Of Trad Gang and sponsorships

[centaur]

Thanks Rob x2. You mods have a thankless job and keep doing what you are doing to keep this a great site.

[Chromebuck]

Everyone needs to shill out and make this site great again!  

This issue has some history on this site and I never understood why and it matters not if I ever understand...  I just like the folks here and could care less about the underbelly of the industry. Just give me some good hunting tips or stories and keep stoking the fire...  

   

Happy day!

Thanks for your diplomacy Rob.

[Jakeemt]

With respect Rob you may be already have a tainted reputation. Deserved or not I cannot say. I can speak only for myself and that's to say I have always been treated fairly here and with respect. However, this site does retain a strong reputation for doing things like banning members who post reviews of certain brands or posting pics with them ect. Again take that with a large grain of salt and I am not saying it is a deserved reputation just that it is a real one. I hope this post is taken in the right way and not as an accusation.

[Jmatt1957]

thanks Rob, I understand and agree with what you are doing.

[Petrichor]

I have no idea what's going on.... Nor do I care. Thanks sponsors and mods and people that produce quality content.

[Scott Barr]

Rob,

I certainly understand and support your point and the fact that you offered an explanation at all.  Some will want to argue it.  Just the nature of forums.  Scott

[DanielB89]

I can see both sides.  

Should we be able to discuss whatever that pertains to traditional bows?  YES.  

Should there be an obvious support for out sponsors?  YES!

Should we avoid products who are not made by our sponsors? No!

on the opposite side, I have no idea of what could have happened between border and tradgang, nor do a lot of you, so just trust the moderators.  
As I have been reminded,
"if you don't like the rules of the play ground, go play else where".

**that is not intended as an insult.  There are reasons I primarily search here first, and one of those is how "clean" it is.  There are not posts that allow you to bash someone(thank you mods).  Part of that is them taking something down we may find as helpful.  

I appreciate the morale of this camp fire.

[Bill Turner]

Thanks Rob for all you do to keep TG at the top of the heap when it comes to traditional archery web sites.  

[trad_bowhunter1965]

Thank you Rob and to all the sponsors I totally understand where Trad gang is coming from. I work hard I pay my due's we have enough free rides in our country. If you pull this post I understand.

[Ray Lyon]

I appreciate all that the moderators do here to keep the site clean. I've seen my share of shill jobs over the years. I also try to do business with the sponsors of this site whenever I possibly can. I just had an email exchange with some stuff I purchased from a non-sponsor where I saw the recommendation to buy from a thread here. In my exchange I mentioned that I saw reference to them on Tradgang and that I buy most of my stuff from sponsors there and recommend they look into for their future advertising.  

This is a huge playground and as Rob mentioned takes a large budget to manage.  It's easy for armchair quarterbacks to critique how a site is run on a thread like this, but until you've done your own (and I don't see the airwaves busting at the seams with quality sites), I'd suggest giving the Tradgang site some slack in the rope.

As a side note, I would think a company like Bear Archery would be a sponsor here. Seems like a natural, however if you look behind the scenes, you've got sponsors in Big Jim, Lost Nation and Kustom King here all selling Bear Bows, so in a way they are sponsoring on behalf of Bear Archery.

[smokin joe]

^^^^^ What Ray said! ^^^^

[monterey]

A couple weeks ago I logged out of one of the bigger outdoor oriented sites on the net for the last time! (Not an archery site). Despite a massive membership count, the majority of the posting is by a small core of critical bashers and cranks.  New members are routinely hammered to the point of being silenced and run off.  Moderation of the site has gone downhill to the point where if proper moderation was reinstituted, there would be few remaining participants.  Sponsors would drift away and the site would wither.

In other words, IT IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF TG!!

Here we have broad participation in a considerate and respectful style. It is due to careful moderation.

That doesn't mean you can't speak your mind here.  Almost any point of view can be iterated here or anywhere else.  It's more about how we choose to say it than what we say.

[FBB]

I do find it interesting that when I was researching the Covert Hunter recently on this site that all of threads that were  titled Covert Hunter do not exist. No matter I ended up going on 3 other sites that didn't delete information regarding this bow and found plenty. In fact I ended up buying one. Now I just don't come to this site that much anymore and I do not plan on renewing my classified fee to have the privilege of viewing bows for sale here.

[Sam McMichael]

Over the years I have seen a few posts deleted that maybe I would not have taken down, but overall, I think the mods do a really good job of looking after this site and us. I totally see Rob's point, and agree with it, about not allowing non-sponsor vendors to use Trad Gang as a marketing outlet. If any of us buy or like to recommend the products of a non-sponsor, we should certainly encourage them to become sponsors on our site. It can be beneficial to them and us.

[hybridbow hunter]

Rob
I posted on the former border bows topic as a satisfied customer despite a limb failure. Am I a shill ? I don't think so...
I bought from trad gang sponsors enough bows and for some still own them, shared and still do on bow info, bowhunting pics and stories and so not to be a called shill of anybody. Neither a basher despite some very less than optimal business issue with some sponsors product.
Plus I could have put in those border topics or general "performance" topics controlled technical info showing datas comparing some very famous sponsors recurve vs border's recurve. I did not because for some I felt that it could have been very unfair and bad for their business to show 20+ fps difference between 2 identical bows for same arrow...
I really enjoy this forum and try to share at my small level some of what is linking us all: the love of bowhunting and archery. Trad Gangers should be free to discuss and share info in a gentleman way about any kind of traditional bow, including border bows.

[Rob DiStefano]

thank you all, particularly those that seem to understand where we're coming from, which in this matter is ...

please DO discuss non-sponsor trad bowhunting products and services, if y'all have a mind to, that's never a problem.  

we don't care what gear you wanna talk about or buy, and as long as it's trad bowhunting related it's all very very good.  that's a prime focus of trad gang.

please don't shill for non-sponsors.  "shill", in our case, means to actively and consistently promote a product or service offered by a non-sponsor, by creating more than just a thread or post - that smacks of marketing.  we trust you can understand that in doing so this just ain't fair to everyone, and in the long run it's a disservice to the membership.

if there are a number of non-sponsor threads running concurrently, yes we're probably gonna at the very least be very concerned.    

the borders bows thread that i took offline was done so not because it was a borders bows thread but because some posts were inappropriate.  in review, it turns out it was lots more than a few posts in question so it's not going back online.  there's another border bows thread running, please use that one.  

we (moderators and admins) could never ever see, let alone read, every post.  most times we're late to the party, and we do rely on you folks to click the "Report Post" icon if you see something that don't seem to look right to you, so we can respond lots quicker and hopefully not allow a thread to escalate out of hand. we like trad gang to have lots of civil minded discussions.  we won't tolerate bashing of any kind, that's not our way.

lastly, to err is human, and i prove my humanity daily.  i make mistakes, as we all do.  i apologize if i've offended anyone, that was not my intent, it was to get us all on the same page and get back to the good trad gang party.  

thank you.

[monterey]

Originally posted by FBB:
I do find it interesting that when I was researching the Covert Hunter recently on this site that all of threads that were  titled Covert Hunter do not exist. No matter I ended up going on 3 other sites that didn't delete information regarding this bow and found plenty. In fact I ended up buying one. Now I just don't come to this site that much anymore and I do not plan on renewing my classified fee to have the privilege of viewing bows for sale here.

I just now ran a search for all the topics in Pow Wow that contained the terms "covert" "border" and "hex".  Seventy two threads were returned.

How you enter your search criteria makes a big difference.  There are probably a few other terms that would bring up even more.

[oldbohntr]

Rob, your explanation makes sense to me.....and I shoot a Covert Hunter.  I really enjoy Tradgang. I'm very likely here to stay! 'Nuff said.

[goobersan]

The fact that covert has remained"covert" on this one could be a testament to their character.
 Rob and the gang are doing a tremendous job. We can't thank them or our sponsors enough. If anyone is upset with our moderators perhaps they start their own website.
Put your pants back on and go shooting

[Jedimaster]

I don't frequent this sight as much as I once did. In fact, I'm not a contributor and very seldom post. However, I read the "Border thread" in question and feel compelled to comment here.
 
Once upon a time, I had a post about a bowyer deleted, so I PM'd Terry about it. He responded by sending his phone number and we had a very good conversation which opened my understanding as to why deleting that post was in everyone's best interest. Sometime later his private reservations about the bowyer were born out publicly. In the end I was grateful for the judgement call which resulted in my post being pulled. Not only that, but I learned Terry is not an egocentric monster but a very cordial and considerate man - at least to me.
 
On another occasion I sold a bow to Rob which he soon discovered had serious issues. It was completely my bad and he had a right to be frustrated but again, what I found was a very reasonable man and a man of honor. I refunded the money but didn't want the bow shipped back to me - Rob could have kept it, attempted to sell it, whatever - but what he did was send me a picture of the bow sawn neatly in two, demonstrating that the bow was taken out of commission as was my wish.  

Through these dealings both men were complete gentlemen and I continue to respect them very much. I may not agree with every decision made here, or at least not understand every decision, but I'm going to give them a pass this time and probably every time. They've proven themselves and they've earned it.

I've never been a shill for a company nor any man so I'm not pumping sunshine up anyone's skirt - just telling it like it is. There were some comments on the Border thread that were inappropriate - even if they were true.  I think it showed remarkable restraint for some of those comments to have been up as long as they were and for those who made them to still be members here.  

The thread wasn't pulled because it was a Border thread - it was pulled because it had taken a disrespectful turn and had ill-spirited posts.  Like I tell my kids, you may disrespect me but your not going to do it in my house.  So here' s to you Rob for keeping it in line and being man enough to take the criticism - and punches - without retaliating.  You've once again proven yourself to be a gentleman.