Subject: Digest for the period 4/20/2004 - 4/21/2004 Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 01:03:55 -0400 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Proposed Guidelines - in their entirety (Mark Tumarkin) 2. New Guidelines, clarifications (Gordon Strong) 3. Re:email pollicy (Don Van Valkenburg) 4. BJCP email policy, Judging variance (Bill Wible) 5. 1. Congratulations, Urbana BUZZ; 2. Great Taste (Bob Paolino) 6. Re: New Guidelines (Ed Westemeier) 7. Re: BJCP email policy (Ed Westemeier) 8. Threaded JudgeNet (Chuck Cox) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark Tumarkin Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 05:59:00 -0400 (GMT-04:00) Subject: Proposed Guidelines - in their entirety David Craft asks: >I poked around the BJCP site and the Hopmadness site and could not find one >link for the entire guidelines? I'd like to print them out at one time and >sit on the sofa with a coldy........... Am I missing something? That actually is a very good idea that we missed. Just to show we really are open to include good suggestions.... you can now find the complete new guidelines at: http://www.bjcp.org/draftstyles/FullGuidelines.html Mark Tumarkin BJCP Guidelines Committee ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gordon Strong Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 08:12:37 -0400 Subject: New Guidelines, clarifications In response to a couple notes on the 4/19-4/20 digest: 1. Full Style Guidelines. We hadn't intended to produce a full set of guidelines before the draft review was done, due to a couple of requests we've put one on the review forum. Look for a response under the Introduction forum. Thanks to John Tull for providing this to me. And thanks to Rob Hudson for setting up the forum software and providing the host system. 2. Online Organizer Reporting System. I wrote the database interface and program specifications, but Jamil Zainasheff deserves the greatest credit for creating the web-based system. I agree that it's helped us work through the backlog (now less than 20 reports) by distributing the workload. We never should have gotten into that position, but we've more fairly distributed the work so the chance that it will happen in the future is greatly lessened. And all who have recorded their points online using that system have seen them recorded in the database within two days. The judge record web site was just updated this weekend (an unusual mid-month update) because we had so much new data to report. 3. Membership Communication. We just rehosted the main BJCP web site to HBD and hope to roll out additional functionality such as better email management. The style guideline review system is our first attempt at using a forum-based solution for collaboration. Based on the results of that test, we may use that type of system as a general Q&A and discussion forum (comments welcome on this idea). This doesn't necessarily address the question of having content to mail to BJCP members in the first place, but having more convenient means that just posting static information on a web site might change that. Ed Westemeier will likely have more to say on this subject. 4. ID/Password self-service/Opt-in. We've thought about this and would like to add this kind of functionality in the future. Improving web-based services to members while continuing to enhance our back-end database operations is my primary objective. I appreciate the comments, constructive criticism and suggestions. Keep them coming. Regards, Gordon Strong BJCP Style Committee Chairman BJCP IT Director ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Don Van Valkenburg Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 07:54:56 -0700 Subject: Re:email pollicy I think I missed part of this conversation, but I caught this from Pete: >I too get 100's of spams / day. >However, I know that there are a number of folks who don't subscribe >to >JudgeNet, or don't have time to read the digests. I think we need to >have some mechanism for inviting them to participate in the feedback >process too. > Just a suggestion, but Yahoogroups would be an excellent platform for this form. It saves all messages, files and data basses can be stored, polls can be taken, and if you don't want to read it in email form you can simply elect to read the HTML version online - no need to keep any msgs on your machine. Don ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Wible Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 12:29:49 -0400 Subject: BJCP email policy, Judging variance 1. Ed, we rarely hear from you. I don't think many people will be offended or feel spammed when you have something to say or ask us. We get the messages from judgenet every time one is released, anyway. My only comments on the style guidelines are that we had (2) new categories recently introduced, and much hoopla was made about both - Imperial IPA and Irish Red Ale. But as of yet, none of the competitions have categories for these. I brewed both for recent competitions and was real surprised when the categories didn't exist and both had to go in (24). I hate mixed categories as it is, and I don't think its fair to have to put either or both of those styles in (24). It's not fair from any perspective - to the guys entering those 2 styles, (which now have to 'compete' against each other, no less!) or to the "historical" and specialty beer brewers who now have to compete with them. I understand the guidelines for both of those styles were already written, and geez, Zymurgy even published fantastic articles and "head start" guides for both styles. Irish Red was in their January/February issue, which came out in December. (4 months ago now) Imperial IPA was 2 issues ago. We're starting to see alot of these styles. Let's get them their own categories, and out of (24)! They don't belong there! I have no other style guidlelines issues. Thank You. 2. "We already collect judge scores and we could analyze them via a program. That analyses would be _some_ kind of feed back to both the organization and the judge." Maybe I missed the point of this discussion - but to what end do you guys want to do this? What kind of measurements? What kind of feedback? What will be the point? What will we be trying to accomplish? Will this turn into a "witch hunt" - an attempt to somehow single out and find all the "bad" judges? Cause that's what it sounds like to me. And what will you do "when" you do find a "bad" judge? Threaten them? Tell them to "shape up or ship out"? Throw them out of the BJCP? Once again, I guess it needs to be pointed out that the BJCP is an entirely volunteer organization. And as it's been said MANY times here, you don't get alot for being a judge. We are already short judges in many areas and for many competitions. We just had this recent discussion where all the guys are complaining because they didn't get advanced, didn't get their test results back in any kind of reasonable time, (because of a lack of graders, people quitting, etc) or didn't even get their new piece of paper with their new title printed on it. Now you guys want to start THIS discussion?? Don't you see the problems we already have? "Peer evaluations" and throwing people out of the program are not the ways to win friends and influence people, guys. Nobody who works for free and does you a favor wants this kind of abuse. Push too hard, ask too much, and you're going to find yourself a little while down the road wondering where all your judges went. My 2 cents. Bill ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bob Paolino Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:08:31 -0400 Subject: 1. Congratulations, Urbana BUZZ; 2. Great Taste 1. It's fairly common to see competition announcements and pleas for judges in this forum, but perhaps not third-party recommendations. I'm gonna do it anyway. The other day RAMBLiN Joel Plutchak posted a call for judges for the BUZZ competition at University of Illinois. Well, yeah, okay, I knew about that and am planning to go judge there again. But yesterday I got my packet for the event in the mail and noticed something: It's the tenth annual BUZZ. Wow! Ten years. I remember going to the first of those, but it surprises me that it was ten years ago, back there at that redneck bar in the soybean fields or going to the former Joe's Brewery afterward where we drank $1 wits and porters from the bar, all subsidised by the fratboys who were paying $3 for their "bigass cans" of RedDog. Or how about the year with the post-competition potluck that also featured a keg of Boon Framboise? They treat their visiting judges well and it's a well-run competition. Joel might have posted a call for judges the other day, but I'm going to post an unsolicted endorsement that you plan to make the trip to central Illinois to help them judge it. 2. It's not a competition, but it's an opportunity to sample beers in dozen of different styles (and some beers that push the limits of those styles or defy styles ;-) ). The Great Taste of the Midwest turns 18 this year. Back before our current prohibitionist era, that would have been old enough to be "legal," but we're going to celebrate 18 years anyway. The event itself isn't until 14-August (second Saturday of August), but the event you need to observe if you wish to be able to attend is 1-May, just 11 days away. That's when tickets go on sale. Expect tickets to sell out in a week or two after the on-sale date. Details at http://mhtg.org Now go back to lunch! Now go have a beer, Bob Paolino UWCU members: Please vote this month for your new board. (Hint: Only one candidate mentioned beer.) "Homer, why don't you get one of those hands-free phones? It's the next best thing to paying attention to the road." --Barney, The Simpsons ( ) ASCII ribbon campaign X against HTML e-mail: / \ Friends don't send friends HTML-bloated messages! A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Westemeier Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:09:34 -0400 Subject: Re: New Guidelines David Craft said: >I poked around the BJCP site and the Hopmadness site and could not find one >link for the entire guidelines? I'd like to print them out at one time and >sit on the sofa with a coldy........... Am I missing something? Actually, you're missing quite a lot, David. If you go to our home page and click on "Styles" you'll be presented with a page called "Style Center." On that page, the first link is to a web-based version, broken down into categories. Below that are links for downloading the full guidelines in one piece (the links are called "Full Guidelines" although you were apparently looking for "entire guidelines" -- sorry about that). You can download the full (entire) guidelines as pdf (Acrobat), rtf (works in just about any word processor), and pdb (Palm OS) for your PDA. We also have two-column format, and condensed (Reader's Digest) version. These are the files that just about every competition organizer downloads, prints, and hands out when you judge. =46urther, if you go to our Links page, you'll find Mike Dixon's alternate version for the Palm. Thanks for asking, instead of just missing it and complaining. Ed ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Westemeier Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:09:47 -0400 Subject: Re: BJCP email policy Thanks to all who responded, publicly or privately, to my question. =46irst, we'll start using email more to communicate. Second, we'll work on adding some new fields to the database so we can handle those who want to opt out of such communication. Third, we'll look into making the password process a bit more user-friendly. Ed ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chuck Cox Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 14:19:20 -0400 Subject: Threaded JudgeNet As an experiment, I am making JudgeNet available via NNTP. This allows you to read JudgeNet using a threaded news reader (which is built into most web browsers). The news server has all articles going back to November of 2001. Point your browser to: news://cccox.ne.client2.attbi.com/judge-news or point your news reader to: cccox.ne.client2.attbi.com and subscribe to the judge-news group. If you want to post to the newsgroup, make sure you configure your news reader with the same email address that you subscribed to JudgeNet with, or your message will be rejected. Comments appreciated. -- Chuck Cox SynchroSystems chuck`at`synchro.com, cccox at fas.harvard.edu, www.synchro.com Bush: less freedom & more spending. Kerry: more spending & less freedom. The choice is obvious. ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** Subject: Digest for the period 4/20/2004 - 4/21/2004 Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 01:03:55 -0400 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Proposed Guidelines - in their entirety (Mark Tumarkin) 2. New Guidelines, clarifications (Gordon Strong) 3. Re:email pollicy (Don Van Valkenburg) 4. BJCP email policy, Judging variance (Bill Wible) 5. 1. Congratulations, Urbana BUZZ; 2. Great Taste (Bob Paolino) 6. Re: New Guidelines (Ed Westemeier) 7. Re: BJCP email policy (Ed Westemeier) 8. Threaded JudgeNet (Chuck Cox) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark Tumarkin Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 05:59:00 -0400 (GMT-04:00) Subject: Proposed Guidelines - in their entirety David Craft asks: >I poked around the BJCP site and the Hopmadness site and could not find one >link for the entire guidelines? I'd like to print them out at one time and >sit on the sofa with a coldy........... Am I missing something? That actually is a very good idea that we missed. Just to show we really are open to include good suggestions.... you can now find the complete new guidelines at: http://www.bjcp.org/draftstyles/FullGuidelines.html Mark Tumarkin BJCP Guidelines Committee ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gordon Strong Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 08:12:37 -0400 Subject: New Guidelines, clarifications In response to a couple notes on the 4/19-4/20 digest: 1. Full Style Guidelines. We hadn't intended to produce a full set of guidelines before the draft review was done, due to a couple of requests we've put one on the review forum. Look for a response under the Introduction forum. Thanks to John Tull for providing this to me. And thanks to Rob Hudson for setting up the forum software and providing the host system. 2. Online Organizer Reporting System. I wrote the database interface and program specifications, but Jamil Zainasheff deserves the greatest credit for creating the web-based system. I agree that it's helped us work through the backlog (now less than 20 reports) by distributing the workload. We never should have gotten into that position, but we've more fairly distributed the work so the chance that it will happen in the future is greatly lessened. And all who have recorded their points online using that system have seen them recorded in the database within two days. The judge record web site was just updated this weekend (an unusual mid-month update) because we had so much new data to report. 3. Membership Communication. We just rehosted the main BJCP web site to HBD and hope to roll out additional functionality such as better email management. The style guideline review system is our first attempt at using a forum-based solution for collaboration. Based on the results of that test, we may use that type of system as a general Q&A and discussion forum (comments welcome on this idea). This doesn't necessarily address the question of having content to mail to BJCP members in the first place, but having more convenient means that just posting static information on a web site might change that. Ed Westemeier will likely have more to say on this subject. 4. ID/Password self-service/Opt-in. We've thought about this and would like to add this kind of functionality in the future. Improving web-based services to members while continuing to enhance our back-end database operations is my primary objective. I appreciate the comments, constructive criticism and suggestions. Keep them coming. Regards, Gordon Strong BJCP Style Committee Chairman BJCP IT Director ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Don Van Valkenburg Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 07:54:56 -0700 Subject: Re:email pollicy I think I missed part of this conversation, but I caught this from Pete: >I too get 100's of spams / day. >However, I know that there are a number of folks who don't subscribe >to >JudgeNet, or don't have time to read the digests. I think we need to >have some mechanism for inviting them to participate in the feedback >process too. > Just a suggestion, but Yahoogroups would be an excellent platform for this form. It saves all messages, files and data basses can be stored, polls can be taken, and if you don't want to read it in email form you can simply elect to read the HTML version online - no need to keep any msgs on your machine. Don ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Wible Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 12:29:49 -0400 Subject: BJCP email policy, Judging variance 1. Ed, we rarely hear from you. I don't think many people will be offended or feel spammed when you have something to say or ask us. We get the messages from judgenet every time one is released, anyway. My only comments on the style guidelines are that we had (2) new categories recently introduced, and much hoopla was made about both - Imperial IPA and Irish Red Ale. But as of yet, none of the competitions have categories for these. I brewed both for recent competitions and was real surprised when the categories didn't exist and both had to go in (24). I hate mixed categories as it is, and I don't think its fair to have to put either or both of those styles in (24). It's not fair from any perspective - to the guys entering those 2 styles, (which now have to 'compete' against each other, no less!) or to the "historical" and specialty beer brewers who now have to compete with them. I understand the guidelines for both of those styles were already written, and geez, Zymurgy even published fantastic articles and "head start" guides for both styles. Irish Red was in their January/February issue, which came out in December. (4 months ago now) Imperial IPA was 2 issues ago. We're starting to see alot of these styles. Let's get them their own categories, and out of (24)! They don't belong there! I have no other style guidlelines issues. Thank You. 2. "We already collect judge scores and we could analyze them via a program. That analyses would be _some_ kind of feed back to both the organization and the judge." Maybe I missed the point of this discussion - but to what end do you guys want to do this? What kind of measurements? What kind of feedback? What will be the point? What will we be trying to accomplish? Will this turn into a "witch hunt" - an attempt to somehow single out and find all the "bad" judges? Cause that's what it sounds like to me. And what will you do "when" you do find a "bad" judge? Threaten them? Tell them to "shape up or ship out"? Throw them out of the BJCP? Once again, I guess it needs to be pointed out that the BJCP is an entirely volunteer organization. And as it's been said MANY times here, you don't get alot for being a judge. We are already short judges in many areas and for many competitions. We just had this recent discussion where all the guys are complaining because they didn't get advanced, didn't get their test results back in any kind of reasonable time, (because of a lack of graders, people quitting, etc) or didn't even get their new piece of paper with their new title printed on it. Now you guys want to start THIS discussion?? Don't you see the problems we already have? "Peer evaluations" and throwing people out of the program are not the ways to win friends and influence people, guys. Nobody who works for free and does you a favor wants this kind of abuse. Push too hard, ask too much, and you're going to find yourself a little while down the road wondering where all your judges went. My 2 cents. Bill ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bob Paolino Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:08:31 -0400 Subject: 1. Congratulations, Urbana BUZZ; 2. Great Taste 1. It's fairly common to see competition announcements and pleas for judges in this forum, but perhaps not third-party recommendations. I'm gonna do it anyway. The other day RAMBLiN Joel Plutchak posted a call for judges for the BUZZ competition at University of Illinois. Well, yeah, okay, I knew about that and am planning to go judge there again. But yesterday I got my packet for the event in the mail and noticed something: It's the tenth annual BUZZ. Wow! Ten years. I remember going to the first of those, but it surprises me that it was ten years ago, back there at that redneck bar in the soybean fields or going to the former Joe's Brewery afterward where we drank $1 wits and porters from the bar, all subsidised by the fratboys who were paying $3 for their "bigass cans" of RedDog. Or how about the year with the post-competition potluck that also featured a keg of Boon Framboise? They treat their visiting judges well and it's a well-run competition. Joel might have posted a call for judges the other day, but I'm going to post an unsolicted endorsement that you plan to make the trip to central Illinois to help them judge it. 2. It's not a competition, but it's an opportunity to sample beers in dozen of different styles (and some beers that push the limits of those styles or defy styles ;-) ). The Great Taste of the Midwest turns 18 this year. Back before our current prohibitionist era, that would have been old enough to be "legal," but we're going to celebrate 18 years anyway. The event itself isn't until 14-August (second Saturday of August), but the event you need to observe if you wish to be able to attend is 1-May, just 11 days away. That's when tickets go on sale. Expect tickets to sell out in a week or two after the on-sale date. Details at http://mhtg.org Now go back to lunch! Now go have a beer, Bob Paolino UWCU members: Please vote this month for your new board. (Hint: Only one candidate mentioned beer.) "Homer, why don't you get one of those hands-free phones? It's the next best thing to paying attention to the road." --Barney, The Simpsons ( ) ASCII ribbon campaign X against HTML e-mail: / \ Friends don't send friends HTML-bloated messages! A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Westemeier Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:09:34 -0400 Subject: Re: New Guidelines David Craft said: >I poked around the BJCP site and the Hopmadness site and could not find one >link for the entire guidelines? I'd like to print them out at one time and >sit on the sofa with a coldy........... Am I missing something? Actually, you're missing quite a lot, David. If you go to our home page and click on "Styles" you'll be presented with a page called "Style Center." On that page, the first link is to a web-based version, broken down into categories. Below that are links for downloading the full guidelines in one piece (the links are called "Full Guidelines" although you were apparently looking for "entire guidelines" -- sorry about that). You can download the full (entire) guidelines as pdf (Acrobat), rtf (works in just about any word processor), and pdb (Palm OS) for your PDA. We also have two-column format, and condensed (Reader's Digest) version. These are the files that just about every competition organizer downloads, prints, and hands out when you judge. =46urther, if you go to our Links page, you'll find Mike Dixon's alternate version for the Palm. Thanks for asking, instead of just missing it and complaining. Ed ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Westemeier Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:09:47 -0400 Subject: Re: BJCP email policy Thanks to all who responded, publicly or privately, to my question. =46irst, we'll start using email more to communicate. Second, we'll work on adding some new fields to the database so we can handle those who want to opt out of such communication. Third, we'll look into making the password process a bit more user-friendly. Ed ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chuck Cox Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 14:19:20 -0400 Subject: Threaded JudgeNet As an experiment, I am making JudgeNet available via NNTP. This allows you to read JudgeNet using a threaded news reader (which is built into most web browsers). The news server has all articles going back to November of 2001. Point your browser to: news://cccox.ne.client2.attbi.com/judge-news or point your news reader to: cccox.ne.client2.attbi.com and subscribe to the judge-news group. If you want to post to the newsgroup, make sure you configure your news reader with the same email address that you subscribed to JudgeNet with, or your message will be rejected. Comments appreciated. -- Chuck Cox SynchroSystems chuck`at`synchro.com, cccox at fas.harvard.edu, www.synchro.com Bush: less freedom & more spending. Kerry: more spending & less freedom. The choice is obvious. ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * **********************************************************************