The one thing that this election year has brought to the forefront is just how unimportant honesty is to so many Americans. Yes, it IS important to many and, I hope, those many honest people outnumber the dishonest. However, it is discouraging to see how people who wish to earn our trust find justification in the lie in order to achieve their goal and how many people are willing to believe the lie.
Is it any wonder so many sneer at Christianity when the very people who profusely claim membership to that club as proof of good character think nothing of lying when it suits their purpose?
It’s not just politics either. I recently ran across a disturbing (albeit not surprising and mildy amusing) case of dishonesty that I am quite sure is probably neither illegal and in the perpetrator’s eyes is “technically” not lying.
Make no mistake about it. It is dishonest and the intent is quite clear, i.e. to direct traffic to away from a competing quilting site (that does not require a fee to participate in all the forums) and to entice people to subscribe to a site that is (in my OPINION) not nearly as valuable and definitely not worth the price of a subscription.
In a random search for quilting sites I ran across this site. It is clearly a marketing tool to direct traffic to Longarmchat.com. No big deal. What I found extremely interesting, though, were the tags that were attached to this site, in particular, the tags listed as “machine quilters resources” and “mqr”!
What happens when you click on those tags? You are directed to LAC!
It appears this Wiki site was setup in May 2008. It’s intent is obvious – to generate more subscribers for LAC. Using tags of a competitor’s name is probably not illegal and perhaps even standard practice but misleading as hell…and “junior” knows it!
LAC owners are well aware that in the quilting community Machine Quilter’s Resource (MQR) offers most everything for the machine quilter, and more, for FREE. A subscription to MQR provides you with added perks (such as class discounts) but you are not required to pay a subscription fee to the forums in order to enjoy the innumerable benefits this site offers. In this writer’s opinion, MQR is far superior in content and overall value.
In contrast, any forum of any real value on LAC requires you pay-to-play. In addition, the prospect of having anonymous moderators, and the capricious and punitive actions by the site owners with regard to those who strongly disagree with their positions, makes it mostly definitely a “members only” club. 
(Transparency of governing is not a priority for LAC.)
Shame on LAC, a site supposedly run by “honest” Christians. Perhaps “honest Christian” is an oxymoron? 
(P.S. Their Wiki site also tags a-1 quilting and compuquilter (not compuTERquilter). These are both names no longer affiliated with LongarmChat but markets from which they continue to poach customers for their subscriber forum site and Intelliquilter business.
If this is standard practice, then why don’t they also tag Gammill, APQS, Nolting, Machine Quilting Robot, Statler Stitcher, i.e. all brands of machines and computerized quilting systems…? Curious. )
It does make a person wonder Christine. I don’t think it is right either.
Okay, I do admit that in the grand scheme of things, this bit of “misdirection” miffed me. But it has been brought to my attention that it would seem little, if any, result has come of the interesting tagging since very little activity happens over on that other site anyway.
Yes, I guess the general atmosphere of presidential politics has made me particularly cranky.
C.