[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Locked thread? (Page 1 of 4)
Posted: 3/21/2008 10:13:58 AM EDT
| I'm confused why the thread below was locked? Did I miss something? Is there more to the story? |
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Yep more to the story but if you google up and read around. It's fairly typical of big boards to do this as it gets bigger. Very very normal. I have experience in several other boards where it has happened in JUST the exact same way but different circumstances. it's natural human psychology at work and you can read up on it by any philosophy of education major or sociologist's or human psychology or even a basic philosopher such as Socrates and Plato. IWO's.. power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It happens in any institution or center point that involves humans in some form or fashion. That kind of stuff. It just would be nice that other dealers would be like Pat from my dealings in years and years purchasing stuff. Nobody can do it better. It can't get any better than him....short on doing it yourself. Which I last heard is illegal. |
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It's not nearly as complicated as some would have you believe. This site has grown a lot. First they offered the team memberships to help offset some of the costs of increased bandwidth and the equipment to support it. Then they decided to add advertisers. The Avilas paid for a lot of it out of their own pocket in the early days. When they decided to make the site self supporting they had to offer paying advertisers something to make it worth their while. It would not be fair to paying advertisers to allow non-paying advertisers free rein to conduct business on the forums. They are still very lenient as long as non-paying dealers conduct business through IMs and Email and don't try to advertise their services or goods on the forum. Now, the Hometown Forums are a little different. When 1GUNRUNNER was staff he was pushing for a "Hometown Dealer" status for those local dealers who sell only to specific regions. This is what I think would be the best answer. It could cost less than the big mail order advertiser subscriptions for those vendors who want to target the whole site. I don't think trying to cause a fuss is the best way to push for this though. I like Pat and will go through him when I am able to buy NFA. I think most of his posts were great for the site especially post about projects and suppressor tests etc. If he decides to turn down my business because I support the sites actions that is his right. I see the point on both sides. Advertising cost is pretty high especially for those not trying to conduct business accross the country. If they let one person advertise in one forum though then other dealers would think they also could do this. I hope something can be worked out and Pat allowed to return one day. |
I think some of us are aware but unaware the we were aware. People pay to advertise on this board? I thought those were just cool logos. Never realized they were links to cool stuff.  I think Pat should be let back on after a time out . . . . . . and writing a thousand times I won't do what I did that you are all aware of. . . . . and 50  . . . and  to the Board Staff, advertisers and owners.Just my .02 |
I don't see that happening. |
Not gone, but banned. See www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=130&t=689603 |
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Define diff between gone and banned- we know he ain't dead! NoAim says just deleting posts that show him as a dealer- meaning he can still post, just not refer to ANY buis activities? Hey, I was only gone for a day, or two, what could have happened and why is it a secret/privileged info? As a "community" we want and deserve to know unless PAT & only Pat doesn't want us to have the details- is that the case? |
The short. Perm-banned. Staff is deleting various threads in the OR HTF as a result. |
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I equivocate on whether to get into these explanations because often I just get "F you Joe's our pal!" so from past experience often I am just beating my head against the wall and dragging things out by trying to explain things. We (not me but AR15.com) charge dealers to sell on the site. We charge more than we used to because a few years ago the site got on the hook for some commercial space for the servers, some additional internet lines and so on. Before that it had been kind of a shoestring operation, usually bailed out on a regular basis by EdSr. In fact when Ed told me about the additional expenses he was getting into I said I did not think it was a good idea. If the increased charges for advertising did not come through then the Avilas would be on the hook for contracts for the stuff I just mentioned. Now Dealers and Industry Partners (dealers with banner ads) pay a fair amount of money to sell on the site, because of this we restrict others from advertising on the site, whether listing items on the equipment exchange, or using trade names "megaguns" as their arfkom name or listing their business name or ffl status in their sig lines. Last week (I think) someone mentioned that coctailer was listing that he was an ffl in his sig line and selling a fair number of guns on the EE, he had about 11 ads going. I spend a fair amount of time throwing dealers off the site. From their standpoint it's a "nothing to lose" situation. This site is very busy and generates a lot of gun sales, so just open an account, start selling and it's basically free until you get caught. I have never kept track, and probably should, but I probably throw a couple of nonpaying dealers off the site every day, and I am sure that is just the tip of the iceberg. The next angle a lot of dealers try is to get back on by lying. I had one dealer e-mailing me calling me a SOB and that she was not a gunshop while I had the website for her gunshop open in a browser window. Just this month I found a member 1999cobra selling brand new guns with the box even in the picture. I locked him and he told me how he sold very few guns, it was just a hobby for him, then he called Ed Sr to complain about me and told him the same thing. I unlocked him with the condition that he stop selling here, within a day he was posting that people should instant message him so he could tell them of a website where they could go and buy guns for a better deal., The reason he was doing that was because he had just become a paying advertiser under the name "paladin arms" on Glocktalk. Of course everything he said to me about "just selling a little here and there" was a complete bald faced lie, but he had nothing to lose by lying to me, so why not, I guess. I have learned that I just flat out cannot trust gun dealers to tell the truth. I could give many more examples like this. Anyway one of the moderators who knew coctailer contacted me and I said I would unlock him as long as he did not sell on the site, he agreed an I unlocked him. Meanwhile PCArms had posted that "our rules about selling are assinine" (I saw that before a moderator removed his post) and that people should go to the "other site" to avoid these rules. At the time I had no idea what "the other site" was, I figured it was silencertests or some other forum I had heard of, but I did not know. PCArms was not only using a business name and advertising in his signature lines, but obviously was aware of the rules here and going out of his way to get around them. I knew this would be a stinkfest so I asked EdSr to look at it and tell me what he think. Ed locked him and I e-mailed PCArms and told him he needed to contact Jorge Avila about paying for a dealership, if one was available. I have a couple of problems with the response I got from him. He claimed that PCArms was not a business name, rather it is just his "internet handle." A bunch of you guys refer to him as PCArms.com and that URL redirects to his website, I also quickly found just by googling his name that he uses that as a business name, I think one place I found was the website for his wife's dog grooming shop where she refers to his business as PCArms.com. He also said something along the lines as he just notifies people of when their stuff gets in here, I know he sells a lot of stuff through this hometown forum. I don't particularly like getting into this squabbling matches so I have been putting off dealing with him for ages. But like his claim that he does not use PCArms as a business name I was confident he was not telling the truth. He then changed his website to have this image largely displayed on his website  Between the arkfom nazi flag and his being dishonest we decided to just leave him locked. I found the link from his website to the Fort Moe forum and the Fort Moe business website. I did not read any of it at that point but was later told it says this
I assume this is a reference to AR15.com, if it is that is a lie. No one has been banned for anything posted on that forum. I had not caught on that that was "the other forum" that pcarms and fortmoe were trying to generate traffic for until I saw the link on PCArms. Fortmoe also had listed in his sig line that he was an ffl and also had the suggestion that people go to his website. I e-mailed him thursday and asked what that was all about, I see I received a response as I am typing this. Scott admits that fortmoe allows dealers who do not have accounts here to sell items without the expense of an arfkom dealership. He goes on to defend PCArms as being a nice guy and states that he won't pay "any more" to ar15.com because he is angry with how the site is run. He seems to feel he should be able to use this site for business purposes without paying the amount this site charges businesses. I will most likely also remove him from ar15.com. While PCArms may be a great guy to people who live in Oregon that he shoots with or goes out for a beer with, when I tried to deal with him he was dishonest and flipped out and put that big nazi flag up. This is not unusual. Most people face to face are pleasant, I have been out to dinner with and been shooting with guys who were the nicest guy you ever met face to face, but who were obnoxious tools when they got behind a keyboard. I don't like that he was dishonest with us, I don't like that he was using this site to slyly generate business for fortmoe's website and I don't like that he flipped out an threw that Nazi flag up. If you are friends with him that probably means nothing to you, I have found that often people will overlook friend's questionable behavior as long as it is not directed at them. That's why I usually don't bother responding to these threads and to be honest I suspect I'm wasting my time, but I hope not. |
| I respect the fact that you came in here and replied, which at this point is akin to "walking into the lions den", but there seems to be other underlying issues that these circumstances have brought to the forefront. I signed up for these forums a year ago, and after working my way around, pretty much only spent time in the OHT or Reloading forums, as I felt there was an air of "elitism" on the part of many moderators and staff. Threads locked or people warned over threads that seemed fairly inconsequential. Now that this situation has came about, there has simply been a snowball effect from all of the small gripes culminating into a solidarity of Oregon bretheren. The moderators on this board, Nox and peta have been most helpful and friendly here. I haven't had a chance to meet peta in person, but have met Nox, and they are both stand up guys that I respect imensely, and no one has issue with them in any way. But its in the unwavering interpretation of the CoC, or at times vagueness of it that has most of the people involved upset. I'll give an example. Shortly after I found the OHT, and began getting to know the people over here, I wanted to give something back, so to speak. I manage an auto parts store, and I approved with my store owner an "OHT Sunday Discount". Since I ran the store by myself that particular day of the week, I wanted to offer a 10% discount to OHT users that came to my store. I read the CoC, but it was unclear to me if my particular business would be categorized in with other firearms dealers. So, I emailed peta for clarification. Sure enough, he came back and told me that I could not advertise that without having a paid dealer membership, even if my business wasn't firearms related. I held no grudge toward peta for that, I respected his clarification, but that negated me just doing right by the OHT. So, its early and I haven't had enough coffe, so I shall end my rant there. I don't know how this will affect the situation, but I can already say that the last week has left me wondering. |
I'm not at all sure why that would have been decided in that manner. Things of this type are routinely approved, and are one of the purposes of the Hometown Forums. You aren't competing in any way with paying advertisers, are helping the members, and doing a GOOD thing. There was no reason for your request to be denied. 
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I understand--but whoever told him that was wrong. It happens--we have so much to keep track of it's hard to know all the protocols.  Sometimes the nuances of a situation mean things which appear similar on the surface can have subtle differences which make one thing okay and another disallowed. Your attempt at doing good should have been approved, I'm sorry it wasn't. If you consider doing it again, please reference this thread and my post. 
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In the past my feeling about non firearms businesses was basically "Who cares?" If someone owns a tow truck or is a dentist and they aren't a pest about it personally I don't care. It's not like the other auto parts store in your town was about to buy a dealership here. However we did have a guy selling insurance who was kind of a pest, and there have been a few incidents where I was a little nervous about something being fishy, but if you want to have 10% off for arfkom members Sunday personally I would think that's fine. One of the hometown staff probably told peta that, and they may have some reason for that beyond what I am thinking. I guess it could snowball out of control? Like every thread could be "20% asparagus at my grocery store this week!" but that seems unlikely. |
I appreciate that you took the time to come in here. I think the over-generalization of the forum rules is what caused the issues. In my case, the guns I was selling were from my personal collection. These were guns that were sitting in my safe and needed to go to someone that would actually use them. I am not a "dealer". I am a manufacturer. The main reason I am a paying Team Member is because of the Retro Forum. That is what brought me here, and is what keeps me coming here. I collect and trade old Colt parts with many of the retro members, and sell collectible parts on the EE. The money from the parts goes to buy more parts(mainly from the EE) Is this not allowed as well? I understand selling guns is a no-no. As a Paying Team Member, it would have been nice to get an IM telling me to remove the firearms from the EE or face a lock. |
Got his number? I currently looking for insurance.
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You're probably right. Just the volume of FFLs/gunshops etc on the site is kind of a pia. And when I ask someone 1/2 the time they either ignore me or say yes and keep doing it, which means finding time to follow up on them again later. Maybe that's not a good excuse. I've said to Juan before I think the site would be better off if we could afford some kind of professional sales guy (whatever you call that, cause I'm sure not one). If you are only selling small volumes of "retro" parts and uppers please continue, that's fine. No one has tried to do much of that on a large commercial basis that I know of besides Nodak spud's lowers. |
He quit the insurance firm a month or two after he started trying to sell tons of policies here 
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I admin a forum that is not firearm related. I've not been around forever like some, but long enough to sit back and see what goes on. I've been part of paid large forums in the past as well, and in the end politics and money soured me. I won't get in the middle of this since really, it's not my business. I have my personal feelings but I won't air them out here. It is a done deal and the people in charge made a decision. I would like to make a comment about the rules, especially since I've had to interpt them in the past for the site I ran... I know it can be difficult when things like the auto parts store discount comes up. Where do you put a stop to it? How do you regulate it? My suggestion would be open communication between the mods and admins. It seems to me...that it is not as clear as it could be at times. This leaves some people with the impression of power hungry mods with a heavy fist (appearances, not saying a hard and fast rule of thumb) but when you have inconsistant interptations of the CoC, this is what you end up with. Of course you can't please everyone, but in the past year I've been on here the "advertising" that was done by PCarms in his sig has not been an issue. To me, this is just saying it was ok. Then, something was done that caught the attention of the mods (a subject for another thread) and then it's pulled out of the hat to ban someone who was stepping on toes. Again, just calling it how it's perceived by an outsider to this mess. It's interesting.
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I had nothing to do with it, and am not privy to all the details, but I can tell you his REACTION to being called on his actions was his downfall. Out of curiosity I did a 3-month search of his posts, and he was clearly using this site mostly to sell stuff and promote his business. No doubt about it. When called on it he didn't simply come clean and agree to stop. His reaction was FAR from that. The bottom line is, this place is VERY expensive to keep afloat (bandwidth costs alone were $5000/mo. two upgrades ago). If the site is to exist in its present humongous form, we MUST have the advertisers (and Team members, of course). If you were paying several thousand dollars a year to advertise here you wouldn't appreciate a "poacher" doing so for free, no? That's all there is to it--we MUST protect our advertisers in order to make it worthwhile for them to pay to be here. We don't catch all the poachers, but when a guy draws attention to himself, lies about his actions, goes ballistic instead of cooperating, then our options are pretty limited. 
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Believe me when I say I understand the costs of running the site and agree about having to pay to advertise. My only question was why was it let to go on so long (with constant interaction of the mods in the OHTF) now all the sudden it was the issue of him being banned? Or..if I'm reading your response correctly...nobody had an issue with his sig line but his response to being banned was his unduing? I mean, I did not read all that transpired through emails so I do not have all the information, but at the same time if he would have agreed to remove the sig and said so sorry sally all would be good? I'm sorry to question the rules but it just "appeared" the sig line advertising was the excuse used to ban someone...that had been in place for a LONG time without recourse. Again, the decision was made on both sides so really, nothing to argue about I was just curious of the details after hearing one side of the story.
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As I said, I'm not privy to everything, but the guy got locked for his actions--the actions did not come after his lock (they never do). I don't know him, but I doubt his past selling efforts were deliberately overlooked, as we (staff) don't do that. I can't guess about the mods, as that would be pure speculation. I guess it's perhaps easy to stay under the radar screen if one is discreet. Once we become aware of a guy selling as a dealer we WILL take action, as we have no choice. Edit to add: I have to leave for the weekend, so I won't be able to answer anything else directed my way until late tomorrow (Sun.) night. Now I have a four hour drive, so I'm logging off. |
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So Pat was banned for having the numbers 07/02 under his avatar and for having "Oregon Research Labs" in his sig line? I search the OHTF EE all the time and cannot remember seeing him selling in the EE....in fact, the last sale in the EE he posted was from 8/19/06 (unless of course all ads have been deleted). So what we have here is a man who receives NFA items and transfers them to individuals. So he was banned for advertising that he can do transfers for NFA items BOUGHT OFF THE AR15.COM EQUIPMENT EXCHANGE??!! I understand the issues you have with dealers selling without paying for the dealer membership, but don't you think it would be better for the site, and generate more traffic if you at least spoke with these people and found out their situation before just locking them? I'm done with this issue as I wasn't involved to begin with, but I thought the intent of AR15.com was to promote firearms ownership? I guess when you throw money into the mix, the mission changes. I'm done....this is rediculous and too much damage has come from this incident. |
I will try to answer, although I do not know all the details either.(ie I know nothing that happened before 2 days ago) As Aimless posted above, he asked me to look into PCArms (the name of a business as screen name is itself considered advertising) and his many threads with "I have 12 of these" and "I got this today,who's is it".I also caught a few "I have one of these.OOPS, wrong forum". Not knowing what was behind that, I saw them as veiled sales and redirecting sale activities to another forum.Bothe of those would be violations of our rules. Doing it in the HTF and having a firearms related link (advertising) were additional violations. I locked PCArms I subsequently received no less than 3 emails from the mod telling me the "who's is this" are because people order things and have them sent directly to pat without ever bothering to alert him of what was coming.He further told me they were NOT sales but sincere attempts to find out who had ordered those items he had received. After telling the mod that Pat should have either waited for the customers to ask him or done something less active, I told the mod if he (the mod) had made some special arrangement for Pat to have this kind of activity and to advertise in his sigline, WE WOULD HONOR IT and have Pat start with a clean slate (afetr he was in compliance with the rules.ie. new name,no advertising in his sigline and no more of these types of threads. I was told by the mod that he had sort of allowed him to do those things because he did not see them as violations (perfectly OK when you have a different opinion on interpreting what constitutes advertisin,sale activities,etc) I was waiting for the mod to give me a new name and agreement by PCArms to abide by the rules (as stated by me above) when I received a copy of Pat's reply to Aimless's email, where Pat said "PCArms was not his business name, etc". I googled PCArms and got no less than 4 references to PCArms in Oregon (Pat's supposedly non existing business name). I also received links to "the other site" (to which sales were allegedly being diverted to) and a link to his Oregon research site with a mock arfcom Nazi flag. And that is when I decided I wasn't going to waste my time giving him a "clean slate" and letting him have a second chance (with the rules clarified for him). It would be like giving a suicide bomber an invitation to a wedding party I can act nicely, as long as you play nicely, but the minute you act "less than nice", I can -and will- assume the same attitude |
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But Ed, I just went to www.PCArms.com and it says NOTHING about Oregon Research Labs, LLC???? NoHair |
Posting a Rick Rolled site isn't a good idea. |