Announcement The Atmosphere of Northwest Firearms - Changes

[Capn Jack]

You "Southerners " have all of the fun.

 

[Medic!]

You "Southerners " have all of the fun.

Well. You know.
Southerners feel the same about Northerners as they do Hemorrhoids.

If they come down and then go back up. It's OK.
But if they come down and stay? Then you got a problem.

 

[Brutus57]

I've not yet met anyone from here in person.
But it is nice to have a regional / local place to hang out and talk guns.
There a a few regulars here that I always look forward to seeing their posts.
Andy

Actually, we weren't introduced but I think I saw you a couple of years ago at Ferndale meet, but until much later I didn't realize it was you, Andy....I believe you were in period gear surrounded by musketoons, muskets,, etc.

Brutus Out

 

[Andy54Hawken]

Maybe so ... Hope I made a good impression. ( If not , then it wasn't me! )
Andy

 

[Brutus57]

Maybe so ... Hope I made a good impression. ( If not , then it wasn't me! )
Andy

Typical "crazy" gun owner!

Brutus Out

 

[etrain16]

You "Southerners " have all of the fun.

Only because folks here pull it together. How about organizing something up north for the folks that don't necessarily care to head down PDX/Vancouver way? Heck, you might even get a few folks from down here to drive up there for a change.

 

[Slobray]

You gonna drive down and join up too?

Depending on the time, I'm in.


Ray

 

[dobeman]

I also don't believe our forefathers expected our flag and pledge of allegiance were to be disrespected by those hiding behind First Amendment Rights.

maybe not, but I think the intent was that in this new country, the people could speak without fear of being summarily executed at the pleasure of a king or put into the pillory. Though today, with our sophistication and technology, we have modern day equivalents of the pillory in the form of social media persecution and trials in the court of political correctness.

 

[nammac]

^^^. Seems we've come full circle... Doing exactly was the founding fathers tried to ensure wouldn't happen...

Sigh....

 

[308]

Today the lion is required, under penalty of law, to bite his tongue while the rats flips him off and dares him to bite.

 

[Libertas7]

And here I thought a hero was some kind of sandwich ....
Andy

I wouldn't mind "snacking" on Black Widow...

 

[Pacific NW Rider]

Most of you have seen and read The Atmosphere of Northwest Firearms. My inbox currently holds 376 conversations pertaining to this; an incredible amount of feedback. I've read all of them, and starting today I'm going to do my best to reply to each of them. I appreciate all of you who took the time to write. While reading these conversations over the past few days I've been compiling my thoughts for the purpose of posting them here for public commentary. There has been no 'behind the scenes' discussion among the staff. Though I will be making the final decisions, this involves everyone. Hopefully we can come up with solutions to our issues together.

One of our biggest challenges is making people understand that unlike most internet forums, our goals (which I mention below) are much more important to us than traffic numbers, advertising, etc. Regardless of money I couldn't live with myself if I were running a community that I knew hurt our cause, and right now I believe that's exactly what I'm doing. Getting people to understand that this is a single issue community built for all current and potential gun owners regardless of political party is something I must do. Fact is there are pro-gun Democrats such as Sen. Betsy Johnson (D-OR) and anti-gun Republicans such as Michael Bloomberg (who has been more effective than anyone when it comes to infringing on the 2A). No question, the simplified generalizations so pervasive here and everywhere else are short-sighted, foolish, and irresponsible, doing great damage to our cause in the solidly blue Pacific Northwest.

Our previous attempts at trying to please everyone has resulted in failure (big surprise), so the new plan is to focus on catering to those who share our goals. I would rather have a smaller group working toward these goals than a larger group whose actions reflect that they don't particularly care. I fully expect to lose some people with the changes we're going to make. I fully expect people to whine about heavy handed moderation, though they violated clearly-written rules with which they didn't agree. I fully expect people to complain about NWFA infringing on their 1st amendment right, and I suggest they re-read the constitution. I fully expect people to complain about moderators unfairly targeting conservatives, though they cannot see who was warned or banned and why. I'm fully aware that, for better or worse, I'll have to live with the results of the decisions we make in the coming week. I'm perfectly fine with that, now more than ever.

REITERATION OF OUR GOALS

1. Promote a positive image of gun owners and gun ownership.
   
2. Increase the overall number of gun owners in the Pacific Northwest.
   
3. Educate gun owners to increase knowledge and safety. Educate non-gun owners to increase knowledge and dispel common myths.
4. Provide resources useful to Northwest gun owners, both online and offline.
5. Provide a medium for members to organize pro-2A activist efforts on the grassroots level.

While we do work with 2A political organizations on occasion, our purpose has never included direct political involvement ourselves. Two reasons for this:

1. There are numerous organizations one can join and work within which are focused solely on the political side of the 2A. The line between activism and politics is very thin, with the difference being that activism represents action.
   
2. No way around it, the practice of politics breeds division. Go read the latest email from any of our 2A organizations and see for yourself. I'm not saying it's right or it's wrong. However, considering our aim of bringing people together and growing our numbers, these are mutually exclusive.

Us trying to serve as yet another 2A political organization does nothing to help our cause, it further divides our resources and organization. Everyone trying to do everything is extremely inefficient and counterproductive. Our strategy, a better strategy, is to focus on specialized goals. One of (if not the) the most important is working to attract new gun owners. Once they've overcome the initial, inherent intimidation of gun ownership and hooked on shooting then they can decide whether they want to get politically involved. Our choice to focus on one aspect, the very first steps in gun ownership, absolutely requires that we maintain a solid, positive image and a welcoming, friendly environment.

I'm not sure who came up with the flawed theory that gun ownership and gun politics cannot be separated - they absolutely can. The use and enjoyment of a right does not automatically involve one in the political fight to protect that right. Right or wrong, participation in that fight is an individual choice. When a group of people all fighting for the same cause attempt to identify which of them are 'more' for their cause it is known as eating their own (#3 below). Unfortunately human nature guarantees that this entirely voluntary habit remains prevalent across the the entire political spectrum.

ISSUES WE NEED TO ADDRESS

1. COMMUNITY TONE/FEEL/FIRST IMPRESSION - I'll go back to the analogy I used in the other thread. If military recruitment began with a war zone tour, how many people would join? How many people aren't joining NWFA in the first place because of what they see? One of the reasons this site has been very successful in the past is due to us being local and welcoming to new people, and us doing our best to provide a helpful, unbiased firearm community. Many have made what will likely be lifelong friends here, despite eventually finding out they had political differences. If those differences were highlighted rather than their shared interest in guns, those friendships likely wouldn't exist. We need to make every effort to focus on the one topic that unites all of us: firearms.
   
   
2. OUR IMAGE - Gun forums in general are a great argument against gun owners and the 2A. Empirical data shows that gun owners are generally law abiding, responsible, quality people. Unfortunately those positive character traits seem to disappear for many once they're in front of a screen. Others are simply so far out of touch that their constant preaching makes us all look like Jerry Fletcher. Even with irrefutable evidence, nobody would believe them because of their reputation. Image is every bit as important as the message one is trying to convey.
   
   
3. CANNIBALISTIC BEHAVIOR - Snubbing and ostracizing others because they're not 'pro-gun enough' is a great way to kill our cause. It's so effective that opposition groups actually use it against us, and we fall for it every time. Who wants to keep company with people who behave like that? In the same way you have to crawl before you can run, it is extremely unlikely for someone to become 100% as-it-was-written pro-gun without being educated in a positive, respectful manner in a non-hostile environment. You will never convince anyone by talking down to them or telling them they're wrong.

CHANGES BEING MADE

1. Rule Updates - Particularly #1
2. Disabled Deleted Post/Thread Placeholder - These serve no good purpose other than to anger people knowing that something was removed. A failed experiment, this is why most other forums don't have them enabled. We will be looking into how we can update our warning system to send a copy of content for which a user was warned.
3. The report button will be moved out of the post control menu to a more convenient location (to be determined).
4. Enforcement of non-2A/RKBA content rule in the Preparedness & Survival section.

POSSIBLE/LIKELY CHANGES

1. Crowd Moderation - We're currently testing a system which will automatically hide a post once it has been reported by members a set number of times. The existing system will still function as normal so moderators can review reports and take further action (or restore the post). The goal with this is to get members more involved in the policing of the site.
2. Legal & Political will be split into two new categories; Laws & Legal for the discussion of current laws and legal issues and Legislation & Activism for the discussion of 2A legislation and activism efforts.
3. Non-firearm political content will be changed to non-2A/RKBA content.
4. Prohibition of news links and chain emails. These carry with them inherent bias and emotion, causing the same in most discussions that takes place.
5. Renaming warnings to reminders. We shouldn't be considering this as we're all adults here, but people act like they're being penalized when they receive a warning. A warning is simply a reminder. The penalty for too many warnings is a vacation, which is actually very rare.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• How do we create a positive, welcoming environment here?
  
• What do we want peoples' initial impressions of our community to be?
  
• What words do we want people to use to describe our community?
• What words do we not want people to use to describe our community?

BEFORE REPLYING HERE

This thread is for feedback on the possible changes or questions. We are not looking for arguments, opinion, or discussion regarding our strategy. Though these are technically opinions, Northwest Firearms will be operating as though they are facts. You don't have to leave if you don't agree, but you do have to respect our rules.

What we are looking for is ideas on how we can solve these issues as a community. Please take the above into consideration. Thank you for your time.

Joe Link
Northwest Firearms

I've not been much of an active member, in part due to a busy life. That said, I have to wonder if the cannibalistic, nasty and negative comments are being injected by liberals who have become members with the intent to troll and disrupt the site? I'm not a conspiracy person, so it's not based on that... just wondering?

 

[Joe13]

I've not been much of an active member, in part due to a busy life. That said, I have to wonder if the cannibalistic, nasty and negative comments are being injected by liberals who have become members with the intent to troll and disrupt the site? I'm not a conspiracy person, so it's not based on that... just wondering?

Nah, just sometimes we get off people.

I don't think politics have anything to do with it.

 

[Diamondback]

Nah, just sometimes we get off people.

I don't think politics have anything to do with it.

Don't be so sure... yeah, we get more than a few Loose Screws, but I'm pretty sure Layton was an Other Team plant.

 

[Joe13]

Don't be so sure... yeah, we get more than a few Loose Screws, but I'm pretty sure Layton was an Other Team plant.

Dunno... I use the ignore button a lot

 

[Diamondback]

Dunno... I use the ignore button a lot

Yeah, me too... unless I deem somebody to require Extended Observation for other reasons.

 

[cigars]

Love the ignore list. It goes both ways though. I'm sure that I'm on a few. I'm honored. Lol.

 

[Joe13]

Love the ignore list. It goes both ways though. I'm sure that I'm on a few. I'm honored. Lol.

I like prefer my forum to be like my life - crazy & drama free

 

[Andy54Hawken]

Having been banned from two forums ... I am sure that I am on someone's ignore list here...

That said ...this has been my favorite forum for firearms.
I do like how we get folks of all different backgrounds and likes ....I also enjoy that we can have everything from serious discussions to good natured banter between folks.
Andy

 

[notazombie]

I just deployed the ignore feature for the first time.