Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum UPDATE!!! A little banning in the air...

Nyuck nyuck.

Is this the post you mean?

Ken

"Is this the post you mean?" he said with tongue buried deeply in cheek.

Nixon revisited....the Watergate question: what did he know and when did he know it?

Yes. It the line "I have had sales personnel interact on this site and I have informed all of them as to this new found policy of truthful information via this site.", that makes me wonder.

Scott,

Where are you with all of this?

I sent a PM via "report a post" awhile ago of Gyro and his sock puppet. Any luck with that one?

Thanks!

So far nothing concrete connects them.

Ken

How many people post
like this and make the
exact same
type statements
about digital pianos
and that acoustics
are basically worth
less...lol

You just did, so that makes 1.

Gyro's posts don't satisfy your worthless criterion, so that leaves it at 1.

Hmmm, turandot, I'd be careful saying things like that. Might invite speculation that Gyro is your sock.

Hrwtzn,

Consider yourself invited. However, I would remind you that Gyro has been around these parts a lot longer than me, so I think it might be a bit (just a bit) less silly for you to speculate that I am his sock. But whatever suits your fancy is okay with me.

Anyway, I think Ken was reassuring members that there is some diligence here in protecting content, not announcing the opening of witch-hunting season. I don't think Ken likes it either when members who have not posted on a thread are assaulted personally on that thread. At least that's the way I've read his previous posts on that subject.

Come, come. Can't you see the ?

Yep, I think that's exactly what Ken had in mind.

Of course, all this talking about him in the third person might have him a bit worried.

My biggest worry is making sure that when someone is banned for such activity that they are REALLY guilty of it. That's why we do all we can.

In fact, even after someone is banned we are willing to listen to an "appeal". So far, I can't think of a case where anyone has done so, except for maybe people sending Frank B. messages in the vein of "who do you think you are".

In this case, I have received a couple of PM's vouching for the integrity of one of the people banned. That is going to make me spend a few hours doing some "what if" scenarios in the case of this one person. If I can think of a scenario that would cast a reasonable doubt on this one person playing games with us on the forum I will reinstate him and apologize to him. That's the only right thing to do.

But, all three individuals have been on here from a common IP address. Including fong ll.

The deal with Gyro
is an entirely different
Case. If he had a sock
it would be very easy
to catch because of where
he is posting from. Now
if everyone will excuse
me, I am going to go and
play a cheap digital
piano.

(Gyro, no malice intended. Just want to show that styles CAN be imitated.)

Ken

Vouching for integrity is nice, but in my humble opinion any dealer caught using a sock to tout their own dealership should be insta-banned. The fact that fong II wrote in broken Engrish is not a mitigating circumstance.

Perhaps not banned forever, but "suspended"? Monitored?

It is interesting that we haven't heard from Scott.

In a nutshell, there are people who have pm'ed me saying that they know Kurtmen and that they cannot believe that he would be involved in such a thing. And I was asked if there was any possibility if perhaps there was some other explanation. I promised to revisit all the evidence to double check. And I will, in the interest of being fair.

Steve, your point is valid. I have received no emails or pm's from anyone banned or from Scott. If I were banned for something I did not do, I would be emailing moderators and Frank B. in an effort to straighten things out. ESPECIALLY if I was in the business of selling pianos and the situation was not making me look good.

While we're speaking of the evidence, I guess I can share it with you.

A couple weeks ago I got a PM from the forum saying that M&B and Kurtmen had accessed the forum using the same IP address. I went through most of their posts to see what addresses they were using and if there were any other things in common. Now, many of us post on here from maybe two, three, maybe four different ip addresses. You know, one from home, one from work, and maybe a couple if we use some public wi-fi. That's it. Kurtmen and M&B had this one ip address in common, but they were coming in here from maybe 50 different ip's. That's unusual to say the least. When I see that kind of thing I get the idea that someone might be trying to make sure multiple ID's did not hit the same IP address. But maybe not. That left the issue of the one common IP address. I reasoned that it was possible it was because they worked together and decided to wait it out and see what happened next.

Then the other day I got the notice that M&B, Kurtmen, AND fong ll were using the same ip address. That pretty much convinced me that games were being played. After all, why would fong ll be using the same ip? And if it was the ip from the store, why didn't Scott come up on that list as well?

That's most of it in a nutshell.

Ken

Perhaps they all like to hang out at the same Starbucks? Another check is to see if their user-agent strings match, though I don't know if you can get to down to that level with this forum software (can you get to the webserver logs?)

I just got caught up in my email. Frank B. forwarded me some mail he received from Kurtmen. So I was incorrect in my previous post about nobody contacting us, I just had not received the email yet.

In reviewing the email, Kurtmen has indicated that there were some uses of the computer in the store by people and that use was not sanctioned by the store management, and that he was not involved. He further indicated that the matter has been addressed by the store management. The recent bannings on the forum evidently brought this issue to everyone's attention.
I think that Kurtmen has given us a plausible explanation for the multiple sign ins. I am happy to have this cleared up, and offer my sincere apologies to Kurtmen for any difficulties and grief this caused you - and I imagine you see from your end how this all came about. I am going to reinstate you to the forum and welcome you back!

In closing, there is a lesson we all should be mindful of in our use of this forum (and in general anywhere on the net).

1. Guard your password with your life.
2. Do not let the computer remember your password if you are using one that many use.
3. If you have suspicion that your password was compromised, change it immediately (Kurtmen, please change your forum password!!!)

fong ll and M&B are still banned.

Welcome back Kurtmen!!!

Ken

Actually, the important thing is that if others can use your computer, remember to log out when you are done.

However, it can be that two separate people could legitimately be using the same computer or internet connection, which would give the same IP address, and have separate accounts.

It is possible, but unusual on this forum. We don't get a lot of notifications of different people using the same ip address.

Most of the time it's a case of someone abandoning an old user name in favor of another. So we get rid of the old one.

Ken