Marion, the only apologies owed, quite frankly, are to us, and the members of the forums.
Instead of working with us to help improve the Custom Knife Forum, and BladeForums.com as a whole, Les decided to pull up his stakes and quit. That's his perogative and right.
But don't try to lay the blame for this on our shoulders. We asked him for his opinions, asked for feedback on who would be good additions to the Custom Knife moderating team, and instead of discussion or even a decent reply, we were accused of being out to get him and he decided to leave. Pure and simple.
Our goal is to make BladeForums.com as a whole a useful resource to every facet of the knife world. By leaving instead of trying to work with us, Les clearly showed that his interests did not lie here with the forums, and helping the membership learn more about the Custom Knife field, but for his own gain instead. That's fine, and I respect that, but again, he made his own decision to leave and quit as a moderator, while we were looking for his help to make it grow even further.
I personally find this episode to be extremely distasteful and childish, and I'm going to try to put an end to all this second guessing and conjecture right now.
Here are the facts. Below is the email that I sent Les:
Les,
As previously mentioned, we are going forward with the combining of the Custom and Collectors forums. Since you didn't have a problem with this earlier, I'm hoping that this is still the case. Anyhow, consider this a heads up.
Also, with the upgrade of the forum software, we now have the ability for multiple moderators in each forum. So, we will probably be adding 1-3 moderators to the Custom/Collectors forum in the near future. Notice, I said *add*, you are *not* being removed, demoted, or pushed aside, we just feel that it would be a great advantage to have more depth of coverage and a wider base of experience for the forum members to draw upon. Plus, this should give you some more time to write that magazine column you were talking about, right?
This is going to be an across the board change and we'll be adding moderators to most of the forums including the Blade Discussion Forum, Community Center, Tactical, etc. Some forums will get more, some less, but this will give us some redundancy if discussions get heated or if someone goes on vacation or to a show, or gets sick, etc.
Anyhow, I'd like your feedback on who else you think would be a good addition to the moderator team for the Custom/Collector forum. I'm thinking about asking Gus K. and maybe Larry Connolly (not sure on him), however, if you know of someone else who is suitable, please let me know.
Also, if you have any ideas on a change of direction/mission for the Custom/Collector forum, please give my your opinion as well.
Here was his response:
Spark,
Please re read my email. Yes, I do have a problem with it. The custom
room needs to stand alone. By allowing anything to be talked about in this
room, you degrade the whole room.
I know you don't have any interest in custom knives and view all knives as
being able to be "lumped" into one forum. This is not the case.
Kevin, the fact that you made the comment about me having more time to
write that magazine article you were talking about, right. This tips your
hand and reveals your hidden agenda.
For whatever reason it still irks you that I am the moderator. Ill call
Mike today and talk with him.
Just to give you a heads up, if this combo room happens, I will resign as
moderator.
Les
He sent this email at 8:00 AM on Friday, and then posted his resignation before I could respond (or was even awake for that matter). Imagine my suprise when I found this email, and then his resignation, even though we *had not* combined the forums or even made a final decision. The entire exchange went downhill after that, and quite frankly, I'm getting sick of this situation.
Please tell me if you can see anywhere in there that we expected Les to leave the forums, or even wanted that? I made it a special point to make sure that Les knew we didn't want him gone, and that he was very important to the custom forum, to the extent of devoting a seperate paragraph to it. Then, just to be careful, I sent the email to Mike to make sure I wasn't saying anything that could be misconstrued. So, after all this, you can imagine my shock.
You can't please everyone all of the time, it's a simple fact. We can't even get the entire forums to agree on something as simple as whether to have the Icons turned on or off. But, Mike and I have to make decisions in order to for the forums as a whole to continue to grow. We went out of our way to ask Les for his input, suggestions, and help, but instead of working with us, he chose to leave instead.
Make your own decisions, but the blame here lies on someone elses shoulders, not ours.
Spark
------------------
Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
Insert witty quip here
[This message has been edited by Spark (edited 12 September 1999).]
[This message has been edited by Spark (edited 12 September 1999).]
