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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
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
CHANGES BEING MADE
POSSIBLE/LIKELY CHANGES
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
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
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
- Promote a positive image of gun owners and gun ownership.
- Increase the overall number of gun owners in the Pacific Northwest.
- Educate gun owners to increase knowledge and safety. Educate non-gun owners to increase knowledge and dispel common myths.
- Provide resources useful to Northwest gun owners, both online and offline.
- Provide a medium for members to organize pro-2A activist efforts on the grassroots level.
- 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.
- 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.
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- Rule Updates - Particularly #1
- 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.
- The report button will be moved out of the post control menu to a more convenient location (to be determined).
- Enforcement of non-2A/RKBA content rule in the Preparedness & Survival section.
POSSIBLE/LIKELY CHANGES
- 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.
- 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.
- Non-firearm political content will be changed to non-2A/RKBA content.
- Prohibition of news links and chain emails. These carry with them inherent bias and emotion, causing the same in most discussions that takes place.
- 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