Editing The Pen Addict 142/transcript (section)

== LaPen ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I like calling it the LaPen, but I won't go into it any further than that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's most people's take on this. I have not gone that far, Michael. But you can feel safe in saying that being located across the pond in the UK. So I will temper myself and call it the LaPen. But their Kickstarter actually got suspended, which I have never seen in all these projects we've looked at, at least on our show. I've seen live projects, and I've seen canceled projects or basically projects that have been shut down by Kickstarter. The LaPen has basically – it's flagged. You can't search for it anymore on Kickstarter, but the page is still up and live, and the backers can actually comment on the page. But there's a big, huge mark on it called suspended if you go to the page, which is weird. So I'm guessing at this point it's only going to happen on LaPen.com. I did it again. See? LaPen.com, which you can go visit, and Mark is going to sell these pens directly. No one in the entire world would have any argument against this pen, right? Because this pen is being manufactured by another vendor called Titaner, I believe, in my opinion. I'm stating that because I can't say factually that I know that for a fact. But it's every single bit of information I have shows me this is the case. And if Mark was not going that route, he would have answered whatever Kickstarter's questions they had with him surrounding the suspension, and the suspension would have been lifted on Kickstarter. That tells you everything you need to know about this project. If I created a Kickstarter project and wanted and was being questioned on the validity of my project and what I was doing, I would certainly have answers that validated it and cleared the name of my Kickstarter project. Or I would accept the banishment knowing that I'm not doing something that should be on Kickstarter. This pen shouldn't be on Kickstarter. This pen should be sold on his site directly. Perfectly fine. Go to town. I mean, and that's pretty much it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Why would a project be suspended? This is from the Kickstarter FAQ. A project may be suspended if our integrity team uncovers evidence that is in violation of one or more of Kickstarter's rules, including misrepresentation of support through self-pledging, misrepresentation of failure to disclose relevant facts about the project or its creator. The creator provides inaccurate or incomplete user information to Kickstarter or one of our partners. The characteristics of the creator's account overlap with the characteristics of backer accounts that pledge to their project. A party related to the creator is posting as an independent supportive party in project comments or elsewhere. The creator is presenting someone else's work as their own. The creator is offering purchased items claiming to have made them. Projects may also be suspended if they chose to launch now, which is a system where Kickstarter will allow you to launch without going through to their team for approval, which is a new thing. But on closer inspection, do not fall within our rules. Now, the reason I read this was they're already interesting. The main thing is the reason we've not seen this is this is part of the newer Kickstarter rules. So we wouldn't have seen this on previous stuff because launch now is like a newer thing. So that's why we've never seen it before, because it's probably quite rare.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's exactly right. And launch now, like when we did the knock Kickstarter, we didn't have that option. Right. We had to go through like this whole auditing thing and I had to edit and I had to add and I had to keep going back and forth with Kickstarter with all this additional information that they required before I launched this project.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Why they changed that, I don't know. You know, I guess they figure they have the same 30 days as everyone else to vet the project, but sometimes it doesn't look good on their part.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But yeah. Anyway, I think I did the right thing and allowing the launch now thing because it allows people to launch on their own timetable, which I think was the problem because people would try and like, I don't know, maybe they would try and set up like press. I don't know why. Sorry about that. Yeah, they're trying to set up PR and stuff like that. And you're kind of stuck in the Kickstarter approval process. That kind of sucks. But it's good that they do it. And apparently it says suspension is non-reversible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now that I didn't know. I figured it would be, okay, we suspended it. We're going to ask the project creator more questions and then we'll determine whether we're going to continue with that or not. I don't know why they just don't remove it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'd like to think that they asked the questions first and then suspend.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Suspend doesn't seem like the right term for that then. If it has zero chance of coming back from a suspension, then it's not really a suspension. It's a cancellation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, but they already have cancellations already, a term that they use though, isn't it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's probably why.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Welcome to your Kickstarter podcast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I just think it's interesting. I think when you look at all of the rules, the reasons, sorry, they're also enlightening.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So anyway, to sum this up, what Mark is doing right now with the law pen is absolutely perfect. It's exactly what should have happened in the first place. It was a project that's fine for Mark to launch, just not on Kickstarter. Sell the pen yourself. That's it. It's super simple.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. It does not belong there. And I wish him the best of luck.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. You know what else doesn't belong, Myke? What? Stupid orange metallic vanishing points. Oh, I was so sad. In the rack next to Stormtrooper vanishing points. So. What's the problem?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Tell me how you know about this now then.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, our good friend, Dwayne Lively, who is actually in the chat room today, all the way in Japan. Who knows what time it is there? I can't even keep track with your time. He's in the chat room today. He made the trip to Atoya, which is where this picture was taken last week that we discussed on last week's show. And I was pretty, I was pretty sure this was going to happen with the orange metallic vanishing point, not being on the lower shelf with the other metallic vanishing points. I was thinking they, they popped that one up on the display up there. But the way the picture was shot, it didn't really look metallic-y. But we have the shots now. I love Dwayne went and took shots of the vanishing point to send to us just to prove the fact that it was actually the metallic version of the vanishing point instead of a flat or matte orange version of the vanishing point. So, you know, if nothing else, this tells us that pilots should make a flat orange vanishing point. And at that point, I will do a happy dance and probably go berserk. And I would probably pay the premium for that, which I haven't done on the Stormtrooper yet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I was going to say, if it tells us one thing is that Dwayne is a hero detective.