The Londinium R24 - Page 22

#211: Post by **Coffeechap** » July 8th, 2020, 9:02 am

LuckyMark wrote:I have only been here ten minutes so don't feel I have a right to be too loud on this issue but do want to say thank you Dan for this fair and transparent attitude.

I recently bought a machine based in part on information I received from this forum. In reality any machine I bought would have done my easy domestic tasks, but I wanted to get what I believed would suit me and my tastes. In this thread I started - Taste preference - Pro 800, Bosco, Alex Leva, Londinium or Strega - there was great advice from many posters who were upfront about their backgrounds. When I read JohnB comments on his Bosco I knew this opinion from someone who also had a Speedster, what I consider an amazing looking machine. I valued his opinions. Truemagellan makes no secret of his engineering background and it came through in his opinion of the Alex Leva, Expressotime loves his Pompei and that came through and was taken into account, as were many others. I have always valued Paul Pratt posts, before and after realising what he does for a living. Full of useful information.

I think it is great to have someone in the thread who is a 'favoured client' or similar, they can share their 'insiders' knowledge. But it is only fair to say that is what you are. I didn't look too long at the Londinium machine as I realised I wouldn't get on with the vendors personality, but when I looked at a recent posters history I was surprised to see bar a few sporadic posts about older levers and also grinders, that almost all of their posts were positive about the Londinium series and talking down competitors. They claim to have owned an Alex Leva, which came out in the UK only weeks before they joined this forum, but have never mentioned it all before June and July this year, mostly in my thread. Hard to imagine such a keen enthusiast would not even post once to say they don't favour it. Lots and lots of post supporting the Londinium in that period, which does prove they deserve their favoured client status! I am not against people with access to prototypes and good inside information, but please declare it. Even just to say I am a good friend of Reiss or similar.

We deserve to be able to trust what we read here. Honesty matters.

Wow, so I am a liar now mark? I have owned literally hundreds of lever machines, I have restored 100s of lever machines and offer help and advice on other forums where ( if you did your research thoroughly) I am very highly regarded. ( please find the forum events that I organise and the help I give in the U.K.) I comment on londiniums here BECAUSE there are some folk that like to cause trouble and derail the threads. However I am more than happy to bow out from here as it is predominantly an American based forum anyway.

#212: Post by **lucasd** » July 8th, 2020, 9:50 am

LuckyMark wrote: We deserve to be able to trust what we read here. Honesty matters.

So now everybody should give full history?
In general you can count that as true:
"For the most part...
Every Pro 800 owner loves their Pro 800
Every Bosco owner loves their Bosco
Every Londinium owner loves their Londinium
etc..."

BTW coffeechap has only 16,638 posts on https://coffeeforums.co.uk/profile/2844-coffeechap/

#213: Post by HB » July 8th, 2020, 10:31 am

Coffeechap wrote:Wow, so I am a liar now mark?

To my reading of the prior posts, nobody is calling anyone a liar.

To clarify my earlier point: When someone is reporting experience with equipment that's not available to the general public, I believe it's reasonable to ask how they acquired it and if there's any financial involvement with the provider. DaveC, for example, writes reviews for Bella Barista; he notes in his writeups that he's being paid for his efforts. If Dave skipped that declaration and published on a personal blog with an implied understanding that he was writing about his personally-acquired equipment without compensation, that could be viewed by some readers as misleading.

EDITED TO NOTE: DaveC contacted me offline and clarified that he hasn't charged for his reviews for over 4 years.

I started What about vendor's friends, insiders, promoters, and influencers? to encourage contributors to consider the possibility of perceived bias and how to cut that off with a brief declaration (e.g., "I'm a long-time customer of EspressoBiz. To help the owner iron out some design issues with the Awesome Espresso Kit, I accepted a pre-production version with the agreement that I'd provide feedback. I paid the wholesale price for the Awesome Espresso Kit."). There's no requirement that anyone do so, but as Mark suggested, it helps clarify one's point of view.

#214: Post by **lucasd** » July 8th, 2020, 10:59 am

Paul_Pratt wrote:But configured differently - dipper vs HX. The HX version misses 2 very important features - a check valve and a flow adjustment. The check valve being a critical component for a lever machine.

This needs clarification.
Is comment for every HX lever, or Londinium product range or just Compresa?

#215: Post by **Coffeechap** » July 8th, 2020, 11:32 am

HB wrote:To my reading of the prior posts, nobody is calling anyone a liar.

Hang on please read marks comments about my ownership of an Alex leva above, (which incidentally is now in Austria with a very happy owner) he infers that I haven't actually owned one, now if that is not calling me a liar then what is, I genuinely want to know, as despite other people's view points on here about my capabilities in English, I am pretty sure it reads exactly like that, anyway as I said before I am more than happy to leave you guys to it.

July 8th, 2020, 11:42 am

Even if we all tried, none of us could completely repress our biases. Your bias is so obvious that it is easy to filter. BUT...with that bias comes experience and knowledge that I for one appreciate. I have learned a lot about the Londinium from your contributions. I will even give it more consideration in my next purchase because of your posts here. Maybe if you imagine how you might come across as biased and acknowledge it people will not bug you about it...as much.

#217: Post by HB » July 8th, 2020, 12:24 pm

Coffeechap wrote:Hang on please read marks comments about my ownership of an Alex leva above... he infers that I haven't actually owned one, now if that is not calling me a liar then what is...

Sorry, I haven't carefully read all 22 pages of this thread and must have missed it. FWIW, I searched on "lie", "liar", "lying" and found no matches except in your posts.

Seriously, without having read the specific quote, I believe an inference often falls short of an accusation of lying. But if another member does cross that line, you can report the post under the Guidelines for productive online discussion as suggested in the site's terms and conditions and a moderator will handle it (e.g., by editing or deleting the post, or even banning the offender for repeated incidents). I much prefer handling modest "forum etiquette" issues offline with the site's reporting mechanism than hijacking an otherwise productive discussion.

July 8th, 2020, 12:46 pm

Ok I can make it easy and you can decipher this as you will, here is exactly what the poster said

"They claim to have owned an Alex Leva, which came out in the UK only weeks before they joined this forum, but have never mentioned it all before June and July this year, mostly in my thread. Hard to imagine such a keen enthusiast would not even post once to say they don't favour it."

The they is me, the individual looked through my posts and came to his conclusions about me, I do not post very often here I'll admit but when subjects take my interest I will.

I understand how I may be coming across and I don't intend to cause any discord to have a big enough community without a jumper up Brit amongst you.

#219: Post by HB » July 8th, 2020, 1:30 pm

Coffeechap wrote:Ok I can make it easy and you can decipher this as you will, here is exactly what the poster said

"They claim to have owned an Alex Leva, which came out in the UK only weeks before they joined this forum, but have never mentioned it all before June and July this year, mostly in my thread. Hard to imagine such a keen enthusiast would not even post once to say they don't favour it."

I read that as voicing skepticism about the details of your post and explaining the basis of that skepticism. There's two ways you could react: Take great umbrage at the implication that you are lying or follow up with a clarification that would address the basis of the skepticism. Online forums have a lot of expressive limitations, so I lean towards the latter approach, if only to avoid derailing the main conversation with a side discussion.

And with that, I think that I've covered my point of view at least two or three times. If you wish to continue this conversation in a more general sense, please start a thread in the Suggestion Box.

#220: Post by **belegnole** » July 8th, 2020, 1:34 pm

Maybe we should all just take a deep breath and put any misunderstandings behind us. I'm sure that with the way the world has been the last few months that we're all wound a bit tight.

Dave, seeing how you already have the new machine. Are you able to share any photos? I'm sure anything that shows how it varies from previous Londiniums or other machines like my Izzo Alex would be appreciated.

I was also interested in the discussion revolving around the accuracy of the preinfusion pressure and temperature. However that seemed to need a bit of testing.