What happened to Wide Eyed And Legless?

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You can only 'liven things up' within the boundaries of what other users as well as the mods deem acceptable. And that threshold seems to be narrowing by the moment.
You cant lay the entirety of the blame squarely at the feet of mods or admin - the members get the forum they deserve, and to a major degree, set the code for what fly's behavior wise.

Banter, sometimes controversial and rowdy plays a huge role, always has. Show me any member who didn't have a hearty gut laugh, even guiltily, at the notorious 'Clock' thread for example. Would that fly today? Not a ******* chance would be my guess.
That was a cracker, there was a lot of threads non brewing related which got a laugh. That is something that is missing on both forums.

I come from the “over the bridge” of Grain and Grape customer, going back quite a few years now - and I recall the early iterations of Keg King coming from some kind of cleaning products company morphing into a home brewshop/design/importer. There were always rumours of discontent and nastiness surrounding Keg King and certainly the old thread wars here 3 years ago brought that all out into the open. Indeed, Keg King has been a bit of an industry pariah ever since and that has been shown in the way they conduct themselves - they have been known to get quite nasty even to loyal customers who dare utter the words Keg Land within earshot of those few still loyal to Keg King.

Over in the west, the war between KK and KL is somewhat amusing to watch from afar, and the dirty wars continue, only now coming to a bit of a conclusion. As back in 2018 as some commented, we may only have “one big K” left soon and it doesn’t take too much to figure out which is going to go on growing and which is going to either downsize or close…. it’s as simple as who has a warehouse of unwanted brewing systems and who cannot keep up with demand / who has by far the bigger cut of social media exposure…. and who is relying on “dictatorships” to keep their product mentions going.

What are the “dirty wars” and what has some of members of forums and groups out there all upset? Well the KK/KL wars are spilling onto the streets - it started about 2 months ago with back chatter of customers, especially of Keg Land, being “attacked” by Keg King employees on forums and social media to the extent they had posts deleted or membership cancelled for no apparent reason. It’s only in the past few days hanging around here and noticing some “famous faces” has it caused a few of us to discuss what on earth is going on - and then I heard a few stories and proof of what really is going on.

Now I don’t mind some corporate argy-bargy, some friendly fire and smaller home-brew shops grumbling back in 2018 of having to adjust to the realities of “$100 co2 bottles and $50 refills…. “ but what if things get really, really nasty? How does one “trap a corporate troller” in 2022 with their pants down?

Enter the (often called by even current followers) dictatorship of Home Brewing Australia (no - not AHB!) Yes sure, they allow the occasional KL puff piece by some of the big social media identities out there but if you look closer at many posts there seems to be an odd number of KK regulators, spunders, Apollos….. and members with “Keg King” in their names. As they say about birds… a group of us started to think is this a Keg King hive, a brew industry Borg???

For the non-trekkies - Borg - Wikipedia

But how to draw them out? Easy - Keg King bait. KK have had a hard time recently with some not too successful product - plastic disposable kegs, spunds that clog easily with Kveik, and of course the “switch” from Guten to Grainfather (ouch!). Self caused problems nothing of Keg Lands fault (ok, the Generation 4 Brewzilla killed Guten). A few innocent posts here and there and out they come…. led by no other than the current Keg King Operations Manager aka look up his name on LinkedIn (and from what we saw, abetted by several Keg King retail staff). The pile on was fast - we suspect Keg King uses some kind of media monitor system to alert them of any mention of their product. In a week we saw 5 members “killed off” in that manner under the help of HBA’s mods - which we suspect are part of the hive.

The accusation every time? These killed off members were Kegland staff; hell one was accused of being Kee himself! Analysing the posts there was no evidence of a direct attack on Keg King product, just a normal observation a typical home brewer would make. However we did notice 3 of the members were members of other ‘books and posters that evidently were KL customers (one of them was a regular KK customer too though - figure that out)?

This is a very sad state of affairs and goes to show Keg King staff are openly attacking home brewers out there! And there are forums and ‘books out there taking sides.

We’ve kept the proof (in some instances the mods could not delete the evidence fast enough, but we caught it) - might make a nice story for a newspaper or ACA…. ar least one of those IT blogs that goes after corporate bullies. Of course Facebook is investigating, advising our IT expert that ‘book is under investigation regardless (there was a heap of discontent a few weeks ago spinning around).

I wonder what Aran B. thinks? Can’t be good for sales 🫢
So Ollie, you're back with yet another name, I guess you don't subscribe to 'Brews in the News' or if you do you are smarting at missing out on the Bevie distributorship deal for Europe and the UK which Keg Land wanted and was bypassed for Keg King.
I think the main reason was because they, KK, have PET fermenters which stays in tact when they are being used.

I thought there was a rule about one supplier calling out another suppliers products or is that a one way street.

Looking at post number 6 in this thread just about sums it up.
 
Fascinating thread. As an outsider, living in France and joining relatively recently, I know nothing of keg wars and don't really need to. I do know that we had a similar bust up on the UK site about 18 months ago and lost some of our most knowledgeable members who've not been seen since, together with a whole load of newbies who were wondering what they'd got themselves into. There's something weird about forum administrators, I suppose we need to look into the psychology of why they choose to do it!
Banter and camaraderie is what makes a good forum as well as exchange of know-how and ideas. During the covid years when we were all locked down, going to the forum for a chat about anything was like going to the pub. I felt I had mates I've never seen and don't even know their real names so when they stop "coming to the pub" because the metaphorical landlord has pisssed them off, they are sorely missed.
But things recover. New faces appear, new banter starts up. I tread carefully here because I'm not 100% sure of the culture and what might offend people, but on my home turf I'm sure I'm on half the members' ignore list and wouldn't have it any other way.
I'm on a couple of other UK forums. One's tiny but we have a great time there. The other seems to attract a lot of old timers and proper know all's, book-writers even. Never found much friendship there, a very cliquey bunch some of whom I'm sure are clinically insane.
This is a good forum in my opinion, friendly people and some very interesting subjects.
 
Nothing has been deleted or edited on here since the KK/KL thing died down, and that was after action by admin, not moderators. In the last 12 months at least the only thing I've deleted was a post in the jokes section which was considered to be inappropriate.
I'm not a client of or user of products of either KL or KK, nor am I local from Melbourne.
I've never really studied what it was all about, nor do I really want to know, and it is irrelevant now as far as I'm concerned. I had enough argy bargy with cranky lawyers and their clients while I was still working. I don't need it now I'm retired.
 
Nothing has been deleted or edited on here since the KK/KL thing died down, and that was after action by admin, not moderators. In the last 12 months at least the only thing I've deleted was a post in the jokes section which was considered to be inappropriate.
I'm not a client of or user of products of either KL or KK, nor am I local from Melbourne.
I've never really studied what it was all about, nor do I really want to know, and it is irrelevant now as far as I'm concerned. I had enough argy bargy with cranky lawyers and their clients while I was still working. I don't need it now I'm retired.
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;)
 
I come from the “over the bridge” of Grain and Grape customer, going back quite a few years now - and I recall the early iterations of Keg King coming from some kind of cleaning products company morphing into a home brewshop/design/importer. There were always rumours of discontent and nastiness surrounding Keg King and certainly the old thread wars here 3 years ago brought that all out into the open. Indeed, Keg King has been a bit of an industry pariah ever since and that has been shown in the way they conduct themselves - they have been known to get quite nasty even to loyal customers who dare utter the words Keg Land within earshot of those few still loyal to Keg King.

Over in the west, the war between KK and KL is somewhat amusing to watch from afar, and the dirty wars continue, only now coming to a bit of a conclusion. As back in 2018 as some commented, we may only have “one big K” left soon and it doesn’t take too much to figure out which is going to go on growing and which is going to either downsize or close…. it’s as simple as who has a warehouse of unwanted brewing systems and who cannot keep up with demand / who has by far the bigger cut of social media exposure…. and who is relying on “dictatorships” to keep their product mentions going.

What are the “dirty wars” and what has some of members of forums and groups out there all upset? Well the KK/KL wars are spilling onto the streets - it started about 2 months ago with back chatter of customers, especially of Keg Land, being “attacked” by Keg King employees on forums and social media to the extent they had posts deleted or membership cancelled for no apparent reason. It’s only in the past few days hanging around here and noticing some “famous faces” has it caused a few of us to discuss what on earth is going on - and then I heard a few stories and proof of what really is going on.

Now I don’t mind some corporate argy-bargy, some friendly fire and smaller home-brew shops grumbling back in 2018 of having to adjust to the realities of “$100 co2 bottles and $50 refills…. “ but what if things get really, really nasty? How does one “trap a corporate troller” in 2022 with their pants down?

Enter the (often called by even current followers) dictatorship of Home Brewing Australia (no - not AHB!) Yes sure, they allow the occasional KL puff piece by some of the big social media identities out there but if you look closer at many posts there seems to be an odd number of KK regulators, spunders, Apollos….. and members with “Keg King” in their names. As they say about birds… a group of us started to think is this a Keg King hive, a brew industry Borg???

For the non-trekkies - Borg - Wikipedia

But how to draw them out? Easy - Keg King bait. KK have had a hard time recently with some not too successful product - plastic disposable kegs, spunds that clog easily with Kveik, and of course the “switch” from Guten to Grainfather (ouch!). Self caused problems nothing of Keg Lands fault (ok, the Generation 4 Brewzilla killed Guten). A few innocent posts here and there and out they come…. led by no other than the current Keg King Operations Manager aka look up his name on LinkedIn (and from what we saw, abetted by several Keg King retail staff). The pile on was fast - we suspect Keg King uses some kind of media monitor system to alert them of any mention of their product. In a week we saw 5 members “killed off” in that manner under the help of HBA’s mods - which we suspect are part of the hive.

The accusation every time? These killed off members were Kegland staff; hell one was accused of being Kee himself! Analysing the posts there was no evidence of a direct attack on Keg King product, just a normal observation a typical home brewer would make. However we did notice 3 of the members were members of other ‘books and posters that evidently were KL customers (one of them was a regular KK customer too though - figure that out)?

This is a very sad state of affairs and goes to show Keg King staff are openly attacking home brewers out there! And there are forums and ‘books out there taking sides.

We’ve kept the proof (in some instances the mods could not delete the evidence fast enough, but we caught it) - might make a nice story for a newspaper or ACA…. ar least one of those IT blogs that goes after corporate bullies. Of course Facebook is investigating, advising our IT expert that ‘book is under investigation regardless (there was a heap of discontent a few weeks ago spinning around).

I wonder what Aran B. thinks? Can’t be good for sales 🫢

At the risk of letting the truth get in the way of your rambling, longwinded, and not particularly interesting story, you didn't get booted for being a KL employee - you got booted because you were sent a message asking if you were a KL employee and didn't reply. Maybe your IT expert can show you how to check your messages?

The mods on there don't give a toss who people shop with - personally I've been pretty vocal about the complete lack of customer service I've had from KK, and the sensational customer service I've had from KL, so to suggest that the mods on that Facebook group are pro or anti either shop looks pretty dumb.

Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame on ACA, and thank you for making me aware that show still exists to remind me not to put on free to air TV.
 
I come from the “over the bridge” of Grain and Grape customer, going back quite a few years now - and I recall the early iterations of Keg King coming from some kind of cleaning products company morphing into a home brewshop/design/importer. There were always rumours of discontent and nastiness surrounding Keg King and certainly the old thread wars here 3 years ago brought that all out into the open. Indeed, Keg King has been a bit of an industry pariah ever since and that has been shown in the way they conduct themselves - they have been known to get quite nasty even to loyal customers who dare utter the words Keg Land within earshot of those few still loyal to Keg King.

Over in the west, the war between KK and KL is somewhat amusing to watch from afar, and the dirty wars continue, only now coming to a bit of a conclusion. As back in 2018 as some commented, we may only have “one big K” left soon and it doesn’t take too much to figure out which is going to go on growing and which is going to either downsize or close…. it’s as simple as who has a warehouse of unwanted brewing systems and who cannot keep up with demand / who has by far the bigger cut of social media exposure…. and who is relying on “dictatorships” to keep their product mentions going.

What are the “dirty wars” and what has some of members of forums and groups out there all upset? Well the KK/KL wars are spilling onto the streets - it started about 2 months ago with back chatter of customers, especially of Keg Land, being “attacked” by Keg King employees on forums and social media to the extent they had posts deleted or membership cancelled for no apparent reason. It’s only in the past few days hanging around here and noticing some “famous faces” has it caused a few of us to discuss what on earth is going on - and then I heard a few stories and proof of what really is going on.

Now I don’t mind some corporate argy-bargy, some friendly fire and smaller home-brew shops grumbling back in 2018 of having to adjust to the realities of “$100 co2 bottles and $50 refills…. “ but what if things get really, really nasty? How does one “trap a corporate troller” in 2022 with their pants down?

Enter the (often called by even current followers) dictatorship of Home Brewing Australia (no - not AHB!) Yes sure, they allow the occasional KL puff piece by some of the big social media identities out there but if you look closer at many posts there seems to be an odd number of KK regulators, spunders, Apollos….. and members with “Keg King” in their names. As they say about birds… a group of us started to think is this a Keg King hive, a brew industry Borg???

For the non-trekkies - Borg - Wikipedia

But how to draw them out? Easy - Keg King bait. KK have had a hard time recently with some not too successful product - plastic disposable kegs, spunds that clog easily with Kveik, and of course the “switch” from Guten to Grainfather (ouch!). Self caused problems nothing of Keg Lands fault (ok, the Generation 4 Brewzilla killed Guten). A few innocent posts here and there and out they come…. led by no other than the current Keg King Operations Manager aka look up his name on LinkedIn (and from what we saw, abetted by several Keg King retail staff). The pile on was fast - we suspect Keg King uses some kind of media monitor system to alert them of any mention of their product. In a week we saw 5 members “killed off” in that manner under the help of HBA’s mods - which we suspect are part of the hive.

The accusation every time? These killed off members were Kegland staff; hell one was accused of being Kee himself! Analysing the posts there was no evidence of a direct attack on Keg King product, just a normal observation a typical home brewer would make. However we did notice 3 of the members were members of other ‘books and posters that evidently were KL customers (one of them was a regular KK customer too though - figure that out)?

This is a very sad state of affairs and goes to show Keg King staff are openly attacking home brewers out there! And there are forums and ‘books out there taking sides.

We’ve kept the proof (in some instances the mods could not delete the evidence fast enough, but we caught it) - might make a nice story for a newspaper or ACA…. ar least one of those IT blogs that goes after corporate bullies. Of course Facebook is investigating, advising our IT expert that ‘book is under investigation regardless (there was a heap of discontent a few weeks ago spinning around).

I wonder what Aran B. thinks? Can’t be good for sales 🫢

Is it just me.... Does anyone understand much of that post???
 
I just want forum that rates like forum.
It won't be a forum if it is manipulated by
I just want forum that rates like forum.
I think that most forum members want a forum that isn't being run by advertisers. They have there own niche to spruik in without setting up ghost accounts to take over the forum.
Going to be interesting to see what CraftMan who has just joined brings to the table. I seem to recall another KL employee called CraftMan being booted off Facebook just recently.
 
Nothing has been deleted or edited on here since the KK/KL thing died down, and that was after action by admin, not moderators. In the last 12 months at least the only thing I've deleted was a post in the jokes section which was considered to be inappropriate.
I'm not a client of or user of products of either KL or KK, nor am I local from Melbourne.
I've never really studied what it was all about, nor do I really want to know, and it is irrelevant now as far as I'm concerned. I had enough argy bargy with cranky lawyers and their clients while I was still working. I don't need it now I'm retired.
I think philrob its time to put on the big boys pants and delete TheCraft's post. Get out of retirement mode and stop KL taking over the forum.
 
I come from the “over the bridge” of Grain and Grape customer, going back quite a few years now - and I recall the early iterations of Keg King coming from some kind of cleaning products company morphing into a home brewshop/design/importer. There were always rumours of discontent and nastiness surrounding Keg King and certainly the old thread wars here 3 years ago brought that all out into the open. Indeed, Keg King has been a bit of an industry pariah ever since and that has been shown in the way they conduct themselves - they have been known to get quite nasty even to loyal customers who dare utter the words Keg Land within earshot of those few still loyal to Keg King.

Over in the west, the war between KK and KL is somewhat amusing to watch from afar, and the dirty wars continue, only now coming to a bit of a conclusion. As back in 2018 as some commented, we may only have “one big K” left soon and it doesn’t take too much to figure out which is going to go on growing and which is going to either downsize or close…. it’s as simple as who has a warehouse of unwanted brewing systems and who cannot keep up with demand / who has by far the bigger cut of social media exposure…. and who is relying on “dictatorships” to keep their product mentions going.

What are the “dirty wars” and what has some of members of forums and groups out there all upset? Well the KK/KL wars are spilling onto the streets - it started about 2 months ago with back chatter of customers, especially of Keg Land, being “attacked” by Keg King employees on forums and social media to the extent they had posts deleted or membership cancelled for no apparent reason. It’s only in the past few days hanging around here and noticing some “famous faces” has it caused a few of us to discuss what on earth is going on - and then I heard a few stories and proof of what really is going on.

Now I don’t mind some corporate argy-bargy, some friendly fire and smaller home-brew shops grumbling back in 2018 of having to adjust to the realities of “$100 co2 bottles and $50 refills…. “ but what if things get really, really nasty? How does one “trap a corporate troller” in 2022 with their pants down?

Enter the (often called by even current followers) dictatorship of Home Brewing Australia (no - not AHB!) Yes sure, they allow the occasional KL puff piece by some of the big social media identities out there but if you look closer at many posts there seems to be an odd number of KK regulators, spunders, Apollos….. and members with “Keg King” in their names. As they say about birds… a group of us started to think is this a Keg King hive, a brew industry Borg???

For the non-trekkies - Borg - Wikipedia

But how to draw them out? Easy - Keg King bait. KK have had a hard time recently with some not too successful product - plastic disposable kegs, spunds that clog easily with Kveik, and of course the “switch” from Guten to Grainfather (ouch!). Self caused problems nothing of Keg Lands fault (ok, the Generation 4 Brewzilla killed Guten). A few innocent posts here and there and out they come…. led by no other than the current Keg King Operations Manager aka look up his name on LinkedIn (and from what we saw, abetted by several Keg King retail staff). The pile on was fast - we suspect Keg King uses some kind of media monitor system to alert them of any mention of their product. In a week we saw 5 members “killed off” in that manner under the help of HBA’s mods - which we suspect are part of the hive.

The accusation every time? These killed off members were Kegland staff; hell one was accused of being Kee himself! Analysing the posts there was no evidence of a direct attack on Keg King product, just a normal observation a typical home brewer would make. However we did notice 3 of the members were members of other ‘books and posters that evidently were KL customers (one of them was a regular KK customer too though - figure that out)?

This is a very sad state of affairs and goes to show Keg King staff are openly attacking home brewers out there! And there are forums and ‘books out there taking sides.

We’ve kept the proof (in some instances the mods could not delete the evidence fast enough, but we caught it) - might make a nice story for a newspaper or ACA…. ar least one of those IT blogs that goes after corporate bullies. Of course Facebook is investigating, advising our IT expert that ‘book is under investigation regardless (there was a heap of discontent a few weeks ago spinning around).

I wonder what Aran B. thinks? Can’t be good for sales 🫢
Resistance is futile
 
Gees you go away for a few months....are we back in lockdown? These type of threads were more prominent when everyone was stuck at home with no one to love them.
Is it just me.... Does anyone understand much of that post???
Read it several times. Can't work out who he is, what he is trying to say, or whose side he is on. LOL
 
Gees you go away for a few months....are we back in lockdown? These type of threads were more prominent when everyone was stuck at home with no one to love them.

Read it several times. Can't work out who he is, what he is trying to say, or whose side he is on. LOL

I still love you @Nullnvoid
 
Sorry for delay, thought I'd have a look if anyone responded since my original post.
Hahahah - wars star again <- this = good, promotes discussion.

WEAL - thank you for responding. Your obviously monitoring.
Maybe some of us can make a few posts that are worth responding on.
Happy to see some other familiar names contributing.
 
Hasn't anyone tried a new hop lately, brewed a batch that tastes like brussels sprouts, devised a recipe that defies BJCP classification? I find the occasional acrimony hard to understand, since I come from America, the exceptional land where everyone lives in blissful harmony and nary a discouraging word is ere spoken (Let's see what that sentence draws).
 
European descendants only, states, helps the bliss.
It would truly be the land of milk and honey were it not for the "JQ" :eek:
Apparently there's dissent as to which European ancestry actually qualifies. ;)
 
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