SAKnights Forum above the new tool forums?

[Douglas]

Seriously... this is the second online place collapsing on me in 2 hours...

Am I truely the cause of smurf like this??

I doubt it. I seem to be the one being called out here 

I guess me saying there should be something for everyone, and there's enough room for all our interests, while agreeing with them that the forum order probably needs changing, upsets people 

I'm pretty damn certain that whatever ruffled their feathers, wasn't you, Nick.

Maybe look again at the language you used in your posts Al. When you describe what you don't like in the forum the language you use is very judgemental.

O'KAY!!!
Now it's time to be BLUNT!!!
There are enough hurt feelings and over sized egos around here.  It's time we stop acting like little kids pointing fingers and remember every time we point one finger at someone else there are three more on the same hand pointing right back at us.  Yes I said it and yes there are three fingers on my hand pointing right back at me.  Enough is enough.  Stop faulting, start respecting!!!!

[AimlessWanderer]

Seriously... this is the second online place collapsing on me in 2 hours...

Am I truely the cause of smurf like this??

I doubt it. I seem to be the one being called out here 

I guess me saying there should be something for everyone, and there's enough room for all our interests, while agreeing with them that the forum order probably needs changing, upsets people 

I'm pretty damn certain that whatever ruffled their feathers, wasn't you, Nick.

Maybe look again at the language you used in your posts Al. When you describe what you don't like in the forum the language you use is very judgemental.

I certainly did, straight away, and I as I mentioned earlier, I had someone else give me their opinion too. Someone I trusted to give me an impartial perspective.

I feel I clearly expressed my own opinions on what I like and don't, but fully acknowledged that despite my strong personal feelings, the stuff I don't like has it's place here too, which was reinforced by by posts from others. Over a number of posts I also said (or at least tried to) that it's not about what any one individual wants. What matters is we ALL get chance to have the forum what we all want. That will be mainly silliness for some, predominantly tools for others, and only specific tools or sub-forums for some people. If we all get the thread types we want, but don't get force fed the thread types we don't, we all win. 

[Sawl Goodman]

First I want to say I have had a great time here on MTO and have developed a great deal of respect for the opinions of the members here.  That respect of differing opinions has been what has kept me coming back.  It has lead me to give Leatherman another chance, shown me just what all the fuss is about concerning Mora and Opinel,  landed me a SOG, a Schrade, a whole bunch more SAKS, and helped me generaly grow in seeing the value of differing ideas and designs.  As a LIFE LONG user of all kinds of tools I like the idea of getting to hear and learn from the openions and thoughts of those I have come to respect and trust.  It sadens me to see such a rift occuring over something that could be a benafit to the over all knowlede of this place.  No I don't have any real interest in some of the topics here and would see them as a distractoin to my reason for being here if I saw my needs as the only reason this form should exist.  I don't however see that as the case.  This is a GLOBAL comunity, a place where differant ideas, different cultures, and the products that are produced and enjoyed can and should be shaired.  I had been using Erwin vice grip adjustable plires for years and thought they were the best thing sense sliced bread.  Then one day I ran accross these things called Knipex being discussed here on MTO.  Well thanks to what I learned here I now know Erin to be a cheap knock off of a far superior Knipex tool.   That is just one example and it's one I would have never found without hand tools being discussed here on MTO.  Knipex just are not found in stores around here.  Yes there are other sources of info on these tools but ypu have to know they exist before you can look for the info.  When you do look, about all that is found are a bunch of Ytube videos that I realy don't trust.  I trust the people here.  People here tend to post on things they actualy use every day or DON'T use and they tend to tell and show why that is the case.  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  I like that.  I also see the need for what some have deemed un-needed Bull Smurfery.  We all experiance differing levels of stresses in our daily lives,  Where better to cut loose, be stupid, have some fun, relax and unstress than with a bunch of other people that we trust.  The rest of the world and this includes most of our beloved spouses just don't get us.  They don't get the need for using our hands to produce a JOB WELL DONE.  We are often outcasts within our own families, because of our passions.  So if we can find others like ourselves to open up and kick a little SMURF around with, where is the harm.  No one has ever forced me to look at or participate in any thread here at MTO that I didn't CHOOSE to.  So again I will say I find this rift to be SADDENING.  I just don't get it.  As to the placement of the verious topics, dose it really matter wether the garlic is next to the onions or the horse raddish when you go to the maket.  They are all root vegatables and all have stong pungent flavors used to make many wonerful dishes all over the GLOBE.  Each one is loved by some and hated by others.  I would be willing to bet no two Markets keep them in the same place, yet we all seek out what we prefer and we still keep going to the market even if they do change things up a bit from time to time.  Again I don't get this rift. Instead I see a great value in opening up MTO and broadening it's horizons and increasing it's "customer" base.

Magnificent post!

I, too, enjoy MTO thoroughly and also welcome the new subforums. In my view, the more knowledge and experience shared can only be a good thing. I live to learn and I hope I can contribute. I don't care about the order of things on the main page, either.

If I were new here and had never seen the forum before, I'd be impressed by the diversity of topics and viewpoints. I think I'd be equally baffled as to what the current fuss is about. I've also seen how changes in familiarity can upset people, and how comfort with the new increases with time. This storm will pass!

[gregozedobe]

I think some of the previous misunderstandings and clashes in this thread is an inherent weakness of on-line forums. 

There just isn't the bandwidth of face to face communications, so people miss the subtleties and instant feedback you get when the person you are communicating with is right in front of you.  So signs like hesitations, facial expressions, body language are all missing,  This can lead to unintended offence giving and taking, and sometimes words, phrases are interpreted with a significantly different meaning than was intended by the person writing the words.

Humour (and particularly sarcasm) can be really difficult to convey on-line, and more so when the people involved are from different countries and cultures.  Often misunderstandings start over something intended as light-hearted banter but is received as direct disrespect.  Sometimes a person can be going through a difficult patch in other aspects of their life and may be more sensitive to a (real or imagined) slur. 

Sometimes people get emotionally involved over a particular issue and forget that others may have quite legitimate and very different opinions on that same issue ( There have been very clear signs of that factor at work in this thread).  Myself, I try to disagree respectfully, but everyone should try to remember that while they are entitled to their own opinions that doesn't mean others aren't also entitled to their opinions (even if you honestly believe they are totally 100% wrong). 

One solution I can see is people learning to only read the threads they are interested in.  As someone said earlier, no-one forces anyone to read something they don't want to read.  Life is too short, so move on to the subjects you enjoy and leave that other stuff alone.  There are several sub-forums that I hardly ever visit because I'm not interested in the subject matter.  That doesn't mean those sub-forums shouldn't exist, and ignoring them doesn't take any great effort on my part, so I don't care that they are there.

[Jaypeebee]

Nicely put Greg......

[McStitchy]

Yes, that is very true and one should always consider the difficulties of written-only communication. I agree Greg 

[gerleatherberman]

I said I wasn't going to chime in, because nobody cares too much about what I think(probably something to do with SAK fandom and my username), but this has gotten utterly ridiculous. I have SAKs and SwissTools, but don't treat them like gods, because they are not the greatest thing in the world. They're awesome, but some of us have other, stronger interests in multi-functional tools.
It all started sometime back, when there was discussions about adding a hand-tool sub-forum and it seemed most of the members who were in that thread thought it would be a neat thing to have. I am having a hard time digesting that some members were actually offended(even just to be funny or not) by the thread order placement.

From my observations, this site has lost a lot of serious MT (non Vic) collectors over the years with SAK/SwissTool stuff constantly posted about in threads not pertaining to SAKs/SwissTools. It is like an endless bombardment of Victorinox in every nook and cranny, in every sub-forum it seems. I maybe reading too hard into it, but it seems the pre-2016 site content and posts were of vastly higher quality.  I love this site and really like many members. I've only bad blood with one or two members here, but I get along well with almost everyone.

Yes, I'm a SAK knight, but above that; I am a Multi-Tool enthusiast(this encompasses saks). If the two new sub-forums draw some new members posting about hand tools, that is awesome. They might even get curious about MultiTools and saks.

Nix,

Please, get your butt back here, ASAP! We need members, like you, who create a lot of thoughtful posts with substance. They're not going to make a vacuum cleaner thread(for example). Sometimes things do slow down or stop when they were agreed on.

Marc,

You're leaving too?
Didn't you start this PHP-mob yourself by making this thread?

Aimless (50ft-trad),

I tend to agree with you on these types of things. Diversification is definitely important.

And everyone else who made a serious reply,
THANK YOU!

This site is the only thing I have to look forward to most days, and so many members have left(before Nix and Marc) from MTs not being the main topic anymore.

[Grant Lamontagne]

Well smurf me in the smurf with a smurf.  Get distracted by a ghost town or two and everything goes to smurf while you are gone.   

First, I have every intention of moving the Power and Hand tool forums further down the list- you guys mentioned that early on and I will change it.  I simply haven't gotten around to it yet.  I didn't realize that it was such a serious deal that it needed to be attended to ASAP.  I will do it as soon as I am done this post since I now know how important it is.

As for adding new forums, many of the subforums you see here, including the Swiss Army Knights, were not originally part of Multitool.org originally.  If you really want to sit through a history lesson, when I started MTO I was trying desperately NOT to start a Victorinox forum.  You see, I was a moderator of the Secret Order of Swiss Army Knives (SOSAK) at Knifeforums.com for a while, and I had developed a monthly SAK website called SOSAKOnline.com which was basically an e-zine.  Since the SOSAK name was owned by KF, and I didn't want to seem like I was copying them, I tried to find something that I was interested in to start a site on that did not involve SAKs, and no one else was doing multitools, so I went with that.  Eventually folks said they wanted a dedicated Swiss Army Knife forum, so I opened what was called The Swiss Forum.  When I eventually broke with KF I changed SOSAKOnline.com to SwissArmyKnights.com and changed The Swiss Forum to The Swiss Army Knights.  It's all part of the evolutionary process of forums.

Heck, in the early days the Outdoors section didn't exist either- it started as The Cycle Path, a place to discuss all of the bicycle tools that are available from Topeak, CCM, Bell and others.  No one talked about those tools though, and it became more of a general biking forum, then a random outdoors forum, and then became it's own section with a few forums inside it.

SOG is the top manufacturer forum because SOG has always supported MTO, right from the very beginning.  The other manufacturers either pretend to ignore us or have occasional, cursory involvement with us, including Victorinox.  In fact, Wenger was a lot more openly supportive of us than Victorinox has been, but that's a tangent that really isn't important to this thread.

When it comes to adding new forums, I think that you will find that I am usually quite reluctant to add them.  Most of you guys won't remember this, but years ago there were a few members pushing me to start a Bear forum, despite the fact that the member leading the charge didn't even have any Bear tools, and very few people were actually talking about them, as Bear really doesn't give a damn about their Bear Jaws tools.  They only keep them in production because of Craftsman, Crescent, Hard Hat and others that buy them in bulk and re-brand them.  With no one talking about Bear, I saw no reason to devote a forum to them.

With Hand and Power Tools, people have been talking about them, and so I thought they deserved a forum of their own.  I don't see it as a dilution of MTO any more than the Watch section or flashlight section.  Not everyone uses multitools outdoors- many people use them for mechanical and maintenance work, and they also use other tools.  It seems only logical that we explore real screwdrivers since we spend so much time comparing Leatherman and Victorinox screwdrivers.  And, I am guessing that very few of us don't have at least one drill.

As for Jack and Marc leaving, I respect their choice to leave, just as I respect everyone else's when/if they should make that decision.  I am not happy about it, and I hope they find their way back here, because they are both excellent members, and, as I have said before, members are what makes a forum what it is.  I actually take it quite personally when people leave, so you'll jut have to imagine how bothered I am by all of this.  We will be here when and if they should decide to return, because that's what we do.

When it comes to adding a dishwasher forum and a vacuum forum,  I would initially like to say that there's no way in the pits of Hades that is going to happen, but in the end it is the members that dictate these things- if enough people start talking about Electrolux versus Kirby, and there's a number of people that won't give up their Filter Queens come Hell or High Water, then yes, we will open those forums.  Not because it is financially beneficial, not to attract new members, but to give the folks that are already talking about these things a place to find all of the info they may want.  It's more of an organizational thing, not a silly financial thing. 

Because let me tell you, if it was all about the money, we'd have a smurf load more ads, and a lot less cash coming out of my pocket to keep this place running.

As usual, I can be reached by PM, email (grant@multitool.org) or by phone at (902) 233-8888, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, on Whatsapp, Google (Hangouts, Gmail, Google Plus etc) and Skype if anyone wants to discuss anything- ideas, questions, comments etc.  I think that those of you that have already contacted me will attest to the fact that I take all of your comments very seriously and respectfully.

Hell, last week I was responding to a certain member on FB Messenger while driving through the mountains- don't worry, I was using voice to text and not typing while driving.

That's my input for now- I am going to go move the forums down now, by popular demand.   

Def

[Don Pablo]

Cheers, Def. 
I think this thread started as a bit of fun and then....  I guess a bit of patience on everyone’s end (me too) would have helped, Huh?

[Mechanickal]

I still feel as if I kicked the seriousness off...

I'll retreat into the basement and take some stuff apart now.

[Wspeed]

Thanks Boss 

[Grant Lamontagne]

The forums are moved down a bit and I kicked the Edged Tools up a bit too.

Def

[Spartan19]

No worries mechanikal, I got a pm this morning, saying another member was leaving. I don't know what happened, two days ago everything was fine, all fun and mts. This morning I hop on, and people are leaving right and left. I don't know what the problem is, but it has nothing to do with you. As for me, I'll always leave the door open should our brothers in steel decide to return, and continue to post pics as I've done before. Don't go anywhere brother! It's starting to get lonely around here

[Spartan19]

If you get a chance Grant, check under bucks and bikes, I just got one of those new fat tire MBs and it's pretty sweet. I know your big into bikes and wasn't sure if you had any prior experience with them

[Douglas]

No worries mechanikal, I got a pm this morning, saying another member was leaving. I don't know what happened, two days ago everything was fine, all fun and mts. This morning I hop on, and people are leaving right and left. I don't know what the problem is, but it has nothing to do with you. As for me, I'll always leave the door open should our brothers in steel decide to return, and continue to post pics as I've done before. Don't go anywhere brother! It's starting to get lonely around here

 

[Wspeed]

  I got the same message 
I just hope that they come back soon
As it won’t be the same without them 

[AimlessWanderer]

I still feel as if I kicked the seriousness off...

I'll retreat into the basement and take some stuff apart now.

Stop blaming yourself 

You made a serious post, in a silly thread, in a serious sub forum, of a diverse forum that's trying to be more diverse, which has members bored of tool stuff that want silliness, members bored of silliness that want tool stuff, and a few that seem to only want what they want, when they want, and nothing else, no matter what others might want, with the rest of the members not caring cos they think it's all fun. Aside from the conflict of personalities, misunderatandings, misinterpretations, and all the other human elements associated with an online forum, albeit an excellent one, what could possibly go wrong? 

[Dutch_Tooler]

Late to this party, so not sure if what I say is (still) relevant, but I'd like to get this off my chest.

I haven't beel a member for long yet, but what attracted me (like others, I gather) was serious dedication to MTs (incl. SAKs) together with the members, the generally friendly atmosphere and a healthy sprinkling of other interesting topics. As long as that is the main thrust of this forum, I'll be honoured to remain a member, if I may.

Personally I don't care in what sequence the forums are listed, but I can see that this might be important to some. If any aspect of the forum or its topics doesn't appeal to me, I simply ignore it - respect for the other members will reduce the times that I'd be willing to become vociferous over it.

Be that as it may, I am hugely surprised by the speed at which this minor quibble has escalated to the point of two (I hear there may have been more) members, some of them long-timers, actually leaving over it. I sure hope this decision is not definitive, but if it is, whilst I do respect the decision, if this was the only reason, maybe we should have, as Don Pablo put it above, been a little more patient and give the powers that be a little bit of time to react to the issue before walking out. It's the weekend, for smurf's sake, and not everybody lives in the forum over weekends.

End of rant, with profuse apologies to whomever found themselves offended over it - this is certainly not intended.

Edit: I'm with AW on his post above. Not your fault, Nick!

[Wspeed]

Non taken D_T

[Don Pablo]

Non taken D_T

[Douglas]

I still feel as if I kicked the seriousness off...

I'll retreat into the basement and take some stuff apart now.

Stop blaming yourself 

You made a serious post, in a silly thread, in a serious sub forum, of a diverse forum that's trying to be more diverse, which has members bored of tool stuff that want silliness, members bored of silliness that want tool stuff, and a few that seem to only want what they want, when they want, and nothing else, no matter what others might want, with the rest of the members not caring cos they think it's all fun. Aside from the conflict of personalities, misunderatandings, misinterpretations, and all the other human elements associated with an online forum, albeit an excellent one, what could possibly go wrong? 

When one considers just how GLOBAL this forum is, the cultural, the language and personal background differances, dare I say it  yes even political, it is amazing just haow powerful the bonds formed here are.  It is just as amazing how seldom these kind of things happen.  Let us just keep supporting each other and the hobbies that keep breaking down all those differances.

Grant,
THANKS for all you do in providing such a great place!

[Grant Lamontagne]

As I see it, the only ones that we should be blaming here are Victorinox and Leatherman for not coming out with enough new stuff for our on-topic discussions....  if they'd get off their keister and design some cool new stuff rather than rehashing the same old things then we wouldn't need to dilute the forum with non tool things like drills and screwdrivers. 

Def

[Douglas]

 

[Wspeed]

  Exactly what I think as well
Just not enough new knives being
made for us to keep talking about 

[McStitchy]

 

[Don Pablo]

Definitely agree!

[Butch]

 

YUP

[Butch]

I've been around the block a couple of times in my life. One thing I have learned is take care of the really important stuff & everything else will work out without my help. Life is just way too short to get upset over something as trivial as forum placement...........now I have some brontosarus  drawings to put on my cave wall.

 

[gustophersmob]

.

[Fuzzbucket]

Members have left  because they don't like their contributions being dismissed as gibberish, crap or bullsmurf just because it's not to the particular taste of few other members.