That's the problem when you are on top - everyone else want's to drag you down into the mud.
There are several problems we have with what Patrick did when he opened up BuySharp, but the actual opening of it is one of the minor ones.
First off, several potshots have been made at us on all of the forums by a number of anonymous users who all seem to have "mythical" based usernames. These are people who we have no information on, yet they are claiming that we did them wrong. This may or may not have happened, but when confronted on it, amazingly, there's no response from them. Of course, naturally they lack email addresses as well, so there's no way that we can contact them to resolve any problems - if they even exist. Hermes would be one of those.
Whether or not these people are actively involved with BuySharp or not - it's awfully convenient that these people have no history prior their slamming us are now come out of the woodwork.
Second, Patricks permissions were turned off because we wanted to see where he was going before he continued to use our site to advertise his own. He already spammed several members. He went out his way to promote his site and two other sites (namely KnifeForums.com and Microholics.com) in the threads (plural) on BladeForums.com. You'll see no mention of them on the other threads, nor any mention of us, so any claims about it being "equally promoted" are pure BS.
Combine that with the fact that this is a direct attempt to sabotage our classifieds and you can see the concern we have. In addition, you'll notice here, in announcement from the administrators of BuySharp they denigrate us as well -
the place for the everday "Knife Nut" to be able to buy and sell knives and related material without having to give up his or her's first born.
If they are willing to sell their first born for $1.49, that's their business... You guys are willing to criticize us for our actions, but I am not seeing any reciprocity for stuff like this.
If Patrick wants to promote TAD, that's fine - he's paid his money and has a banner, he's earned the right. We'll make no bones about that. But promoting a competitor site while trying to sabotage our own is asking a bit much.
Third, we're getting forwarded tons of email that hits below the belt - talks of Boycotting BladeForums.com, how we're mercenary and the like - again, instead of contacting us directly, some people choose to just talk about us behind our backs.
Finally, our opening 1SKS was out of necessity. We've done everything we can to make BladeForums.com work, and yet nothing from it seems to put food on our tables. How many of you would do something like this, and incur the expenses we have, without getting anything in return? None? I thought so. Without 1SKS, BladeForums.com would have closed in March or April. If you are going to fault us for trying to earn an income, please walk a mile in our moccassins.
So, yes, we've had to make some hard decisions. When you take the risks, that's what happens. If you don't do anything, it's easy look pretty. Anyone can take shots at you when things go wrong - but at least we're trying to make this work.
But the result is that BladeForums.com is the largest knife related site in the world - we have the most traffic, the most members, the most bandwidth, the most manufacturers, the best content, etc. That's a result of the discussions that
you guys create. But in the end, someone has to foot the bills.
Anyone want to compare stats? I'll be more than happy to. We'll pass over 60GB of information this month. Even including the days that our server logs were down (6 out of 27 so far), we've had over 8 million hits this month. We've passed over 41 Gb of information as of today, even without the 6 days of available traffic analysis. We show more than 100,000 pages each day. All of this has a cost.
I've looked at the stats of the competition. They aren't even 1/5th of the size of us. It's a whole different ball game when you aren't dealing with the same issues. BladeForums.com is still the best bang for the buck when you are trying to sell, find information, buy, etc.
I'd love to go back to the days where we only had to pay $100 per month to keep this site going. But those days are long gone. And if we go down, what makes you think that the next person isn't going to have to pay the same bills *if* they can reach the same levels you guys brought us to?
You can criticize all you want. Hell, I'll even agree with you on certain things.
So, in the interests of making everyone happy again, we're willing to work with you guys.
You want free for sale forums? Fine, we'll turn them back on. Dealers want free for sale forums? No problem, we'll make them free for dealers as well. That should make everyone happy.
Spark
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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
Insert witty quip here
[This message has been edited by Spark (edited 06-28-2000).]
I think BSF will be really big. Thank you Patrick.
