Sean and rich, seems to me that most of this "trolling" has been baited, possibly unintentionally, although i can't see how it wouldn't be obvious the comments that follow some of the posts that instigated them.
Who is to blame in my opinion is a little like a chicken and an egg.
And regardless of who is to blame, I think Bruce has been his own worst enemy in the whole ( multi forum) saga, and having a break is entirely correct, although I think a break from firstly putting heritage down and secondly wanting to have the last word would be all it would take.
Only so long people want to read very thinly disguised jabs at the competition (or not disguised)
But who knows? Not me, I'm just a one star collector and zero star seller.
As to you two forum owners, don't tell them that! The mice will play 
Ari pretty much sums it up as did Matt and Neo who agreed with Matt.
What started anything isn't always the issue, but who only wants to play games on their own rules.
When I started a BP thread, it wasn't meant to be turned into a "I'm better than you and I'm better than everyone and that other company is full of posers". It was a BP thread. If you make claims and then your claims are refuted in detail, a smart person accepts the realities. There is nowhere in that thread that I attack Bruce and several times I mention how his auctions are the answer for some, while Heritage or my own auctions are the answer to others (For some reason, I snubbed Peter at MPE. Peter is definitely another option). Clearly I believe that if you are going to "step in it" then you should be able to deal with the sticky gooey stuff on your shoe. Nobody made Bruce turn that thread into another sales opportunity.
Then you have the issue of the Million Dollar thread. I'd like to know what members are allowed to post and what members aren't. It is in the discussion board - where it belongs - and it is my understanding that any member can comment there. Hello.. I have almost 6000 posts here. I must be a member. The only threads that any member "owns" here are FS/FA/WTB/ETC and their dedicated My Collection thread. No other thread on this forum is locked to any member. If Bruce wants to restrict who can post in a thread, he should open his own forum, or do it on his own website, otherwise it belongs to this forum, not Bruce. Moreover, while yes Sean's first post was snarky, it was in actuality a very good question because how do we know that once again it wasn't going to be turned into a "Heritage is bad, I'm good" thread? beyond that, Sean and myself as well as every other member all made excellent comments, again, no one attacked anyone. so what's the whine about? That the ability top turn it into a sales thread was defeated?
Then there's the thread on NSF.. nobody did more advertising in that thread than Bruce himself until I joined in many months later<that's when suddenly the thread became so onerous. It was okay for him to keep it alive, but when some other seller wanted to use it, well.. there's something wrong here.
This is ridiculous stuff. Very sophomoric.
If there is a troll, it's the person who for years has banged on Heritage with innuendo. The person who every time a person put up a WTB thread on any forum would come back with "We have one coming up in our auction next week". When a poster was being discussed was always "We have one coming up in our auction next week" or "We just sold one last week". The person who would take any side in any conversation that was against Heritage, regardless of whether the other side was correct. THAT is trolling
I'm not immune to critique. I get plenty of it, some from some of you guys. It doesn't make me pout. I'm no victim. I'm not looking for sympathy. If I make a mistake I expect someone would point it out just like if I make a statement and I refuse to give some facts to back it up I'll expect someone to point it out. If I say "95-99% of what you sell goes for less than what I sell it for" You can be absolutely certain that I would get a response to that. If I got one that was as detailed and factual as the one I myself posted, I'd probably have to admit defeat. Some people can't do that, so they take their pail & shovel and go home.
