The unofficial, non binding, carries no weight, Pay It Forward possibility discussion thread

Bring back the PiF? maybe... when no idea... soon definitely not.
I don't think the rules were entirely too bad the main purpose of them was to try and combat abuse. I ended up with something from it that I still feel I owe for and am certainly very appreciative of. I have contemplated just doing a give away or two just my items to give away don't feel that great to me and this is likely do to the fact that if I will give them away they have little value to me personally.

I think there is a difficult aspect to a material PiF where if you receive from it you feel, or should feel, like you owe it to PiF something to the next person that has a value comparable to what you received. The catch is if you receive something nice, perhaps something difficult for you to normal buy, then that value can be difficult to match when you often subjectively look at what you have to offer and can part with usually not having a value to you personally that equates the same. It doesn't be that the objects are objectively of near equal value or even subjectively to another party. I had this problem with the first item I claimed a Gold Membership and ended up offering 2 inexpensive knives a CRKT Swindle and Kershaw Cryo II but was told that the CRKT Swindle was enough so the Kershaw was pulled eventually. I can see now that objectively the CRKT Swindle would have a comparable value to a Gold Membership but at the time to me it didn't feel like it had enough value. I later ended up with a Bradford G3 that was more gifted outside the thread but my desire for it however I still want to pay that forward in some way but when I look at stuff I have it is tough to see something that meets the value while also something I am not too attached to.
 
GotSteel said:
I was sad to see the PIF thread closed and thought it would be a good idea to start a discussion about potentially moving forward.. thoughts, suggestions, rules, comments about how we could start anew (and hopefully keep it from devolving).
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We really tried everything on the last run.

It was a spur of the moment thing with minimal rules only. It worked for quite a while actually!

Then things got complicated and it turned into a swap meet.

Starting a thread about starting a thread is already a bad start. I say give it up until it happens naturally and burns on it's own, or never happens at all.

Just go through the last one. Take a look and see what happened. It's not something you can control.
 
Quiet said:
These are good ideas, however, they really do highlight the need for a name change. It should just be called what it is "Swap Meet Amongst A Select Group of About 15-20 Bladeforums Members Thread". And that's ok.

Paying it forward means that you're putting something up for grabs with no expectation of recompense, and you don't care about value, because you're trying to put some good Karma* out into the universe with no expectations or strings attached. Needing to assess values, and validity of trade items versus what you're offering up....well, if all of the members of that group are starting to put rules in place, then that's a trading thread, which again, is just fine. In a trading thread, there should be rules in place to protect the integrity of the enterprise against low-post-count cockroaches (half of whom managed to poormouth their way into free BlueBar tags) who only joined Bladeforums so they could come skitter into the thread with their hands out like "PLEASE SAH, MAY I HAVE THIS, SAH, THANK YOU SO MUCH BROTHERS AND BEST FRIENDS" and then when the kitchen lights get turned on, those roaches all vanish, hiding under the fridge, never to be seen again.

Personally, I think the Trade-It-Forward thread should be created only after some set rules are in place. BUT, it's not about me, because I didn't participate in past threads, and I damn sure won't be participating in any new ones. Folks are free to do what they want to do. Cockroaches and "ornery" folks alike. :)






* Not banked Karma, sit down Bear guy. LOL
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Honestly, should see if something like a semi-permanent post is allowed to be placed in the Trading forum... call it "Take a penny, leave a penny... BUT KNIVES!" Treat it accordingly. Take the community aspect of the old PiF to the community area, which has already been done. Want the old camaraderie: community thread... want to trade knives... have at it over in the trade thread.
 
Deinos said:
Honestly, should see if something like a semi-permanent post is allowed to be placed in the Trading forum... call it "Take a penny, leave a penny... BUT KNIVES!" Treat it accordingly. Take the community aspect of the old PiF to the community area, which has already been done. Want the old camaraderie: community thread... want to trade knives... have at it over in the trade thread.
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Yep. And just to add... want to just give away a knife? Then just give it away in the Giveaway Forum.

A "Ye Olde Trading Blanket" thread in the Trading Forum would probably work just fine.
 
jlauffer said:
Hey, for a while the Neon SRT-4 was the fastest 4-cyl car on the planet!
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Lol. I remember those days. Same time my boys were racing the RX8 , Acura Rsx typs S , WRX and that neon back around 2005 :)
 
jlauffer said:
Hey, for a while the Neon SRT-4 was the fastest 4-cyl car on the planet!
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Lol. I remember those days. Same time we were racing the RX8 , Acura Rsx typs S , WRX and that neon back around 2005 when we were kids.
 
BellaBlades said:
Lol. I remember those days. Same time we were racing the RX8 , Acura Rsx typs S , WRX and that neon back around 2005 when we were kids.
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15 years ago I still wasn't a kid:oops: But did have a 2006 Legacy GT that was fun!

Regarding the PIF, all I know is I sent out a few things I could do without, and picked up a couple cool things I probably never would have bought (or even found) on my own. Too bad it had to get so complicated, but I guess it's just the nature of the beast.
 
Wow, some of you completely miss the point of a PIF thread.

Even though the last one became a Charlie Foxtrot, there was some good that came out of it. And, yes, it did get some people that went off the deep end. Especially near the end.

But, that is not the point of a PIF thread. Helping out other people is. Who cares how it is done? If you don’t agree with it, don’t get involved.

Also, let me set the record straight. It was not a swap-meet. I understand how some would feel like it was but, it wasn’t.
Member A offers something as a PIF. Member B claims the item and puts up something to keep the thread moving along. Member A doesn’t get that item. Member C gets it.

It would only be a swap-meet if members A & B exchanged items. Member A gains nothing except good feelings for what he did. It’s close but no cigar.

I find it ironic that many of the people that criticize the pay it forward process in these threads don’t ever participate. It’s like the person that complains about how the elections went but never bothered to vote.

As for doing a standard GAW instead of a PIF...sure, you can do that but it’s not as much fun.

If you can come up with a better system that brings people together like a PIF, offers camaraderie and friendship like a PIF but without its drawbacks, I’d like to know about it.
 
Sharp & Fiery said:
I feel like IF there is a good time for another PIF thread, it will and SHOULD be initiated by at least a Gold/Platinum member in good standing.

This is not the time.
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Why Gold/Platinum? Are the rest of us second class citizens?

Or, do I dare say it? Are we dishonest in some way?
 
I think it is more of a thing where being started and initially lead by gold or platinum member can help instill trust or faith in the thread. I do otherwise agree with you sabre cat sabre cat why does it matter the membership level of the initiator.
 
For the record I was on the last PIF and I claimed a PIF the other member never sent it . He never even bothered to PM or give me a reason why . Someone claimed what I put up and I Sent it out . I never made a big deal out of it and don’t intend to . Just saying this because it can get ugly people sending you a message about how much your PIF is value is not cool . You want to PIF go out to a dinner and give the waiter a bigger tip than usual. Lol
 
I didn’t care to call him out because it wasn’t a trade it was a PIF. If the thread would had stayed around longer I would have mentioned A BE AWARE OF .........
 
I’d argue it is still suitable to call out/warn others of as they likely claimed something and abused the PiF by not following through with sending out their “offering”. I respect your choice not to but just giving my .02 on the issue. In a way you were tricked into giving something away which just again adds to the poor picture it paints of the PiF thread. I would still say the thread had more goodwill than not even with some perversion of the threads core.
 
This thread is a prime example of why it’s way too soon to try a similar thread agin. Too many people have too many different opinions, and a bunch of people are still sore about how the last one ended.

In the beginning, and even well into it, it kept a pretty good sense of community. Yeah, a bunch of items got moved from hand to hand, but I also got to know a bunch of members a lot better than I might have otherwise. Unfortunately, near the end, humans being humans, it started to devolve into something else. A few members tried to take advantage of it, a few others got into squabbles, and everything went down hill to some degree or another.

@Quiet says it was nothing more than a trading thread, but he’s (mostly) wrong. Things didn’t get traded item for item. sabre cat sabre cat says it really was a PIF thread, but thinking back, it wasn’t really. To Quiet, and other’s points, a true PIF would really be with out the intent of something being done in return. We all expected participants to refill the pot.

Deinos Deinos put it perfectly. It was a take-a-penny, leave-a-penny concept at its core. Which is ok, as long as it’s understood by all. No one complains when someone takes 2 or 3 pennies, and occasionally someone will add in a nickels to the plate. Unfortunately, unlike pennies and nickels , we place much more value on things like knives, and the thread goes where it did. People just started talking it much to serious.
 
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