In today’s world, I would bet that more research is done on the internet than anywhere else.  I personally do this when buying just about anything.  I did it when I started to get into barbecue, to help figure out what kind of smoker to get to start out, how to do the Minion Method, etc.

This is a great way to anonymously gather information at any hour of the day.  You get the opinions of other people, sometimes expert reviews, ideas from a wide variety of people or just compare and contrast rants and raves from internet posters.

There is a potential problem with this, however.  When I was first getting into the idea of doing competitions, I got on the BBQ Forum and found a thread or two that posted pictures of barbecue entries and asking readers to judge that entry.  The posts were at times almost brutal.  I even posted some practice entries my wife did to get feedback, and got responses.

Now I’m not saying anyone was intentially cruel, and everyone that posted replies on my entries were very nice about it.  The problem is that this approach really blows things out of proportion.  Appearance is 1/7th of the total judges’ scores, with taste being 4/7th and tenderness being 2/7.  Appearance will likely make
the difference between being 11th and 5th, or even more, but posting photos online and letting people stare at them is so far from the real activity.  Judges only see the entry for a few seconds, and the appearance is more an impression than seeing if they notice one strand of pork out of place or a rib that hasn’t been expertly sliced by a surgeon.

Now the upside of posting entry photos and asking for feedback…  If you have people look over your entries when they have the luxury of looking closely at a photo, they’re going to find just about anything that might be a problem.  If you pay attention, your appearance scores will just be better.  If you do more than is necessary, you’re not hurting yourself, that’s for sure… and when it comes down to it, I’d rather get that 1/7th of my score as high as I can, as long as I’m also improveing the other 6/7th at the same time.

I kind of started this post as a bit of a rant, but I convinced myself that use of the internet to improve my scores is a good thing!  I’ll probably continue, if my wife wants to get feedback on anything new she’s doing.  I also think there are people out there that love to critique anything they get a chance to critique… so giving them the chance is almost like doing them a favor!  Now if someone could figure out how to send me some brisket through the computer for me to tell them how it would score…

Just remember that if you post your stuff on the internet, don’t be thin skinned…  Take what you can from it, and learn.

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