Sorry all, Im not on 24 hours per day I didnt get a chance to sign on to NT this evening until after 6 pm. I know people were waiting on a reply to this post: p087.ezboard.com/fniketal...3264.topic
but rather than re-open the post and add a reply on page 20, I'll just resume the discussion here.
Its obvious $teve has put a lot of time into this, but it wont take NEARLY as long to obliterate his pitiful lies.
With that, lets hold our noses and sort through his steaming pile of refuse:
Thanks for FINALLY admitting that the ONLY reason you started the iss forums was because we turned down your offer to advertise on NikeTalk in exchange for hosting.
I use buy us out for $0 in a figurative sense, because you wanted props (your word choice) in exchange for hosting that you were already paying for. Wed be working hard every day on NT just to promote your reselling business. I turned it down and then you whined and cried about how we slapped your hand away, then made up some story about how you created the ISS forums because there was too much hate on NikeTalk.
Thank you for FINALLY admitting to the truth: you couldnt have NikeTalk, so you made a cheap clone.
Just go to godaddy.com and look up the entry:
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: INSTYLESHOES.COM
Created on: 27-Mar-00
NikeTalk was founded Dec. 9th, 1999.
Besides, we all know that ISS was NOTHING before NT. Thats no coincidence. Im not attempting to take credit for it, but our community sure as heck deserves it. You built a name for your business on NikeTalk, period.
Oh, does that count the ISS mods? Does it count all the little kids you encouraged to vandalize public property with your stickers in exchange for prizes?
I recently received a PM from someone who claims to have come up with the concept for bluesole. You just used him, had him spend hours of his free time to build up your site, and then dumped him.
You are, by far, one of the least ethical businesspeople I have ever met. A real entrepreneur ALWAYS pays his or her employees FIRST NEVER LAST! You wanted to profit before you were willing to pay anyone, and as long as you have a ready supply of chumps to moderate your forums for free you have no intention of EVER compensating them for their labor.
Exploitation 101 must be a popular class at Ball State.
This is an arrant lie. I NEVER sought you out to ask about hosting. I have the emails saved. You GAVE me unsolicited advice about hosting.
Dont flatter yourself I didnt come to YOU for help.
Unfortunately for you, I still have that WHOLE email chain:
Subject: RE: Server Move for NT
For ISS it costs around $2,000 per month - but - I got a hell of a great deal on bandwidth. Most of the time people think they are going to use a ton of bandwidth because their site is going to be so popular -but in reality they never do. Because of this some providers will be more than willing to give you more bandwidth upfront knowing you probably won't touch it. Right now ISS burns through 3 TBs per month. Without the image hosting the bandwidth would be about half that.But of course there is a catch to bandwidth. There are two types - one of them is much cheaper than the other but there are fairly serious delays using this type of bandwidth - even if there are no loads on the servers. And most hosting companies don't let you know that they are using the cheaper version.I think the biggest issues you have in front of you were outlined below. 1. Forum software isn't made for boards as busy as yours without major tweaking and some code re-writes. It can be done for sure - but - you have to have someone that can do this and be on call... if you get on ISS we are getting creamed from 7pm - 1am est and that is with two optimized servers that have heavy processing power and RAM. Right now we are in the middle of totally re-writing some of the code and adding more power... but then issue #2 comes into play.2. There are complex limitations to adding more than one server to your farm. Breaking out the d MySQL is cake - two servers - but to add another server to your MySQL side isn't simple and requires copies of your database to be live so when it gets hosed up you can switch over quickly.... and it will get hosed. EzBoards is really a sweet deal in some ways because they know their board software well and you can grow to pretty much any size - but of course the software is very limited and it gets expensive.All of my experience is with phpBB. There are tons of other options - and some are geared towards larger forums from the offset - but none of them will run your site on one server. You will need at least two dual processor servers and even that might choke.Hope this helps some. _steve
-----Original Message----- From: Method Man [mailto:-methodman@excite.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 1:03 AM To: Steve@@#%$.com Subject: RE: Server Move for NTHey Steve,Thanks for the advice.We don't have any concrete plans to move, but we're always exploring our alternatives. If moving allows us to create a better community and deliver more money to the causes we care about, then obviously that's something we'd need to consider. Out of curiosity: based on your experience, what would you expect a setup like that to cost per month? Peace.
--- On Wed 10/04, Steve Mullholand < Steve@@#%$.com > wrote: From: Steve Mullholand [mailto: Steve@@#%$.com] To: -methodman@excite.com Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 11:01:17 -0400 Subject: Server Move for NTHey Meth,Just wanted to give you a heads up about moving your forum. I don't know what your plans are but I can give you a little advice about the forum software / hardware side.If you decide to go with software like what ISS has (PHP based) then you will need to hire a part-time person who heavily understands PHP and how mySQL works because no software out of the box will run a growing forum like NT. It is going to take at least 2 of the most bad @#%$ servers out there to run NT - with a lot of code changes. I've run into a few walls during the growth phase of ISS and some lessons were learned the hard way. Plus - very few hosting sites know how to handle that much traffic for a busy board. They know how to handle traffic for sure - but forum traffic is so different than "normal" web traffic._steve
You came to me offering UNSOLICITED advice. I then asked what you were paying a month out of curiosity. Did I reach out to you for help? No, and yet that complete fabrication is the TITLE of your post! Clearly, you reached out to me OFFERING help. I asked one follow up question and that was the end of it.
Youre still bragging about $100? It makes me sick to think of all the money you made standing on our backs. You certainly got your $100 worth out of that donation given the number of times you shamelessly boast about it and flaunt it as though you were our savior.
As for giving back, you havent given back even a penny on the dollar for all that youve taken from our community alone. How many customers did you get from our site? Where did the idea for your NikeTalk: the magazine come from? How many of YOUR staff members have been poached from NikeTalk? Thats the tip of the iceberg. Youve been standing on the shoulders of our community members from day one. You owe them a debt youll never repay.
I never said that you dont pay people for Sole Collector. If youre hiring people FULL TIME, obviously they cant live on your boat.
Whered you find talent like RK and Billy Hoyle by the way? Didnt they start out on the ISS forums? Oh, right my mistake.
As for great things coming from all the hard work great for whom? Shilling for sneaker companies is a great thing for fans? You finally turning a profit is a great thing for sneaker fans? Stop me when I get to the good news.
Youve gotta be freaking kidding me. You hire people because of the service they render not because youre doing the community a favor. You OWE them for their services, period. Thats not giving back, its fair compensation and even then, youve VERY selective about whom you compensate.
For example, you dont PAY everyone for contributing. If people offer contributions, and that can include posting on your website, since your terms of service specify that you OWN everything posted to your forums, youll take that content FOR FREE and sell it in your magazine. If someone gets a job as a result of the exposure, thats a result of their talent. You were just looking to fill empty space and you have a lot of that to go around.
Plenty of people who now work in the industry posted on NikeTalk, gained visibility here, and made contacts through our board. Youre one of them. You wouldnt have found RK without NT, you wouldnt have gotten connected to Nike without RK, and though he certainly deserved the recognition he received from Nike of his own merit, RK made his initial contacts with Nike through NT.
FACT: you never even addressed it until it was posted to NikeTalk.
What does that say? Everything, really.
Clearly, YOU care. Thats what precipitated this long rant of yours, after all. Had I not commented in an ISS vs. NT post last night, you wouldnt have made this post today. That much is obvious.
You lock ANY mention of NT right away, likely because youre scared of your members leaving your board for ours.
I admit we lock posts that promote ISS, but why shouldnt we? You dont pay for advertising. Youve gained enough from us over the years. We owe you nothing. Members of your street team attempt to infiltrate NT all the time to promote your crap. Were not obligated to allow them to advertise on your behalf.
There werent many other sneaker boards like ours, and trust that you stole everything from forums to our RULES. You guys PLAGIARIZED our rules of course, youve changed it now that its become a source of embarrassment but EVERYONE knows it and remembers it.
Even now, you can clearly see that all youve done is edit the rules page that contained elements DIRECTLY copied and pasted from our site.
Were NOT going to upgrade our site to look a lot like ISS. All I said is that we MAY add a feedback feature at some point, like ebay and TONS of vbulletins and phpbbs did BEFORE you lifted the feature for yourself.
100% false. What did I ever do to him?
Professor K left when you offered him a job.
Proof? In August of 2004, just a few months before he left the site, Professor K tried to get in touch with me through RK to ask if Id be willing to write something for Kicksologys farewell.
As some may remember, he asked a few people within the industry to pick out their favorite Kicksology review and write about the site as part of a countdown to the closing of the site. He asked me to participate, and I declined. I still have the emails to prove that, too.
I never had any problems with him before you offered him a job. I wonder what turned him around? Was it that I didnt like some of his friends designs over at Jordan brand, or was it because you offered him a job and mod status on your board? Either way, it says far more about the type of person he is (or, at least, the person he was at that time) than it does about me.
Are you sure it wasnt because your deal with Nike expired and theyre no longer subsidizing your contests?
Those $pending ompetitions represent everything wrong with the hobby, thanks for the contribution.
Yeah, I believe that one. Youre still bragging about donating $100 to our community chest, you STILL have your charity auction link up on bluesole nearly a year after the fact, and were supposed to believe that you make significant charitable donations that youre not announcing? Thats logical.
We announce our donations because it is THE COMMUNITYS donation not a personal donation. None of our staff members talk about how much we personally and individually give to charity, after all.
You cant tell anyone here that your use of Nikes promotional products hasnt been ultimately self-serving with a straight face. Its used to purchase the support and loyalty of your customers.
Nice try, though. You want people to just accept on blind faith that you're "giving back" without proof. The examples of "giving back" you've provided so far have all been self-serving. You think printing somebody's artwork in your magazine for free is "giving back?" You think giving our members a free sample of your magazine is "giving back?"
We give back 100% of our ad revenue. We don't just slide the leftovers to charity. Giving back is the ONLY reason we run NikeTalk.
The marketplace is one of the only reasons kids visit your forums, which are and always have been little more than a promotional tool for your business ventures. Ultimately, you benefit from the traffic your forums receive through the profits to your website and magazine, yet you dont pay any of the moderators whose labor permits the entire operation.
If that were true, youd just offer the service through your marketplace. We have measures in place to try and filter out fakes, yet were not attempting to profit from it.
It was a business opportunity, and you minimized your risk by convincing people to invest their labor into your business with no obligation. Some, you ditched before the site even had a chance to fail. The rest will go uncompensated simply because the venture is doomed. Regardless, you were in it for personal gain and had that NOT been the case, the site NEVER wouldve been launched as a profitable venture. You wouldve just used the same marketplace you boasted about earlier.
You dont want your mods and admins to work for people who dont appreciate the value of their services?
I hope the ironys not lost on you, Steve.
Yawn. Just another for-profit venture youre now desperately plugging on NT.
I think you forgot to mention the street address in your little pitch.
Tell me, do you pay these professionals?
What forums did we add that you had FIRST? Tell me that with proof.
Oh, and if ezboard is so lame, why did ISS START on ezboard?
Youve always been two steps behind. We couldnt do much about the forum software in the past because we werent gouging our members. We werent making a penny from the site, so we couldnt afford to pay thousands for hosting. Now, we have the opportunity to upgrade our forum platform and we're going to make the most of it.
Have your developers on call - you may see something you like.
I.e. thats why you brought in NikeTalkers to write for the mag because youre not an authentic sneaker fan.
Face it, you saw it as a business opportunity first and foremost and thats still true today. You love it because its engulfed your life. If you didnt LEARN to love it, youd have committed that a long time ago.
Right, and your form of giving back was to post a free sample issue of your magazine?
Thats advertising. Unfortunately, the info hits NT first so even if that WERENT a back issue, itd all be old news anyway.
Theres a reason he doesnt talk to you and theres also a reason that some people in his company take advantage of the free advertising your magazine represents. If Nike can use you as a promotional tool, so can Puma. The magazine has no integrity, itll never run anything truly negative as a feature or the companies will stop subsidizing it. When the companies stop giving exclusives, the well dries up. Its mutual back scratching. You have no choice BUT to treat the people at Puma and other companies with respect and professionalism your livelihood depends on it.
My sentiments exactly.
PS - If you want to hear something REALLY funny ask ol Steve about the message he just sent to Ktown the other day. I wont spoil the surprise let him tell it or ask Ktown.
[Edit: my response to Steve's slapdash "rebuttal" appears on page 8: p087.ezboard.com/fniketal...6&stop=200 ]
[Second edit: still more desperate, false allegations shattered on page 21: p087.ezboard.com/fniketal...1&stop=511 ]
but rather than re-open the post and add a reply on page 20, I'll just resume the discussion here.
Its obvious $teve has put a lot of time into this, but it wont take NEARLY as long to obliterate his pitiful lies.
With that, lets hold our noses and sort through his steaming pile of refuse:
Quote:
1. The Cool deal that was offered a long time ago was nothing more
than Free Hosting. The Niketalk name and domain would be kept by whoever
owned it I never offered to buy it. I didnt even want to become a mod
or admin. All I asked for in return for the free hosting was that there
would be one post to let people know that Instyleshoes.com paid for the
hosting. That is it. The deal was turned down and I was tired of pop-up
ads so I started my own.
Thanks for FINALLY admitting that the ONLY reason you started the iss forums was because we turned down your offer to advertise on NikeTalk in exchange for hosting.
I use buy us out for $0 in a figurative sense, because you wanted props (your word choice) in exchange for hosting that you were already paying for. Wed be working hard every day on NT just to promote your reselling business. I turned it down and then you whined and cried about how we slapped your hand away, then made up some story about how you created the ISS forums because there was too much hate on NikeTalk.
Thank you for FINALLY admitting to the truth: you couldnt have NikeTalk, so you made a cheap clone.
Quote:False.
2. Instyleshoes.com is older than Niketalk. I didnt create
Instyleshoes.com because of Niketalk I started it before Niketalk even
existed.
Just go to godaddy.com and look up the entry:
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: INSTYLESHOES.COM
Created on: 27-Mar-00
NikeTalk was founded Dec. 9th, 1999.
Besides, we all know that ISS was NOTHING before NT. Thats no coincidence. Im not attempting to take credit for it, but our community sure as heck deserves it. You built a name for your business on NikeTalk, period.
Quote:
3. Only one person who worked on the creation of bluesole.com is under
18--age 17. The rest are ages 31,23,34,38, 20,18 and 26. So, where are
all of the kids Meth keeps talking about? And did anyone get paid to
create bluesole.com? Nope but I did give them the option to be paid
during and after the project was finished. The real opportunity was to work with me on the project and if it took off great if ot we all learned about creating a website from scratch. Nobody put any money in except for me and I put in most of the time to configure
the software.
Oh, does that count the ISS mods? Does it count all the little kids you encouraged to vandalize public property with your stickers in exchange for prizes?
I recently received a PM from someone who claims to have come up with the concept for bluesole. You just used him, had him spend hours of his free time to build up your site, and then dumped him.
You are, by far, one of the least ethical businesspeople I have ever met. A real entrepreneur ALWAYS pays his or her employees FIRST NEVER LAST! You wanted to profit before you were willing to pay anyone, and as long as you have a ready supply of chumps to moderate your forums for free you have no intention of EVER compensating them for their labor.
Exploitation 101 must be a popular class at Ball State.
Quote:
4. Meth came to me to find out about moving Niketalk to an independent
platform like ISS has. And what did I do? I gave him the information on
how to do it. Of course this was before he started acting like he is
now. Why did I give out this information? Because I dont hate Niketalk
and I thought it was a way of giving back from what I took from Niketalk over the years.
This is an arrant lie. I NEVER sought you out to ask about hosting. I have the emails saved. You GAVE me unsolicited advice about hosting.
Dont flatter yourself I didnt come to YOU for help.
Unfortunately for you, I still have that WHOLE email chain:
Subject: RE: Server Move for NT
For ISS it costs around $2,000 per month - but - I got a hell of a great deal on bandwidth. Most of the time people think they are going to use a ton of bandwidth because their site is going to be so popular -but in reality they never do. Because of this some providers will be more than willing to give you more bandwidth upfront knowing you probably won't touch it. Right now ISS burns through 3 TBs per month. Without the image hosting the bandwidth would be about half that.But of course there is a catch to bandwidth. There are two types - one of them is much cheaper than the other but there are fairly serious delays using this type of bandwidth - even if there are no loads on the servers. And most hosting companies don't let you know that they are using the cheaper version.I think the biggest issues you have in front of you were outlined below. 1. Forum software isn't made for boards as busy as yours without major tweaking and some code re-writes. It can be done for sure - but - you have to have someone that can do this and be on call... if you get on ISS we are getting creamed from 7pm - 1am est and that is with two optimized servers that have heavy processing power and RAM. Right now we are in the middle of totally re-writing some of the code and adding more power... but then issue #2 comes into play.2. There are complex limitations to adding more than one server to your farm. Breaking out the d MySQL is cake - two servers - but to add another server to your MySQL side isn't simple and requires copies of your database to be live so when it gets hosed up you can switch over quickly.... and it will get hosed. EzBoards is really a sweet deal in some ways because they know their board software well and you can grow to pretty much any size - but of course the software is very limited and it gets expensive.All of my experience is with phpBB. There are tons of other options - and some are geared towards larger forums from the offset - but none of them will run your site on one server. You will need at least two dual processor servers and even that might choke.Hope this helps some. _steve
-----Original Message----- From: Method Man [mailto:-methodman@excite.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 1:03 AM To: Steve@@#%$.com Subject: RE: Server Move for NTHey Steve,Thanks for the advice.We don't have any concrete plans to move, but we're always exploring our alternatives. If moving allows us to create a better community and deliver more money to the causes we care about, then obviously that's something we'd need to consider. Out of curiosity: based on your experience, what would you expect a setup like that to cost per month? Peace.
--- On Wed 10/04, Steve Mullholand < Steve@@#%$.com > wrote: From: Steve Mullholand [mailto: Steve@@#%$.com] To: -methodman@excite.com Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 11:01:17 -0400 Subject: Server Move for NTHey Meth,Just wanted to give you a heads up about moving your forum. I don't know what your plans are but I can give you a little advice about the forum software / hardware side.If you decide to go with software like what ISS has (PHP based) then you will need to hire a part-time person who heavily understands PHP and how mySQL works because no software out of the box will run a growing forum like NT. It is going to take at least 2 of the most bad @#%$ servers out there to run NT - with a lot of code changes. I've run into a few walls during the growth phase of ISS and some lessons were learned the hard way. Plus - very few hosting sites know how to handle that much traffic for a busy board. They know how to handle traffic for sure - but forum traffic is so different than "normal" web traffic._steve
You came to me offering UNSOLICITED advice. I then asked what you were paying a month out of curiosity. Did I reach out to you for help? No, and yet that complete fabrication is the TITLE of your post! Clearly, you reached out to me OFFERING help. I asked one follow up question and that was the end of it.
Quote:
5. Did I take from Niketalk? Yes. Although I was the first to give $100
(this was back when people were giving $5 or $10 I was down for the
cause now that $100 would be considered chump change but back then
it was pretty serious) to the forum. Back in the day I used Niketalk to
promote instyleshoes.com and that wasnt right. I didnt see anything
wrong with it back then but a few years later I did and I do want to
apologize for this. I apologized to the Meth awhile back but I see it
didnt go anywhere. At the end of this post I have a small but free gift to Niketalk.
Youre still bragging about $100? It makes me sick to think of all the money you made standing on our backs. You certainly got your $100 worth out of that donation given the number of times you shamelessly boast about it and flaunt it as though you were our savior.
As for giving back, you havent given back even a penny on the dollar for all that youve taken from our community alone. How many customers did you get from our site? Where did the idea for your NikeTalk: the magazine come from? How many of YOUR staff members have been poached from NikeTalk? Thats the tip of the iceberg. Youve been standing on the shoulders of our community members from day one. You owe them a debt youll never repay.
Quote:
6. Nobody makes money except for Steve Ive heard this a number of
times and you have to be kidding me. I was the last person to make any
kind of salary at Sole Collector. There were many weeks back in 2005
that I ate PB&J but that is how I had to do it because I didnt want
any of my employees to ever miss a paycheck. And do you know what? They
never did. A lot of you dont know but more than 90% of magazines dont
make a second issue and less than that make it a year. Sole Collector
has become successful because of the people behind it including
Retrokid, Nick, Zac, and many others. And it is only getting better. We
have kicked the trend and are now a serious publication. No doubt things are rolling now but it was a huge gamble to create Sole Collector and great things have come of all the hard work we have done.
I never said that you dont pay people for Sole Collector. If youre hiring people FULL TIME, obviously they cant live on your boat.
Whered you find talent like RK and Billy Hoyle by the way? Didnt they start out on the ISS forums? Oh, right my mistake.
As for great things coming from all the hard work great for whom? Shilling for sneaker companies is a great thing for fans? You finally turning a profit is a great thing for sneaker fans? Stop me when I get to the good news.
Quote:
8. Giving back - Many people have gotten jobs because they have been in
Sole Collector and many people have put their artwork or customs in
Sole Collector and have been given work because of it. Just ask Justin
Taylor. We hire many freelance writers like Ruffin51 who gave back to
the community through his writing skills.
Youve gotta be freaking kidding me. You hire people because of the service they render not because youre doing the community a favor. You OWE them for their services, period. Thats not giving back, its fair compensation and even then, youve VERY selective about whom you compensate.
For example, you dont PAY everyone for contributing. If people offer contributions, and that can include posting on your website, since your terms of service specify that you OWN everything posted to your forums, youll take that content FOR FREE and sell it in your magazine. If someone gets a job as a result of the exposure, thats a result of their talent. You were just looking to fill empty space and you have a lot of that to go around.
Plenty of people who now work in the industry posted on NikeTalk, gained visibility here, and made contacts through our board. Youre one of them. You wouldnt have found RK without NT, you wouldnt have gotten connected to Nike without RK, and though he certainly deserved the recognition he received from Nike of his own merit, RK made his initial contacts with Nike through NT.
Quote:
9. The instyleshoes.com fiasco- I apologized for it as soon as it
happened and do you hear anyone complaining since? Nobody has missed a
payment and the system is fixed and running strong. Yes it was a huge
mistake but we took care of everyone. Even the original guy from
Australia who made the post didnt want us to ship his shoes back. He
wanted us to keep them and sell them.
FACT: you never even addressed it until it was posted to NikeTalk.
What does that say? Everything, really.
Quote:
10. ISS>NT / NT>ISS who really cares. To some it has gotten to the
point now that it is Chevy against Ford but to most it is just another
forum another way to get information. There are 70,000 members on ISS
and it is a great community with an excellent culture. Yes, it is
different than NT but that is exactly how it should be. The Admins and
Mods at ISS consistently lock down any posts that try to rank the sites
vs. one another because they all agree that it's ignorant, and we have
other things to focus on. But on NT all negative posts about ISS go
unheeded and end up in the archives but if there is a positive post
it is locked or magically disappears.
Clearly, YOU care. Thats what precipitated this long rant of yours, after all. Had I not commented in an ISS vs. NT post last night, you wouldnt have made this post today. That much is obvious.
You lock ANY mention of NT right away, likely because youre scared of your members leaving your board for ours.
I admit we lock posts that promote ISS, but why shouldnt we? You dont pay for advertising. Youve gained enough from us over the years. We owe you nothing. Members of your street team attempt to infiltrate NT all the time to promote your crap. Were not obligated to allow them to advertise on your behalf.
Quote:
11. NT actually upgraded their site to look a lot like ISS? Am I mad? No
way. There are only so many way to organize a site like NT and ISS
but to think ISS copied from NT is just wrong. Yeah we have the
Stoneface from Ezboards and that too will be upgraded soon.
There werent many other sneaker boards like ours, and trust that you stole everything from forums to our RULES. You guys PLAGIARIZED our rules of course, youve changed it now that its become a source of embarrassment but EVERYONE knows it and remembers it.
Even now, you can clearly see that all youve done is edit the rules page that contained elements DIRECTLY copied and pasted from our site.
Were NOT going to upgrade our site to look a lot like ISS. All I said is that we MAY add a feedback feature at some point, like ebay and TONS of vbulletins and phpbbs did BEFORE you lifted the feature for yourself.
Quote:
12. Think about this ProfessorK left NT because of Meth. To be honest
I never met anyone who gave so much to the sneaker culture without ever
asking for anything in return except maybe Retrokid. ProfessorK is a
SERIOUSLY intelligent cat and has earned the utmost respect world wide
for what he has done. And Meth makes him so pissed he walks? That in
itself should get people to feverishly shake their heads.
100% false. What did I ever do to him?
Professor K left when you offered him a job.
Proof? In August of 2004, just a few months before he left the site, Professor K tried to get in touch with me through RK to ask if Id be willing to write something for Kicksologys farewell.
As some may remember, he asked a few people within the industry to pick out their favorite Kicksology review and write about the site as part of a countdown to the closing of the site. He asked me to participate, and I declined. I still have the emails to prove that, too.
I never had any problems with him before you offered him a job. I wonder what turned him around? Was it that I didnt like some of his friends designs over at Jordan brand, or was it because you offered him a job and mod status on your board? Either way, it says far more about the type of person he is (or, at least, the person he was at that time) than it does about me.
Quote:
13. The sneaker competitions were a great idea on paper but it changed
the dynamics of the culture. After the last one I decided to make it a
final comp. I think it was great for people to get together and talk
about and see amazing kicks but the competitions just got out of hand
on the buy / sell - secretive side.
Are you sure it wasnt because your deal with Nike expired and theyre no longer subsidizing your contests?
Those $pending ompetitions represent everything wrong with the hobby, thanks for the contribution.
Quote:
14. We give back via charity all of the time. Just because I dont post
it every other day doesnt mean that we dont do it. Another perfect
example of misinforming the public is this statement from Meth: where
he just flipped a pair of shoes he got free of charge from Nike - some
sacrifice. How do you know where I got these shoes? You always talk
like you know. I didnt get these shoes from Nike. And why is putting up
a pair of shoes I received for auction a bad thing? How do you know if
they were my one and only personal pairs of these shoes? I would think
that is a hell of a lot more positive than throwing up some ads and
telling everyone to click on them which is against the Google adword
rules -. Plus, we have given away PlayStation AF1s and over $15,000
worth of other shoes on the forum for free--not to attract users, but to
give back in a unique way. I have connections and I channel these
connections to the forum for the community. It is a win win situation,
but somehow Meth likes to slant it as a negative or that there is some
ulterior motive.
Yeah, I believe that one. Youre still bragging about donating $100 to our community chest, you STILL have your charity auction link up on bluesole nearly a year after the fact, and were supposed to believe that you make significant charitable donations that youre not announcing? Thats logical.
We announce our donations because it is THE COMMUNITYS donation not a personal donation. None of our staff members talk about how much we personally and individually give to charity, after all.
You cant tell anyone here that your use of Nikes promotional products hasnt been ultimately self-serving with a straight face. Its used to purchase the support and loyalty of your customers.
Nice try, though. You want people to just accept on blind faith that you're "giving back" without proof. The examples of "giving back" you've provided so far have all been self-serving. You think printing somebody's artwork in your magazine for free is "giving back?" You think giving our members a free sample of your magazine is "giving back?"
We give back 100% of our ad revenue. We don't just slide the leftovers to charity. Giving back is the ONLY reason we run NikeTalk.
Quote:
15. Creating the marketplace has taken a huge chunk out of sales on
instyleshoes.com. A lot of people are going to say that is the best
part of the forum and of course Steve would keep the marketplace
going.. When I started ISS I knew the marketplace could be important to
the community and instead of leaving it out so I would make more money
on instyleshoes.com I went ahead and created it and Im glad I did.
There are 100s of transactions per day and Im proud of my team as they
have grown into something substantial. In fact, there have been
instances when the ISS/SC staff considered doing away with the
Marketplace at times when there seemed to be an increasing number of
frauds. Instead, I encouraged them to keep the Marketplace. As a result,
they are continually modifying rules to try to make it the best
Marketplace possible given the nature of the boards. I see the
Marketplace as a serious asset to the community, and wouldn't have it
any other way. But of course it is easy to overlook matters like this
and continually try to spin things negatively.
The marketplace is one of the only reasons kids visit your forums, which are and always have been little more than a promotional tool for your business ventures. Ultimately, you benefit from the traffic your forums receive through the profits to your website and magazine, yet you dont pay any of the moderators whose labor permits the entire operation.
Quote:
16. Although the greenstole April fools joke was kind of funny its
fundamental message was bad. Filtering out fakes is a positive thing,
and we all know that with the rapid proliferation of fakes being sold
via the internet--something that we all complain about continuously. So
why trying to remedy that situation gets interpreted as a bad thing is
beyond me. Just because it is a business doesnt mean it is a appalling
thing.
If that were true, youd just offer the service through your marketplace. We have measures in place to try and filter out fakes, yet were not attempting to profit from it.
It was a business opportunity, and you minimized your risk by convincing people to invest their labor into your business with no obligation. Some, you ditched before the site even had a chance to fail. The rest will go uncompensated simply because the venture is doomed. Regardless, you were in it for personal gain and had that NOT been the case, the site NEVER wouldve been launched as a profitable venture. You wouldve just used the same marketplace you boasted about earlier.
Quote:
17. Did I ban people that made comments on NT about how ISS sucks and
the only reason they USE the site is because of the marketplace? Yes
and the reason I did it was because I didnt think it was fair for my
mods and admins to work for people like that.
You dont want your mods and admins to work for people who dont appreciate the value of their services?
I hope the ironys not lost on you, Steve.
Quote:
18. Sole Bar the joint isnt anything like what people are posting
and that is how I want it. When July 7th rolls around people will see
what we are all about. And no, we are not going to sell alcohol it
isnt that type of bar. It is a sole bar (my friend owns the Shoe Bar in
Tokyo and even that store isnt like ours)
Yawn. Just another for-profit venture youre now desperately plugging on NT.
I think you forgot to mention the street address in your little pitch.
Quote:
Do you know we have
professionals working on the forum software on a daily basis? And why
say things are stolen or hacked do you know this for fact? The fact
is that nothing is stolen or hacked (except the stoneface is borrowed).
And we stole NTs format? Please. Take a look at what NT looked like 2
years ago and what ISS looked like now NT looks a lot more like ISS
than ever before. It is just sad to see someone like Meth cry so much
and so often about things he just doesnt know about. We have a new site
coming out as well but you wont see me bashing any other site because
of the software they are using.
Tell me, do you pay these professionals?
What forums did we add that you had FIRST? Tell me that with proof.
Oh, and if ezboard is so lame, why did ISS START on ezboard?
Youve always been two steps behind. We couldnt do much about the forum software in the past because we werent gouging our members. We werent making a penny from the site, so we couldnt afford to pay thousands for hosting. Now, we have the opportunity to upgrade our forum platform and we're going to make the most of it.
Have your developers on call - you may see something you like.
Quote:
But I cant front - wasnt raised with the knowledge that a lot of you were raised with so that is why SC has expert writers who have lived / still live the shoe life.
I.e. thats why you brought in NikeTalkers to write for the mag because youre not an authentic sneaker fan.
Quote:
My emersion into the shoe world happened in 1995 and Ive been going strong ever since.
Face it, you saw it as a business opportunity first and foremost and thats still true today. You love it because its engulfed your life. If you didnt LEARN to love it, youd have committed that a long time ago.
Quote:Thats what weve been doing. Forgive me if I havent praised you lately; I havent seen much cause.
If I messed up or if someone that works with me screws up lay it on us we deserve it.
Quote:
Now Im not here to sell anything Im here to educate and give
something back to NT.
Right, and your form of giving back was to post a free sample issue of your magazine?
Thats advertising. Unfortunately, the info hits NT first so even if that WERENT a back issue, itd all be old news anyway.
Quote:
And if you REALLY want to know what Sole Collector is all about and
how we run the business then ask Air Rev. I havent talked to him since
our disagreement on the forum a long time ago but ask him how Sole
Collector treats the company he works for and what level of
professionalism we bring.
Theres a reason he doesnt talk to you and theres also a reason that some people in his company take advantage of the free advertising your magazine represents. If Nike can use you as a promotional tool, so can Puma. The magazine has no integrity, itll never run anything truly negative as a feature or the companies will stop subsidizing it. When the companies stop giving exclusives, the well dries up. Its mutual back scratching. You have no choice BUT to treat the people at Puma and other companies with respect and professionalism your livelihood depends on it.
Quote:
It is easy to blindly follow someone but
once that person has been proven wrong multiple times you have to
question your own self as to why you believe- just because it is easy
isnt a good answer. Secondly, karma is a b!tch and at some point in
time it is going to catch up.
My sentiments exactly.
PS - If you want to hear something REALLY funny ask ol Steve about the message he just sent to Ktown the other day. I wont spoil the surprise let him tell it or ask Ktown.
[Edit: my response to Steve's slapdash "rebuttal" appears on page 8: p087.ezboard.com/fniketal...6&stop=200 ]
[Second edit: still more desperate, false allegations shattered on page 21: p087.ezboard.com/fniketal...1&stop=511 ]
