I want to discuss something I've experienced / witnesssed many times on forums with regards to " trolls " and how quick we can sometimes be to call people out as such.
I made a fair number of mistakes on the old GG, namely jumping right in before I got a feel for the place. I asked a bunch of dumb questions and made some meaningless posts.
There are still two members I fear will never like me, and two of them I'm kind of glad have not found the new place yet, simply because I don't want those past mistakes of mine to become an issue
Trolling sucks and nobody likes it, with this many people can become quick to judge and call people out as trolls.
Someone like former me comes along who means no harm and ends up raising red flags for these folks, when you do something to annoy one of them the last straw comes quickly for them.
I don't blame them, but they should just let the mods do their jobs.
Once they label you a troll you really don't know what to do, you end up in a bit of a tail spin because you never intended to be a troll and are now becoming an outcast.
At this point you're doing whatever you can to get out of the hotseat , this means lots of backtracking and a lot of " what I meant was ".
From there you're on both offense and defense and pretty soon you've become the troll you were labeled as all because you jumped the gun and went full throttle on a new forum because you're excited to be part of a place where everyone shares you're interests.
It's not always the case but it's pretty common.
I see this happen a lot on bladeforums, and sadly it's often routed by the fact that the person's exact brew of interest is slightly different and they don't realize that those differences matter.
There's generally more of a widespread commonality beyond just the subject of the forum.
On bladeforums it's generally knife users and collectors and a mix in between.
Someone who's only interested in a knife as a weapon and not a cutting tool won't fit in very well, same goes for one who only wants to display them but doesn't carry a cutting tool in their pocket.
Here it seems to be about the same with regards to tools.
My point in all of this is that often someone who means well can make mistakes and do things that nay raise a red flag when they just don't know.
Maybe they're new to forums, or are just a bit over zealous.
Trolls exist, but I think it's a good idea to give someone the botd and let them know they may be raising some red flags before going on the offensive.
