MY impression of the ethical standards of members of this list is quite good. I suppose with so many persons here, there may be a bad apple or two, but in general we seem to be an agreeable group. I did have one terrific struggle with a list member over a Zeus part: he wanted to give it to me for free and I insisted on paying for it. Dispute was never really resolved.
Would it be helpful to air dirty laundry here and try to resolve problems? As a litigator in the stuff I do to support my bike habit, my personal reaction is "hell no!" I read the list to get away from reality, and I don't want the bad old world to intrude on the list were all lugs are beautifully tapered, all riders have explosive sprints and all hills are down.
I also would be of the opinion that email lists are a very poor medium for resolving conflict. There is a important reason why parties in a trial have the right to confront witnesses against them eyeball to eyeball in live court. It's because you'll never get at the truth with the written word from the parties involved. Even in a simple civil suit with eyewitnesses, cross examination and expert testimony, juries struggle like blazes to tell who is lying and who is not. And most of the time, neither is lying: they both are absolutely convinced that the way they remember the facts is the absolute truth, even if it is 180 degrees divergent from the opposing party's equally sincere protestations. And both are convinced that the other is a degenerate, evil lying $%#&. And both are often wrong.
If we wanted to thrash out the recent Confente imbrologio, in order to achieve anything definite, we would need several days, both parties in the same room, all the relevant documents, a dozen other witnesses and the services of a highly skilled arbiter or mediator to even begin to approach "the truth". To try to do it in this forum leaves us in the impossible position of evaluating based on the written summaries of the parties. How can I judge? I've done business with Jim and he was very fair. I've never done business with Brian (my loss, I'm sure.) Do I conclude then that Jim is right and Brian not? Absurd. Maybe I'll send Brian my Raleigh Pro that needs repainting, and then I'll be qualified to judge. If I could look Brian and Jim in the eye, hear them speak, then perhaps I could begin to make a judgement, but in this forum?
There may not be another forum available for discussing business practices and questions of ethics in the classic bike world, and who did down whom, but I am sadly pessimistic of this one's ability to distill out the truth. All it can do is create confusion and hurt feelings when we wander off the topics of how lugs were filed or when a frame was made, what freewheel will fit Normandy hubs or how Mario did it. When the Confente debate started, my initial impression was that the two debaters were more interested in one upping each other and damaging each other's reputations than reaching the truth. I've since concluded, based on later posts, that I was mistaken, but how can you avoid such mistakes in such a sterile medium, devoid of vocal nuance, visual clues and body language? So not only am I unsure of the "real story" of Mario, I had a false negative impression of two other classic bike masters. I have to vote to leave argument and conflict off the list. At most, simply state "I remember it differently, like so" and then let it go. But who can let it go once we let the genie out of the bottle? I've no answers, I'm afraid, only worries.
Tom Adams, sorry this post ran so long from Kansas City. Time for a beer.
I am no expert on classic lightweight cycles, nor am I an expert on how this list is run, but I am willing to share my feelings about business deals between list members gone bad. Our list is relatively small and I have come to know the more vocal list members well, over the last four months. Let us start first with what bicycles are to us. It is art, and physical aspirations combined. Whenever art is involved, people reveal themselves more completely than in say politics or finance. The soul is uncovered in the process of restoration of the bike and the body simultaneously. The ability of people to share their plans and hopes and artistic yearnings in a safe environment is damaged when someone doesn't honor the sacredness of such a space. I mean all this in total seriousness. That is why I suggest revealing the identities of those that violate this trust, by doing dirty business deals in the name of serving list members, with shared interests. The list could offer the possibility for the buyer and seller to make statements of their views of what might have gone wrong, and the other members would be free to draw their own conclusions. From what I understand, disagreements between list members over sale of merchandise, is not an every day occurrence. Statements that include the identities of parties are no more likely to drag on, taking up valuable bandwidth, then statements that only suggest who the parties are. In that light, what is the advantage of the list protecting those identities, when the list is taking no position on who is right or wrong ? Revealing identities would not clear the air, but I bet that it would discourage tendencies to future swindles. Garth, perhaps a bit naive Libre, in Surfside Fl.