I didn't get banned from B&B...
Could be because I am not a member there. It would be interesting to see how quickly I would get banned after opening my mouth. That is of course assuming I would have the time to open my mouth of course.
Anyway... I would like to leave the topic of the banning behind us.
I will say why, of course.
The message about the supermoderator decision was given in a time when I was 1 of 3 super mods, and for all practical intents and purposes, I was 'the' supermoderator. I don't want to talk about the conversations I had then and who was involved and who did what. If we look at the entire situation from afar: being 'the' supermod at the time, the buck rightfully stopped with me and I handled the fallout. I am well aware that not everything happened the way it should have happened, but in the end there was a reason I could justify for myself, even though the whole situation was a mess.
As for the GD (we're on a roll here
) different argument, and one I actually agreed with. And I have no commercial interests whatsoever. Many people (staff AND senior members) tried them and reported wildly inconsistent results. I also saw various pics of new GD's and they were outright crappy, with edges protruding from the underside of the scales even. And they were not singular exceptions.
We formally say that zeepk are crap. Ditto for Kriegar. Ditto for all of the others.
Noone ever questioned that 'shit list', or argued that we only maintained a shit list to protect the profits of commercial interests.
When the new wapienicas came along, the reception was very good. I bought 4, and they were fantastic. Almost shaveready out of the box, to my surprise, easy to hone and able to hold a fantastic egde. They sold like hotcakes. So just because they are cheap does not warrant negative attention. Even the RAD guys like Iwan reported that they shaved better than his Livi. And noone balked at that comparison, even though Lynn is the Livi distributor for the US.
Then GDs came along with the aforementioned issues, and certain people started talking up the GDs, especially the people who were selling them (pot, kettle, black?) while many of us (mod team and others) thought they were very inconsistent and should be treated with care. I still don't think that they should be recommended to a newbie -unless- they come from a reseller who fixed all the issues, and verified that the one they were selling was decent and able to hold an edge. Warning people against GD imo was no more underserved than calling zeepk razor junk.
If you look at the GD thread here
http://www.straightrazorplace.com/forums/razors/50411-about-gold-dollar-razors.html
You'll see that we admitted outright that we knew it would cause problems and that many of the staff are also vendor. And I also mentioned the 9$ wapis which I would not have done if the price was the problem, and none of us is selling them.
I can accept that not all of us have the same idea. However, if you think we should have kept our mouth shut about the GDs, do you then also think we should not have prevented a guy from selling zeepk razors in the classifieds?