A Brief Introduction to this Page's Purpose

Not Another Dime! is dedicated to documenting the assorted, and sometimes wild, details of Mr. Ken Whitman's business dealings within the Role Playing Game (RPG) industry. This place is NOT intended to be a medium of discussion about Mr. Whitman, pro or con, but instead be a "jumping off" point to enable the reader to make their own informed decision about Mr. Whitman's history and business character. (Editor's Note: After years of this documentation, we simply cannot be anything BUT "con" when it comes to Mr. Whitman)

Whenever possible, links to the original source material will be provided, but in many cases that information may have been deleted or secured behind restricted-access (like a private Facebook page) accounts.

Anything posted here is the opinion of the retrospective author and any content shown is to be considered "fair use" and posted for educational purposes only.

Note to authors: Please begin each post with the original date of the event being documented in the format of YYYY.MM.DD (i.e. If the event being recorded happened on March 15th, 2015 and today's date was August 8th, 2018 the beginning of the post's title would be 2015.03.15 and not 2018.08.08) so readers can use the Chronology page to find specific information. Please use appropriate tags when possible for the same reason.

Note to contributors: If you have some valid data to send, screenshots, links to other Ken Whitman stories, etc., please feel free to send a gmail to notanotherdimeblog. We'll look into it and post if appropriate.

Monday, May 23, 2016

2016.05.23 Commentary on Kickstarter's Terms of Service as it Pertains to Ken "Whit" Whitman's KS "Funding"

2016.05.23 Commentary on Kickstarter's Terms of Service as it Pertains to Ken "Whit" Whitman's KS "Funding"
This post is a bit of a repeat in that Jolly Blackburn posted this basic Kickstarter information on some of Ken "Whit" Whitman's Kickstarter comments.

While he posted the information without commentary, we won't. Not everyone with a vested interest in d20 Entertainment's unfulfilled promises are going to see Jolly's (I hope he doesn't mind if we pretend to be on a familiar enough basis to use 1st names) post.

While most people focus on the almost $200K Ken "Whit" Whitman scammed gleaned from Kickstarter, there is an untold fortune in off-books sales of books, KenzerCo products, and resin that easily gets glossed over. Of course this post is in regards to Kickstarter's own terms of use. We've highlighted the simple fact that Kickstarter should be held accountable for violating their own rules, but just like Ken "Whit" Whitman's off-book sales all this is often overlooked.

Jolly's post is from Kickstarter's Terms of Use, item #4 (How Projects Work). We've copied the formatting as it was presented. Any emphasis on our part, mostly for commentary, will look like this (1):

"When a project is successfully funded, the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their obligation to their backers.

Throughout the process, creators owe their backers a high standard of effort, honest communication, and a dedication to bringing the project to life.(1) At the same time, backers must understand that when they back a project, they’re helping to create something new — not ordering something that already exists. There may be changes or delays, and there’s a chance something could happen that prevents the creator from being able to finish the project as promised.

If a creator is unable (2) to complete their project and fulfill rewards, they’ve failed to live up to the basic obligations of this agreement. To right this, they must make every reasonable effort to find another way of bringing the project to the best possible conclusion for backers. A creator in this position has only remedied the situation and met their obligations to backers if:


  • they post an update that explains what work has been done, how funds were used, and what prevents them from finishing the project as planned;(3)
  • they work diligently and in good faith to bring the project to the best possible conclusion in a timeframe that’s communicated to backers;(4)
  • they’re able to demonstrate that they’ve used funds appropriately and made every reasonable effort to complete the project as promised; (5)
  • they’ve been honest, and have made no material misrepresentations in their communication to backers; and (5)
  • they offer to return any remaining funds to backers who have not received their reward (in proportion to the amounts pledged), or else explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form.(6)

The creator is solely responsible for fulfilling the promises made in their project. If they’re unable to satisfy the terms of this agreement, they may be subject to legal action (7) by backers."

1) Ken "Whit" Whitman has been anything but honest or dedicated. He has openly admitted to co-mingling funds from different projects and people have figured out many of his lies. There are literally too many to post & link to in one post.

2) Or simply unwilling. See any post regarding Pencil Dice and/or Deck Dice

3) While there have been some communication regarding certain project delays, there has been no accounting on how funds were used and what work has been done. There have been multiple excuses as to why projects haven't been completed, including several of "Jolly Blackburn has interfered with my ability to raise more funds"

4) In short, nothing regarding these projects has been done "in good faith"

5) See comment #3

6) Ken "Whit" Whitman probably never had any intention to refund backers. He has publicly stated he is "broke" while also admitting he has made little money from life in general, yet he has claimed to spend large sums of personal money (as in upwards of 133% of his annual income) not only on Kickstarter projects, but also on developing new projects.

7) We would posit that this tidbit is actually a part of Ken "Whit" Whitman's business model. Use Kickstarter scams to swindle a lot of people out of relatively small amounts of money, as-in less money than those scammed would have to spend on lawyers & lawsuits to get their investments back.



8 comments :

  1. Here it is, two months after Kenny threatened to sick THE LAW on me, and have Facebook give up my IP address, and have me extradited to GA to stand trial for 'ruining' Kenny's life.

    "Within 30 days, me and you are gonna get a chance to speak to each other" - Ken Whitman

    Like every other Ken Whitman promise, this one has not come to pass.

    So, has anyone made a count of all the promises he's made and never kept?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That list would be longer than Santa's naughty list...

      Delete
  2. Threats from Kenny are like dog farts. A shitty unpleasantness, but without any substance.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I laugh because Ken made that same threat to me last month via email when I emailed him about an update. He called it cyber-bullying and explained he pained him to do it but he was filing charges and that Georgia had 'very tough laws' making it a 'federal' crime and they would extradite me. It was like an email from an 8 year old. Glad to hear I'm not the only one he sent that nonsense to. The cherry on top was him telling me Im not allowed to email him again and he will only reply to registered snail mail.

    In answer to your question - no. Ken always threatens lawsuits but has never followed through.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Perfect example is the RPG.net forum thread regarding the RapidPOD (AKA Vixen Printing) venture wherein he threatens to sue RPG.net and other forum users for libel, slander and "internet stocking."

    https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?350372-RapidPOD-at-GenCon&highlight=KenWhitman

    ReplyDelete
  5. I just have to say the "internet stocking" gave me a good laugh. Stocking isn't very close to being a simple typo of the word stalking..meaning that the intentional spelling actually was stocking. It's funny how children interpret words.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes (I think he meant "stalking"). I am just repeating his exact spelling from the forum thread. There are other typos and misspellings but "internet stocking" and "internet stockers" are my favorite. It's almost painful to see how he crashed and burned on that forum. They permabanned him,

      https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?352304-KenWhitman-permabanned&highlight=KenWhitman

      but have archived the thread because they feel it is still valuable to people who have been defrauded by Ken Whitman. A great place to go if you would like to know more about his thought process.

      Delete
    2. "Dobby has been given a stocking. Dobby is free!"

      Delete

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