I am done with that site I think
Paul,
You and David (BrickStoneOven) may choose to participate at the PMQ Think Tank forum or not, but my advice to you--which is the same advice I follow--is to take forums like the PMQTT as you find them. They are not there for your pleasure. They are there as adjuncts to their magazines and to get eyeballs for their advertising and subscribers for their magazines, attract advertisers, and to generate leads for articles for their magazines. They are in business to make money. They also understand that 99% of their members and visitors who visit their forums are there for essentially one purpose. They are there looking for something for nothing. In the real world, they would perhaps have to hire and pay consultants, much as they would do with doctors, lawyers, plumbers and electricians. They are also likely to leave once they get what they are looking for. Remember, most of their members are pizza operators who are running businesses and trying to survive in a lousy economy. They are not looking for a communal, social, Facebook-type of experience, although I am sure that the forums would prefer that such be the case. They are looking for advice and solutions. Under such circumstances, you are likely to get occasional riffraff who are rude and engage in offensive behavior. To control such individuals requires very close monitoring by the moderators. Even there, the few moderators of the PMQTT who try hard to control the forum will fall short of that objective, without any fault on their part, since, by and large, they are also pizza operators with full time jobs and too little time to devote to moderating the forum.
I think that the PMQTT started to deteriorate when some of their best and most respected and competent members left the forum--people like Evelyne Slomon, John Correll, and Big Dave Ostrander and other paid PMQ staff members who regularly posted on specialized aspects of running pizza businesses. When they left, the content and quality of the forum went downhill. Tom Lehmann is one of the few remaining quality persons on the dough side of the forum, and even he is devoting far less time to the forum than he once did. For forums like the PMQTT to succeed and be a viable force, they need quality content from quality, competent people, tight moderation by the moderators, and the support of the membership. In my opinion, forums are fragile enterprises. Having seen the deterioration of the PMQ and Pizza Today forums, even the best of forums are vulnerable to the same fate if things start going south.
So, my best advice is to use forums like PMQ and Pizza Today, either as a poster or a reader, to get information that is useful to you and not to get overly agitated when members are not always civil and don't always behave themselves.
Peter
