Original poster poses this question…
“I am new to AR’s and I was at the local gun shop and they have a DPMS flat top for $900 and a RRA flat top rifle for $985… Are these good prices? Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Newbie”
First reply:
“Hey Newbie, welcome to the site.
You might want to look into the Spikes M4-LE… It’s a lot of rifle for the money.
IMO I would go that route before I bought either of the choices you listed”
Second reply:
“BCM is another good choice… check out their site… much better choice than the DPMS or the RRA”
Third reply:
“Spikes sells crap, they use inferior steel in their barrels, give false specs on their website and the bolts they use come from China… BCM is way better hands down”
Who is the troll and who is simply offering their opinion on a company?
In my opinion the poster of the third reply is posting solely to bash a company and if this is the case would it be spamming or trolling to dispute his claims?
I think it’s pretty easy to differentiate between people who are just trying to offer up their honest opinions or dispute slanderous claims and people who are posting to stir up trouble.
Those found to be constantly doing nothing more than stirring up trouble and posting with malicious intent should be put in time-out and warned and if it happens again lock the account.
As for spamming… if someone is constantly posting links to Spikes retail site or constantly interjecting Spikes Tactical into every thread regardless of relevance they should be treated the same way… warning followed by account lock.
this is where perception is everything. I don’t think I’ve seen a post that I would equate with your third reply, or even close to it, on this board. However I bet a lot of people read some of the replies like your first one more like…
First reply:
“Hey Newbie, welcome to the site.
You might want to look into the Spikes M4-LE… It’s a lot of rifle for the money.
IMO I would go that route before I bought either of the choices you listed.
I have one myself and I’ve glued half the Crapco catalog onto it and it’s been flawless in all 50 rounds I’ve fired through it from the bench.”
Now I am not saying that Spike’s only makes guns for that segment, and I am not saying that only that segment has weighed in, but just as you appear to have perceived every post questioning Spike’s as being “anti”, many people have perceived a lot of the “pro” posts as being the equivalent of what I posted in red.
and float enough of your “first reply” posts (whether your version or mine) in the short time frame that we’ve seen them, right on the heels of a couple of threads that induced a good amount of dramaticals, and I think you can see where the staff starts to wonder what is going on.
It seems Spike’s threads ran into trouble when there were unverified claims about the quality and materials that went into the product. The claims could now be true, or, maybe not. Saying a Spike’s is as good as a Colt w/o proper vetting of the product tends to irritate some; myself included. However, I will say I hope Rob gives us the lowdown and that the AR world gets to discuss another quality product. If it can make it to the left side of the Chart, then we all benefit.
