good question.
i wonder myself and i am a bit torn. on the one hand, i am happy to be inducted, even online, and i cant wait for the hog ash. im sure it is one way jerry is able to thank all of us here for our support (and furthering our addiction. jerry, you enabler!!!
)
but i was always of the opinion that induction should be in person at blade or blade west. i thought it was another reason it was so special to be an inducted hog.
Names added to the list again.
In that list at the beginning of this thread, there are quite a few names I don't recognize, and I've been on Bladeforums, and specifically the Busse forum, a good bit the past couple of years. There are the names one would suspect (minus a few), but there are many I didn't suspect. I've seen, as resinguy mentions, one new HOG admit in a different thread to owning no INFI. That one confused me a little as well.
That said, if it were just a matter of owning INFI, there are guys in the online induction more deserving than me. I have a respectable stash of INFI, more now than I had when I was inducted, but some others have full-fledged HOG hoards that include a lot of old-school straights and hard-to-find variants. So it clearly isn't just about what you've got.
In addition, I suspect a few stealth HOGs in the mix. We all remember when, out of the blue, Mulder popped our eyeballs with all the SHBAs and SHSHs. Just in the past couple of days, buckman#10 impressed me with his Meaners and old-school SJs, among other pieces. Stealth HOG tendencies beat to a different drummer, but they're HOGs just the same in my book.
I think the big influx of HOGs is a good thing. First, it makes the community feel more inclusive, and a charge of exclusion (eg. Kool Aid Slurpee Club) is one that the Busse bashers love to hold against us. (FWIW, I love the fact that the Busse crowd has taken up the Kool Aid moniker as a badge of honor because hey, everyone drinks Kool Aid, right?
) In terms of the new inductions, there are guys like Tyrkon and MORIMOTOM and numerous others who've done a lot in recent years to use, collect, promote, argue, and enjoy Busse knives. Such BF members have added considerably to the online community here.
Second, I think that there's method to Jerry's madness. His original post about the online induction mentions that the HOGs eventually will be arranged by "orders" of HOGdom, and so the guys who've been around forever and who've made the trips to Blade will get recognition for this fact. At the same time, the people who contribute countless hours online won't feel like they're on the outs. As others have mentioned, a trip to Atlanta is just not in the works for everybody.
My two cents. YMMV.
:thumbup: 
