Great posts by everyone lately... from retirement, to the forum knife process and then on to bugs and socks LoL
The one thing that stuck out to me when I was catching up on this thread last night was that I am in the "relatively new" category to The Porch and this 2018 knife is going to be my first official Traditional Forum knife (or any "forum type" knife for that matter). I joined BladeForums in November of 2016 and lurked / learned-a-lot / read-a-lot and got a feel for everything for almost a year before I ever even posted anything. I understood that although I was paying a fee to be part of this community, I couldn't come in like a "bull in a china shop" because like any social media site you can get the hammer dropped on you pretty quickly and then it just becomes a hostile environment. I'm very impressed with the care that our mods put into trying to suppress that negative environment, especially in the Traditional Forum. Sometimes the community itself steps up too and lets people know that they may want to tread a little lighter for a while. It happened to me a couple of times but I certainly didn't look at it as "elitist", I looked at it as getting to know the community and finding my seat on The Porch. I stepped back and realized that many members have been participating on BF for 10+ years and have posted thousands of comments, informative pieces, pictures, etc. above and beyond what might be expected in a social media community. The last couple pages on this thread alone you have R8Shell with 10,000 posts, Jeff with 13,000, Charlie nearly 17,000, Will with nearly 20,000 and Jack with nearly 30,000 posts... that's amazing considering I have ~750 LoL.
So taking all of that into consideration, when it came to participating in the forum knife process I knew where my seat was on The Porch; I voted for what I wanted, I read nearly every post and contributed previous information where I could, I referred to
@meako 's Porchenberg forum knife process checklist as many times as I could
I lobbied with PhotoShopped pictures of what the forum knife I wanted could look like
and above all I minded my Pints and Quarts. To expect any more than that based on my Traditional Forum membership status is unrealistic. It takes time to earn your stripes and I have no problem with the limitations that the mods are wanting to have for the Traditional Forum Knife, I waited a year to be eligible and didn't think twice about it; just makes the knife that much more awesome for me this year
My suggestion to the mods would be to add a "sticky" to the top of the Traditional Forum thread that lays out the whole process and lists the necessary qualifications for getting the knife. That way people know when they first pop into the thread that if they want to be a part of this special knife, then they should try to contribute to The Porch. Grab a broom, sweep the birdseed off the steps and then find your place to sit and chat a while
Whatever, it looks great at the end of a spring, I believe there are others like a fleur du lys ?
In a discussion about Richards knives, I made a post saying I saw them all the time, that they were very inexpensive here, and I'd be happy to pick them up for folks. I was just trying to be helpful, but I'd actually committed an act of 'Deal-spotting'! 
Gary meant to issue a warning, and accidentally infracted me! 
