i've been thinkin hard about that for the past month. if, hypothetically, dan slapped some res c on a chinese 420j2 curvy thing and we all thought it sucked, would we be called childish pansies for complaining before we were banned? some people were quite zealous about the issue, but they still followed the forum rules, which did not include "no negative opinions on scrappers."

another thing we learned in the marketing course i just took are there are two types of publicity, controlled (paid advertisements) and uncontrolled (word of mouth/mouse). these forums work like a free press, i like to think. Dan could have silenced the voices that allegedly cost him hundreds of sales by posting these pics sooner but that didn't happen. Rather than educate them sooner, they were threatened. "Just ban 'em, Tom." It's like your forum avatar gets the guillotine for speaking against the state. It wouldn't save those sales, either. BF and KF are much more widely read and it's no sweat for someone with a grudge to just click over there, repost the opinion to the larger community, along with a story of how they were banned for having an opinion which was wrong but based on the evidence was justified.

I am thankful to the mods for not banning my friends, though. You know that this forum is more about the people than the knives. We could meet anywhere, but choose the yard.