Bladeforums origin?

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Great story. I enjoyed reading that. Brought me back. Kind of amazing how much has happened in just a few years. Also reminds me how quickly we became dependent on our machines.
 
This was a very good read.
It's a common tale in forums. I have seen this same scenario play itself out over, and over again.

For whatever reason(s) the very best forums are born from the ashes of dispute.
I've seen it on all venues from motorcycles to distillation to chemistry... I think it is a two fold issue.

(1) Human nature... People in general like to think their opinion is the only valid opinion, and get lost in the defensive battle. The main point gets muddied, and the swinging for the bleachers begins.

(2) The need for truth... As much as some people will blindly fight for a forgotten point, there are others that only want the truth to shine thru the darkness.

I guess it shows evident which side of that coin Mr. Sparks is on.
Great read!
It reminds me of my all time favorite movie, and life lesson... Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Except this instance had a better outcome for the hero. ;)
 
While on the subject....let's not forget the old Knife Chat - back in the days of recdotknives.com! That would have been exactly twenty years ago at this point. I recall Spark making the announcement in that chat that Bladeforums was now open and taking registrations! All of us rushed over to join - and I should have been the first one to register since I was on a cable connection and everyone else was on a dial up. I screwed up something though and didn't make it until - fourth or fifth if I recall correctly. My registered date says Feb 1999, but, that's due to a name change I had Spark do for me.
 
I was there, I was on any knife related B.B. at the time which weren’t many at the time.

You remember the first server upgrade when some members lost post counts and some even had to reregister because they were either corrupted or lost in the transfer.

I lost a couple of thousand posts off my count and when I reregistered I chose the dancing bear for my avatar and the meltdown man for my sig line. Those have not changed since the day I registered. I leave them as is because after all these years I feel it recognizable like some of the other old timers who have kept the same profile pic over the years.

It makes it easier for newer and older members of the community to recognize me as a longstanding member of the forum.

Some of us have been here so long we’ve seen other members get married, have kids who’ve grown up and had kids of their own and even pass away. We’ve lost so many great members of the community it’s nice to know that they’re memorialized in the virtual pages of Blade Forums dot com.

They’re part of the history of this forum and I’d like to think that after over 20 year’s discussing knives with these same friends I’m part of the BF history pages. After all as it says in my sig line, I am the self proclaimed BFC’s Most Notable Member. :rolleyes:
 
I was here from the beginning of this site. Recdotknives was before my time getting a PC. No big deal but at the time when we bought our very first PC., I came across this site. I had started collecting knives since the early 1980’s and this site was a revelation!

Mike was abrasive but very interesting and entertaining and Kevin was the one who maintained the site. Think about how Kevin was so talented in maintaining a site way back when!

We discussed many, many knives way back then and slowly, many of the greatest knife makers back then came aboard. It really was a paradise back then with almost no adversity and knife people just talking about knives came aboard but of course, that would end as this site soon became larger.

Turber was a genius starting this site and Kevin was a genius maintaining it! I’m sad that many of the original members here are now long gone as they had so much to give.

I don’t come here much anymore as it’s grown beyond belief and is much different than it was and has so many issues with inappropriate posts.

Kevin’s genius was when he started charging people to become members or to sell stuff. I had no problem with that and I paid the price to sell stuff for a few years.

When he said there would be no more bringing back up “for sale” posts, with a simple “up” or whatever in the thread, I was done here.

Like I said, Kev, is still here and is a true survivor and thanks for all those early wonderful years!
 
Spark said:
It's a long story.

In the beginning there was USENET, which had a knife discussion group called rec.knives that flourished for a number of years. Then the WWW revolution started, and Josh Burbank of PVK started a site called recdotknives.com which used one of the earliest forms of bulletin board software out there - wwwthreads.

Josh used RDK to troll people. At the time I was doing freelance webdev work and one of my customers was Earl Stewart of Central Florida Knife & Tool. He asked me to step up and help him defend Kevin "MadDog" McClung against various attackers both on rec.knives and recdotknives.com. I quickly realized that it'd be easier to control the territory the battle was being fought on than letting others dictate the terms, and knifeforums was born. Knifeforums quickly expanded beyond the capabilities of wwwthreads and was transitioned to Ultimate Bulletin Board software (UBB), which was much better (at the time). Mike Turber, owner of World of Weapons (WOW) was a moderator for the General discussion area of KFC and all of us were fighting the battles against the haters all over USENET & the web. Eventually Josh outed himself as using multiple profiles to fight back (IIRC he posted under the ID of Staples5 on USENET and like a dumbass signed his actual name to a post) and that pretty much sunk recdotknives.com - he got caught red handed doing the things he claimed not to do. After that, KnifeForums started to flourish.

Earl Stewart and I had a falling out because, quite frankly, he didn't want to pay me for my work. Rather than actually pay me, he decided to try to destroy my reputation, hoping I'd go quietly. McClung decided this was an opportune time for him to repay my efforts defending his sorry ass by stabbing me in the back repeatedly. Unfortunately, for them, I had friends who were also pretty pissed at both of these guys over other misc things, and they helped me out. Phone calls were made, and a battle plan was drawn... and, using the lessons learned from the RDK -> KFC battle, BladeForums.com was born. vB had just come out, so we purchased a lisc, set up BladeForums.com, and away we went. The original silent partner didn't like the way the KFC vs BFC fight was going and backed out of supporting, so Mike Turber stepped up and took over the financial ownership of BFC. I don't remember the exact details of the first battles, but the end game was that BFC won and grew, and KFC was left behind and stagnated.

I went to work for Turber and moved down to Jacksonville, Florida, doing web stuff for him and running BFC. Sometime after that, Stewart sold KFC to Nowka, yadda yadda yadda.

For whatever reason, WOW didn't do so hot for a bit, and Turber started 1SKS. Things continued not going so well and my paychecks started to bounce, so I grabbed my nuts and made Turber an offer he couldn't refuse - sell me 1SKS and BFC, or I'd quit, start my own sites, and he wouldn't be left with a business to sell. He took the paycheck. There were some other behind the scenes things, but they weren't important. Around 2002-3 I cleared out the last of my hurdles, had 1SKS / BFC owned outright, and moved shop back up here to Kentucky.

Anyhow, as soon as I had control over this site and didn't have to answer to anyone, I changed how it operated. I don't like using BFC as a sales tool for 1SKS - I believe that it should be a resource for the knife community, and if the community is happy with it, the community as a whole will support it. I think it does ok, you guys are the ultimate judge in that regard.
Click to expand...

Holy Shit this was fascinating to read. I’m glad I’m here.
 
WOW, I too was an early member, (lockback2).But not for very long,life ,kids, devorice, an other stutt happened. Now that I have read the history that spark put up I remember those things.Boy, has this place grown, an it's great to be back and be a part of something that has helped the knife world so much. Thanks SPARK. wayne.
 
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