Haven't lost a wink. I think you've missed my point. I'm not concerned about pipemakers suing me. I'm concerned about fair play on a forum which I publish. If you get a chance, read my posts in this thread.
Thanks,
Dale
Here's what you actually did write:
"Sometimes the complaints are entirely legitimate responses to particularly nasty critiques and sometimes they are entirely over-reactions to the slightest perceived critique. But, there is very often a kind of nastiness of tone that I don't see anywhere else on these boards. Also, I am forced to conclude that, among pipers, there are lots of people who are particularly prone to threaten litigation...."
Now by "nastiness of tone," would you include phrases like, "If you get a chance, read my posts in this thread."?
A reasonable person would conclude you've been threatened by lawsuits to which I again suggest you not worry about it. I was in fact responding directly to the first post in the thread. You seem to suggest these complainers use a nasty tone in raising their complaints. The way that reads to me is those makers raising complaints with you and threatening to sue you are using a particularly nasty tone against you or those on this forum, often, as you state, over petty perceptions. You also suggest perhaps that harsh criticisms in this forum of these makers is unusual, but your primary emphasis seems directed at those fuming at you and threatening to sue you as "publisher."
Now, you raise the notion of being sued as a publisher in your very first statement on the subject and then when I respond to this clearly stated concern, you suggest I read your posts. By doing so, you seem to take upon the same tone you call into question in the very same paragraph in your instigating post.
That being said, this is the way pipers and a pipe makers are. What doesn't happen in your whistle forums is you wait ten years of begging for delivery, and the six thousand dollar whistle never shows up. Or shows up minus a fipple. So you have to wait around another year for a fipple that plays before you can actually start learning anything. Pipers can't as a community put up with anyone in the business of wasting years of their lives and thousands of their hard-grafted dollars only to deliver unplayable crap. You just can't roll over a couple of years at a pop waiting around for an instrument to play only to find problem after problem with workmanship or playability or simple delivery, and ever learn the instrument in your lifetime. Thus, pipers are patient for years, and then ultimately take the deadbeats out of the game for the sake of the people.
Pipe makers on the other hand, have enjoyed generations of being able to jerk-around the customer and BS their way through the market, like owning water rights in the Mojave desert. Where else are they gonna go? they have chuckled at our expense. Well, now they can go to just the guys who deliver playable instruments rather than beg for a place in line and pay whatever is being demanded and taking whatever is delivered. Furthermore, they can avenge their wrongs and promote the honorable in forums like this. They aren't mute, silenced and humbled like lost sheep hoping the shepherd finds them in time for supper. It isn't a time where anyone who wants to throw some wood on a lathe can just chatter out something vaguely like a set of pipes and be considered an important person.
That's capitalism. That's a free market, and that's the internet. The real source of complaint from most of these makers, is they can no longer control the flow of information about their instruments and their craft. The customer is starting to know better, and forums like this insure that they will and do, and that others are warned against the lazy, the dishonest, and the unreliable. That's good for the instrument, the trade, the music, and it should be one of the things a forum like this is all about.
So I submit that it isn't a lack of "fair play," your complainers are really upset about. It is in fact, that your forum here represents the first time they've been forced to submit to fair play. By the time you read a complaint here about some maker or dealer, the complainant has already invested years of being helplessly jerked around by the party being complained about. In most cases those finally rallying the community here have already had to endure months and years of abuse by those with whom they raise a grievance, made possible only by the fact they they have been for generations previously, quite able to do what they feel, as soon as they feel, as well as they bother, and still get paid for it, and the customer had no way of bringing this to anyone's attention, and thus the maker or dealer of substandard products and services could get away with anything.
Imagine the outrage of those suddenly finding out their incompetence, dishonesty, or disorganization was becoming common knowledge! Nasty? Well it's probably quite a shock to them.
Royce
Just kidding, of course. I don't know where you could easily draw a line. People want to know which makers are recommended, who to stay away from and why. 
