Expect some new faces- The Parker/Squire's Board goes subscription only

Speaking of other boards, I've been enjoying La Passion du Vin lately, though only as a lurker - my active French is weak. I wonder if there's a cool German venue favored by the hipster chatters here.
 
originally posted by Florida Jim:
You must be joking, Brad.
The whole eBob board is gone as of tomorrow unless you pony up?
Who thought that was a good idea?
Some soon to be unemployed PR guy somewhere is saying - oh yeah, narrow the brand - good biz.
Best, Jim
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Not joking at all. Absolutely stupid pr.

Here's the sudden announcement on the board:

"Back in November, 2001, we launched eRobertParker.com with the goal of creating the world's best wine information site. Our objective was simple. We wanted to provide independent reviews of the best wines in the world and encourage open discussion of them to the benefit of the participants. Toward that end, we invited Mark Squires to bring his Wine Talk Bulletin Board over to the site and offered it openly and freely to all, subsidized by our subscription revenues. Virtually overnight the board became the Internet's premier forum for wine discussion. It has grown dramatically in size and stature as the population of wine lovers grew. At the outset, we asked Mark to maintain his philosophy of insisting on real names and email addresses. This approach sought civilized, non-commercial discussion of wine. Over the years the Internet and the board have changed. Supervising the huge volume of posts has become increasingly time consuming and expensive. At the same time, we've noted that the subscriber-only forums we created some time back are increasingly popular and much easier to manage. Moreover, we're committed to providing even more functionality and greater coverage of wines for our subscribers in the near future. This will require us to spend wisely. We are a small company with limited resources and, after months of deliberation, we've come to the conclusion that it is in the best interest of the people who count most - our subscribers - that we change our policy with regard to the bulletin board. On April 27, the entire Mark Squires' Bulletin Board on eRobertParker.com will become a subscriber-only forum, open only to subscribers of Robert Parker's Wine Advocate or eRobertParker.com. A notice to our print subscribers on how to continue/gain access to the subscriber-only board was sent with the April print edition. Once an eRobertParker.com subscriber is logged onto the site they can access the BB but they must logon to it in order to post. Change is always difficult but, like this action, often necessary. We are sorry to say goodbye to those posters to Mark Squires' Bulletin Board who are not subscribers, and who have made valuable contributions. We will miss you, but our overwhelming goal is more focused support and assistance to our subscribers, who are our bloodline of support and make all the fascinating features of the bulletin board possible. We look forward to better serving our loyal subscribers through a more focused effort on them. As always, we wish each and every one of you all the best in wine and life. "
 
Danke. (Not a language I've studied at all.)

Brad, I think Chris is afraid for the Compleat Wine Geek site. The ravening hordes will simply descend upon it and rend it note from note.
 
Crazy.

You would think people might want a chance to retract their content, but maybe I haven't read the terms of service with care.

If I'd ever posted there, I might be steamed.

But mercifully that is not the case.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
You would think people might want a chance to retract their content
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I think that's why it was not announced, else people would empty masses of content and impoverish the archives of the thing.

Someone who is a friend of a friend on a social networking site responded to a status remark about this issue, saying she had written to the administrators requesting her food-related posts and recipes be withdrawn and had been told no, that the site owned all of the content.

The wonders of the Internet. It is larger than us. And we can put our foot in our mouths for all eternity, and sometimes behind our own backs.

I have several thousand posts on that site, as well as numerous private messages. Since I don't keep record of what I taste anywhere but on fora and blog, it'll keep me from verifying, in future.

I hadn't participated on that site since mid-2008, but before that had been active on it for at least two years.

Oh well. Sic transit.
 
originally posted by Mark Davis:
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Can we disable requests for new accounts?
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My first thought too!
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Three. Or have a test, like you do for getting your driver's licence.

Oh, it's horribly snotty of me to say this, though. Populism, and all that. And botulism.*

*Gratuitous "Disorderly" nonsensical remark that newbies will take for an "in joke." Which is, of course, the in joke. As is this footnote.

ETA: Hm, maybe we need to go really massive with the in-jokes.

And random hyphenation variation.
 
originally posted by Florida Jim:
You must be joking, Brad.
The whole eBob board is gone as of tomorrow unless you pony up?
Who thought that was a good idea?
Some soon to be unemployed PR guy somewhere is saying - oh yeah, narrow the brand - good biz.
Best, Jim
Click to expand...

No PR person in their right mind would have made this call. If anyone outside the wine womb cared enough to notice, this would be a perfect Harvard Business School case study of how to fuck up a brand and destroy its value. Based on time spent with him, Parker's an okay guy, but when backed into a corner he prefers to fight back rather than look at the realities of the situation. I think that he realized that he was spending so much time dealing with bullshit brought on by Squires' attitude that it became apparent that it wasn't worth the hassle. Someone should get him some Eckhardt Tolle books and force him to read them.

originally posted by Sharon Bowman:

ETA: Hm, maybe we need to go really massive with the in-jokes.

And random hyphenation variation.
Click to expand...

Got you covered on both counts. In spades.

-Eden (it just comes with the terroiritory)
 
In all seriousness, does anyone (besides Brad) really care about this? That an Internet message board dedicated to wine and populated by lawyers has gone subscription only?

And those worried about not being able to retrieve old content, does that content have any measurable value?
 
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