I have a slightly different take on KJ's departure. First, I should be clear that I wish he had not left as his departure definitely diminished the technical expertise available to the Kioti forum, I don't think anyone could disagree on that. And, he was clearly an ambassador/cheerleader of sorts for Kioti which ain't all a bad thing. As the long term members will recall, KJ had a unique relationship with Kioti which I think was the root of the problem. He had worked directly for Kioti revising the owner's manuals (a good thing) and as a consequence I'm sure he felt closer to corporate Kioti than most of the rest of us mere tractor owners. I suspect, that closeness to Kioti led him to fall into a self appointed role as defender of all things Kioti and that was a mistake.
KJ was not a shill or completely uncritical of Kioti but it sure seemed at times that you could predict that any critical remark about a Kioti would get an almost Pavlovian defensive response from him. I suppose that could be thought of as just simple brand loyalty but for someone who posted as much as he did, it meant he was getting into catfights constantly. The people he was squabbling with may have been wrong sometimes and right sometimes but KJ's reliable defensive posture often just ended up escalating small technical disagreements of opinion into battles royal. I'm not saying that he started all the squabbles at all but his diplomatic skills did not seem up to avoiding confrontation for confrontation's sake. Perhaps a thicker skin would have helped. Some of the TBN members whose posts seemed to irk him most are clearly guys who are not thin skinned, who like to argue and who, like KJ, know a lot about tractors and have their own opinions. I wondered sometimes if KJ just lacked experience and perspective in dealing with such characters. He sure took criticism of Kioti personally which in the end made it unpleasant for him to continue to participate. That said, I wish he would return to the forum.
That KJ's antagonists were not Kioti owners doesn't really matter so much to me. As this is clearly an open forum one should expect "outsiders" to post and sometimes they will be disagreeable. Life on forums is not truly refereed (despite the efforts of our dear moderators) so one has to deal with gratuitous potshots without overreacting. I think one can argue without getting personal and one can also walk away from an argument that does get personal perfectly honorably. Sometimes you just need to resist the urge to fire another salvo and just click on the next thread button. Speak softly and carry a big click.
Kioti gets a lot of attention from non owners because it is perceived as an upstart company and because Kioti owners say a lot of nice things about their machines. I'm sure Hyundai posts are attacked on car forums as well (at least before they started piling up the JD Powers awards). Kioti probably gets more attention on this forum than it deserves given relative numbers of owners. It is not a big three company and yet is apparently making inroads. (As an aside, I smiled recently when I saw that Kubota now compares their
B2630 to JD, MF, Kioti and Mahindra in promotional literature. Last year they did not mention Kioti or Mahindra. Kubota would never mention the others in promotional literature if they did not see them as serious competition). Recall the old adage that "bad publicity is better than no publicity". Defenders of the Kioti faith should take that to heart.
Come back KJ, your R+R is over and we don't want to list you as AWOL.
