Had he posted his (IYNSHO) "little observation" in a blog we wouldn't have gotten the chance to deride him for sharing, or emasculate his attempt at offering value. <--Sarcasm.
"Sort of" (and by that I mean completely) misses the point. I have no interest in deriding, emasculating, belittling, or otherwise insulting anyone. I simply think a post of this nature would be better suited to a blog... and if that means "we" wouldn't have had the chance to do all those things, all the better. Putting the "little observation" part in quotes to suggest I'm somehow undermining his experiences is a joke... like I said, I find the whole thing fascinating myself, but what I meant was that, while it's amazing on a personal level, it's a pretty routine observation that anybody using a Belgian yeast will make, and to suggest otherwise is just silly.
People make a big deal all the time about forum clutter when posters fail to try the search engine first. This isn't all that different. There's no need to turn the HBT forums into LiveJournal.
I apologized for the abrasiveness of my post late last night, and you don't have to agree with me as to whether threads like this really ought to be here, but, just like I was wrong for being a smart-ass last night (and rightfully called out on it, even if under the wrong assumptions), these posts are equally wrong and unjustified. And frankly, the continued attempt to make it seem like I'm still trying to insult the OP (and at this point, I'm just treating it as an example of a larger issue) is not just petty and childish, but almost suggests a desire to insult him by proxy.
This is not a personal thing. I don't think the OP's observations and opinions are any less valuable than anyone else's - I simply believe that stuff like this, from ANYONE, is better suited to a medium like a blog. I believe this site even provides a function for it. And, given how amazing I find the use of different yeast strains (and even treating/stressing it in different ways) to achieve such dramatically flavor profiles, a fascination that dawgman seems to share, I'd actually likely be inclined to check his blog out if he had one.
Anyways, I think I've said enough on the topic and really don't need to keep going in circles only to be met with more mud-slinging. If you fail to see the point by now, you're either being willfully ignorant/combative, or willfulness is not even a luxury you have when it comes to ignorance. Either way, this has become absolutely pointless. The only person I owe an apology to is dawgman, and only for the manner and tone of my original reply - I still don't think this kind of thing ought to have an entire thread dedicated to it (and if those of you vehemently trash-talking actually believed it did, you wouldn't be so wholly contributing to the derailment of it), but there's nothing really
wrong with what he did, and he didn't deserve that initial attitude.
Regardless of this obvious difference in opinion dawgman, I hope you know I'm sincere in my apology. And you're absolutely right that the environment created by things like such a response to an innocent thread is not conducive to a growing, friendly community.
With that being said... time to pop a Midol and head off to bed.
I can guarantee this thread will be the last thing on my mind, but it seems as if it will take quite a while for some people here to clean out all that sand from that most irritating of all places.