Why? don’t you guys want your opinion counted? it doesn’t cost anything and actually increases the chance that new products will in some small part reflect YOUR wants and desires.
This comes across as a little elitist on a forum that prides itself on inclusivity.
If I was this kid and I got that kind of response I would not be coming back here and might not want to become a homebrewer even if I was interested.
I’m not saying you have to answer the kids survey but take it easy. It’s not like he’s trying to offend you.
One of my engineering senior design projects was to design a 25MGD reverse osmosis drinking water treatment plant using brackish estuary water for the source. Our class was split into teams. Each team had to submit their design as if it were a response to an RFP from a local municipal utility. The professor had engineers from local utilities evaluate the proposals as if they were the real deal. If we had done drive-by work like this we would have shamed the professor and failed the class.
Didn’t mean to come across so harshly. It’s just a pet peeve of mine when someone simply makes a post to a forum to finish their homework. If you were really serious about this product/project, then you are much better off actually engaging discussion on a forum like this. You’ll get much more useful and relevant info that way. Otherwise it just comes off as “here - fill out my SurveyMonkey”, and that kinda rubs me the wrong way.
Not sure if this is the reason they finally chimed back in, but when I completed their survey, I added some comments to the effect they may want to check back on the forum to look at all of the comments as there would likely be useful input for them here. Otherwise it just felt like dropping a coin in their cup without being able to ask how they were doing.
There was nothing harsh about your response erockrph. You have a well tuned BS detecter.
A Georgia Tech engineering program senior design project? Which engineering disipline?
If this really is about a senior design project then it certainly isn’t about hobbyists teaching homebrewing 101 to a newby.
“Lager, ale, stout or pilsener?” Really? Don’t you think that someone at senior design level would have a bit more brewing knowledge than that? I think they would be able to give lessons in brewing to most everyone here on this forum.
I didn’t follow the link for largely the same reason. They would get far better information if they participated and engaged people in the forum. If they’re just dropping these one-post links to all the homebrew-related sites, then they’re spamming and/or lazy. Even something like “hey, I’m working on a homebrew-related design project and I don’t know a thing about beer making, could someone give me some advice on what to put in a marketing survey” would be much better than the approach they took.
You don’t see it here because it doesn’t really come up, but a lot of the computer programming language forums have explicit “no homework” policies. There is a huge difference in the politeness and information content in the response to “PLEASE HELP! Can someone show me how to write a bubble sort function?” (usually from an account with only a handful of posts, followed by thread bump messages every hour), and “I can’t seem to find the bug in my bubble sort function. I’ve made a doubly-linked list but I keep getting a null pointer error. Here is a sample of my code. …”
I spoke with one of my associates at work who is a recent Georgia Tech Grad (works in our engineering department) and asked him about this practice, and he told me this is a pretty normal practice for Senior Projects there.
Perhaps their professors could could let them know if they’re going to use a forum to get information, they should stay on top of their posts so it doesn’t seem so anonymous. We could really help this guy, if he’d let us.
I agree. however if I was the guy that posted that and then came it to see these responses I would RUN the other way. I would feel like some of the people on this forum didn’t want me here because I was new and didn’t know a lot.
Now, I freely admit that this could be some lazy kid in college who figured ‘beer, that should be easy’ but they could just as easily be just like any of the new folks that come on here to ask if they should pitch their yeast when the wort is at 80* ‘like the instructions say’. Should they have to chat with us for a week or so first?
Certainly asking specific questions would net them more information but in what form? when the assignment is ‘design a survey and gather data with it’ you can’t use conversations for a forum. it has to be a survey.
I’m just trying to put a different perspective out there. Let’s remember when we were in school and feeling overwhelmed. Would it have helped if people we approached for help told us we hadn’t earned it?
My two cents: I agree with both sides. I completely agree with Mort in that people should not just be brushed aside because it was their first post because the that’s how we all get involved but I also agree that the first time poster should be diligent in follow up and participation and in this case, also comment on the feedback being provided.
Forums are a two way street and everyone is here to both learn and teach or mentor, which is also the way the world basically works, So to the OP, if you ever check back in, keep these things in mind as a lot more information can be provided than just simple answers to a survey, that, well, wasn’t really well thought out in the first place;)
Engaging people in conversation is really the best way to gain knowledge anyways…
Engineering senior design projects are the culmination of 4 to 5 years of rigorous study. They are not an opportunity to engage hobbyists in conversation. That would be the equivalent of a medical intern putting up a online questionaire asking Boy Scouts which bandaid brand they prefer to keep in their first aid kits.
It would be a whole lot more believable if the student had said he was a business major designing a maketing campagne for a new type of brewing equpment. Something is fishy here.
I suspect we are being punked by some fraternity brothers, you know, kinda like the names of the pilots on the airliner that crashed in San Francisco.
I must agree Carl. The survey would have been more believable as a first round marketing questionnaire. Even then, it doesn’t seem to be very well thought out. I thought Georgia Tech was better than that! I mentored a group of Delaware engineering students a number of years ago on a senior project and believe me, there was a boatload more research into the concept phase than I see here.
Agreed. Nobody likes to be duped but that’s the necessary risk if we’re going to be welcoming to those new to the hobby-obsession. To me, this forum is about earnest sharing of knowledge in a virtual community setting. We tend to take posters at face value with a healthy level of trust, and we happily accept and answer the same post after post, usually without any comment that the poster could have / should have done a simple search before blithely posting a much-repeated question.
I agree with Mort that this goodwill should extend to posts of this sort. It’s easy to conclude that we may be being used, but who really knows.
If this post was some sort of an odd hoax, then some of our egos were mildly harmed and we’ll quickly get over it.
If this post was genuine, then we are slamming someone who is reaching out to the homebrewing community, albeit with a specific agenda and project to complete. As was said, anyone getting this kind of reception would rightly want to get out of AHA Dodge.
Very well said, mugwort. I’d rather err on the side of being welcoming and helpful. A one-post guy with an agenda doesn’t mean that I’m required to buy whatever he’s selling. Probably won’t. But in this case I honestly see a couple of slacker college guys who thought a project on beer would be cool doing the bare minimum (if that) to get by. Yes their knowledge of beer styles and the like was obviously lacking. No skin off my butt.