This thread is absolutely amazing. I am a member of more than a few online forums, and have been a moderator at one of them for about 8 years now. I have never seen THIS AMOUNT of childish behavior from leading members and MODS anywhere.
Nobody has asked Troy to police CL purchases. That would be an insane request.
Here are the facts in my 1 year of being at this hobby. I'll tell this story to illustrate a point.
There is one member of this forum (remember no names mentioned) in particular who I've had a bad dealing with. I've since seen that member reach out to some very local CL sellers and absolutely RUIN purchases that I had set up with them. Here's an example: A nice vintage kettle pops up on CL for $35. I email the seller saying I'll take it and we set up a time for pickup. 10 min later I get an email from the seller saying he was offered a LOT more money by a guy who lives in the same far-away state as this forum member and now the grill is on CL for $300. I've seen this happen time and time again with this guy. This forum member has even gone as far as to reach out to locals on CL and just tell them their stuff is worth more than they are asking, and the price goes up even though he had no interest in purchasing it. Stacked on top of this behavior is the fact that I had a pretty crappy purchase with this forum member, who literally posted on the forum something to the effect of, "Now that I've gotten rid of some of my crappy grills, my collection moves forward" after I received my purchase from him.
Should anyone be surprised when I don't want to invite this forum member over for breakfast? ? ? ?
More importantly, should I continue to frequent a forum who's leadership continues to reach out and support this jerk? ? ? ?
This forum member has poop on his shoes for a reason. Nobody lifted his foot and slapped it on the bottom of his shoe. It's there because he was walking in crap where he shouldn't have been. Nuff said..
Look, I'm not trying to stir the pot here, but this is what I've witnessed in the year that I've been here. Greg bought a grill, posted it to the forum, and it's somehow turned into some sort of a pissin match.
(Scratching head) I don't get it!
In the end, these are just a bunch of dumb little grills, regardless of what color they are or what their vents say on them. Is it really worth it to wreck a potential friendship over this crap? To me this place is much more about the
PEOPLE and less about the actual
KETTLES.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programing.......