffee industry. Otherwise the outside of the Aeropress box wouldn't still have the same text.
If I was in Mark's shoes, or a Moderator (Heaven forbid!) Mr. Adler's butt would have been bounced to the kerb a couple of years ago. And I would have been FAR less polite than Mark has been so far. And as far as online personae are concerned, "I yam who I yam", and you can even look me up in the phonebook.
MarkPrince Moderator Joined: 19 Dec 2001 Posts: 5,144 Location: Vancouver Expertise: Professional
Espresso: Frankenstein'ed LM Linea Grinder: Anfim Super Caimano Vac Pot: 1922 Silex Drip: Krups Moka Brew Roaster: Hottop
Posted Sat Nov 7, 2009, 4:10am Subject: Re: Aeropress owner and CoffeeGeek.
I also want to add one more thing to this thread.
There's some of you who believe that
a- the aeropress threads bring more people to this website, b- we would have less traffic on the site if we had long ago stopped the promoting aeropress threads c- more traffic means more money for this website.
For (a), while the aeropress threads no doubt bring people to the website, I would argue the "more" part. CoffeeGeek's google ranking does just fine without the Aeropress threads.
For (b) - absolutely not. We would, at most, maybe see a 0.01% drop in traffic, based on the numbers I view monthly.
For (c) - maybe its a common misconception, but CoffeeGeek has no pay per views or pay per clicks advertising. All of our ads, sold only to coffee related businesses, are flat rate ads. Whether we have 900,000 visitors or 2,000,000 visitors a month, we don't make less (or more) money based on traffic.
So there is no benefit to the running and cost of CoffeeGeek.com by having the Aeropress threads intact, or by having the Aeropress promoted in a very unique way for over four years now in our forums.
The benefit is to two groups / people: to anyone and everyone who wants to discuss the Aeropress, learn more about it, figure it out, find out how to use it, and interact with other people using it, and the second benefactor is Alan Adler's company, and any vendor who sells the product.
Bitches_Brew Senior Member Joined: 4 Feb 2009 Posts: 443 Location: indiana Expertise: I like coffee
Espresso: silvia Grinder: rocky Roaster: behmor
Posted Sat Nov 7, 2009, 6:20am Subject: Re: Aeropress owner and CoffeeGeek.
IMAWriter Said:
And you'd know that how?
What has that got to do with anything? Nor can you prove that.
OK, so a Television series forms the basis for your spurious, personal accusations. You have NO intelligent argument here. Money is not the issue, it's about whether one can argue the facts without someone else whining that they are being attacked. There was NO personal attack. Except yours. BB, I feel, until you can prove your allegations regarding Mark's motivation, You owe him an apology. I have no horse in this race, other than to gladly serve the members here as best I can. This is not a paying gig, nor does it gives me, or any moderator pleasure to call out a member, you included. For all others, pleaseallow the process to resolve.
would you have preferred me to use a goodfellas or godfather referance?;)
please rob, tell me what part of this does not mention money......
First of all, Alan back when you first launched your Aeropress, I personally gave you permission to do something we rarely let happen on CoffeeGeek - I let you talk about and promote your product in our forums. I did so because it was a brand new device and something quite different from the norm.
In retrospect, from a business owner perspective, that was a big mistake on my part. It was a mistake because of two reasons. First, you garnered absolutely invaluable publicity potential out of it because as you know, word of mouth advertising and the free-flowing of information and discussion here is worth 1000% more than buying a few banners and such - and there has never been any compensation. Second, even though you've garnered all this publicity, as far as I know, you did a short, one ad-run on CG as a proper sponsor for a short time, but then stopped and that was quite some time ago. You still garner a lot of word of mouth advertising, goodwill (for the most part) and publicity for the Aeropress on CoffeeGeek, but you are not a site supporter.
Alan, you've gotten, as stated above, invaluable promotion and discussion of your product. You've gotten invaluable endorsements from many, many folks. And you continue to get this without being a commercial supporter of a website that wouldn't exist if we didn't have commercial advertising partners. In a way, these advertisers are paying for your promotion.
You've gotten a very free ride on CG for several years now, and because of that, if there's any gray area in rules bending, I'm more likely to err in the favour of the person without any personal interests involved than I am in the direction of the person getting the free ride.
there's only two companies / products I've ever given this kind of leeway to in the forums. Ironically enough, one of the two did a minimal advertising run (Aeropress); the other has never advertised on CG. Its a state of affairs I probably won't ever let happen again.
Some felt I was over the top in calling Alan to task for his years of using CoffeeGeek forums as a free promotional venue for his product, from which he profits greatly.
As far as I know, no other web forum dedicated to coffee and espresso has given Alan this kind of latitude and a free hand to promote his product. I know he's tried and had the forum owners scale him back or outright stop his posts. And, as far as I know, Aerobee and Aeropress doesn't do anything to support coffee and barista communities
We've lost advertising revenue in three ways because of the latitude we've given Alan Adler:
1- We've had two advertisers specifically pull their ad programs because they felt we were giving preferential treatment to Alan 2- We've had one advertiser who had an aeropress ad program in place cancel it because he felt there was no need - the forum discussions were enough to promote the product (and their website was linked to in several threads) 3- We have had no ad revenue from Aeropress save for one New and Noteworthy 4 years ago.
There's absolutely no gratitude in any form displayed for the venue we've provided him or the latitiude for years now we've given him, even after we said "no more promotion,
Alan has not respected my request to stop outright promotion of his product.
money might not be the WHOLE issue at hand, but you can't deny that it has nothing to do with it.
i was just giving my point of view, not trying to "attack" anyone. if you really feel that i personally attacked him, issue me the strike and be done with it. like you said..."it's about whether one can argue the facts without someone else whining that they are being attacked."
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