Third Party Press

XRFacts , Forums and Censorship

Hambone said:
Blast from the past:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120724013532/http:/xrfacts.com/?page_id=2

Does that look like "science" to "help collectors and the hobby" or does it look like a sales pitch to control the COA/authenticity racket and make money?
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Quote: "and never again buy a helmet from a vendor who does not provide you with an Original XRFacts Certificate of Authenticity." Nice sales pitch.
I put COA's and capture papers in the same category as Charmin but Charmin is more pleasant to use.
 
Serious Discord

Military Trader.com - 10 Questions with Kelly Hicks said:
Moreover, we discovered that one of our team argued about it on social media, causing damage and further fanning the flames.
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Bugme posted that Kelly Hicks threw David May under the bus. I think he really did. It appears from the quote that there was some serious discord among the XRFact crew after David "maui" May posted on this forum. It appears that Kelly Hicks wasn't very happy with maui's performance here and he didn't know about it until after the fact. It appears that maui pulled a Rudolf Hess stunt.
 
GunKraut said:
Quote: "and never again buy a helmet from a vendor who does not provide you with an Original XRFacts Certificate of Authenticity." Nice sales pitch.
I put COA's and capture papers in the same category as Charmin but Charmin is more pleasant to use.
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I like original vet documents though. They do provide research potential and provide history. I've tracked several pieces through vet docs. But, like anything else, one must be wary of fake docs.
 
tjg79 said:
Bugme posted that Kelly Hicks threw David May under the bus. I think he really did. It appears from the quote that there was some serious discord among the XRFact crew after David "maui" May posted on this forum. It appears that Kelly Hicks wasn't very happy with maui's performance here and he didn't know about it until after the fact. It appears that maui pulled a Rudolf Hess stunt.
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My opinions: It looks more like Hicks blaming "social media" for XRFacts' failure and the Champagne Rune matter. However, it is clear that the failure of XRFacts / XRF to do as advertised was inherent. The Champagne Rune fraud is simply a matter of DougB revealing that CRSS lids that Hicks and XRFacts authenticated were airbrushed humpers. Hicks, XRFacts, and the Champagne Rune seem all inextricably tied together, so there are but two choices: 1) Admit that XRFacts was a boondoggle and the Champagne Rune a fraud and mistakes were made; or 2) Blame "social media", double down, and proclaim XRFacts to have worked and the Champagne Rune real, except that there are fakes of them, just as any other SS helmet.

The latter strategy cannot involve appearing to argue either of those cases except maybe at WAF where there are people receptive to it and the thread will be "edited" for "civility" and to "keep it on track". :googlie Even still, I doubt there will even be an appearance there.

If there was any real chance of Option 2) having merit, Hicks would come here, or appear anywhere, GWH2 would be good, and show how XRFacts actually works successfully and provide pics of an actual Champagne Rune helmet which is not an airbrushed humpjob. Science and sane people do not accept the existence of Sasquatches because a Sasquatch expert who sells Sasquatch memorabilia says they are real and no one can prove that Sasquatches don't exist.
 
I agree that it appears that Hicks is blaming social media, but he's also throwing maui under the bus for being incompetent and fanning the flames. If the flames grew, it was because maui was clueless and wouldn't answer questions, couldn't explain how the XRF test method was valid and had no proof that his method worked.
 
There are no flames here to fan, but in the viewership, many were likely wondering if maui, being the XRFacts chief technology guy, could successfully defend his claims and silence XRFacts critics. maui failed miserably. His buffoonish performance wouldn't convince anyone that XRFacts was a competent lid testing service. maui's appearance here did damage to the XRFacts cause. If there was any doubt that XRFacts might have been maligned, it vaporized with maui's display of abject buffoonery. maui's inability to defend or explain his test method here likely raised the growing volume of criticism everywhere.
 
Well, if maui couldn't defend XRFacts' claims, no one could. He was their technical, subject matter expert, the XRFacts science officer. maui probably never envisioned his claims would be questioned and his lack of XRF knowledge fully exposed.
 
My under the bus statement was implying that the "XRFacts Team" was no longer a team and Mr. Hicks was attempting(albeit lamely) to throw the blame for their failure unto others. Since he could not blame Wilson, he only had one other toady to blame beside those slimy "social media' types like us.
 
Bugme said:
My under the bus statement was implying that the "XRFacts Team" was no longer a team and Mr. Hicks was attempting(albeit lamely) to throw the blame for their failure unto others. Since he could not blame Wilson, he only had one other toady to blame beside those slimy "social media' types like us.
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Oh, my opinion agrees with yours, but throwing Maui under the bus is a dodge on top of a dodge, bizarre really, non-response on top of non-response. It's the only way to de-legitimize the criticisms and questions without responding to them, but double.

IMHO, either man up and admit being incorrect on the Champagne Rune and XRFacts or show us why us slimy "social media" types are wrong. More credibility is lost by insisting that the Champagne Rune is real, but not posting one up and blaming inherent failure due to a misapplication of a device upon "social media" criticism. To me, that non-response is just dripping with cheese.
 
Read the quote carefully. Hicks is throwing maui under the bus. My interpretation: The XRFacts crew minus maui, discovered after the fact that maui had argued about XRF on the K98k forum and caused damage to XRFacts. It appears that at least Hicks wasn't happy about that. Apparently, it stuck with him enough to mention it years after it happened and credits it with helping to destroy XRFacts. Hicks generalizes and blames social media and with that general criticism of social media, primarily this forum, he lumps in maui's episode here.

Although, there is one key point. Hicks confuses the timeline. XRFacts failed or halted sales well before maui appeared on this forum if I recall correctly. Although, I got the impression from maui's posts that they or at least maui was planning to resurrect the collapsed lid testing service. This ongoing thread was a threat to that plan. So, maui appeared here and I would think everyone would agree that maui's performance was inept.
 
My opinions:

Oh I'm not saying he's not trying to throw Maui under the bus. Within the metaphor I'm saying he's throwing Maui on the ground at the bus stop that the bus left about an hour before.

So, I guess he is arguing that XRFacts would have been a success had no one been allowed to criticize or question it.
 
Well, as I said before, Hicks doesn't mention the hump jobs with XRFacts COAs on the web. That's what really drove a stake into the heart of XRFacts. The sheeple could comprehend that clearly. Hence, what we were posting on GB and here explained why.
 
The abysmal lack of independent reasoning ability amongst the XRFacts sheeple / waftarded was disturbing to me. That it could be launched like it was, with so little questioning and independent review of the widely known and reported limitations of hand held XRF, particularly with reference to the XRFacts' claimed applications, restored my faith in the efficacy and profit in Nigerian email scams. Someone proclaiming that XRFacts was the "savior of the hobby" is the intellectual equivalent of a person rolling their IRAs and retirement into a bank wire to an account at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
 
Hicks also doesn't want to acknowledge that if you take "social media" out of the equation, XRFacts was doomed to fail from the beginning. XRFacts lid testing service was advertised as an expensive, $200 per lid, foolproof "provenance through science" authentication service when it was actually based on the visual observations and subjective opinions of maui and Hicks. The law of probability was going to catch up with them, because nobody bats 1.000. But, with a lid testing service advertised as independent and objective "provenance through science," or a "scientific determination of authenticity," everybody expected 1.000 batting average for $200 per lid.
 
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hambone, here is a good one for you to study ...
 

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is your lapdog with you tjg79? are you ready to be serious? ....what do you mean ?....this SS helmet is one of the rarest helmets in the world

do you even own any helmets ?
 
maui said:
is your lapdog with you tjg79? are you ready to be serious? ....what do you mean ?....this SS helmet is one of the rarest helmets in the world do you even own any helmets ?
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Do you have a pie-chart to prove that?
 
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