- "the whole forum was sure this was a scam" -> On the contrary, if you read the forums carefully you will find a very small number of critics with no credibility, and/or a history of trolling, making a lot of posts, but there is a much larger number of supporters (older accounts with more credence) who only defend ASIC vendors occasionally. The mere fact that BFL has so many preorders proves the large number of believers/supporters (and yes some of these customers in line are here just for the quick money and have no idea of the risks) - this is one of the reasons I say you are misinformed, because you failed to distinguish the general opinion of the forum members - but this is not your fault - it takes a lot of time to sift through the posts to filter out who can be trusted, who has the credentials, what information is important, etc
Actually it's been the opposite in this case. A number of veterans here cast doubt over Avalon as a result of their sudden "BFL like" behavior, which is a lot more than I can say about the nonsense that surrounded BFL for quite some time. Avalon started out with some transparency, but when it came time to package and ship they suddenly went secretive. That's never usually a good sign, and resulted in quite a bit of reasonable unease. It was the "newbie" accounts that kept popping up noting Avalon wasn't a scam and that we were overreacting.
Given the information (or lack thereof) we had available to us, I found the unease and pessimistic speculation justified, if not warranted. People can only make informed decisions with information...take that away and we're left with our imaginations.
Well, what can I say... you were wrong too about interpreting the forum's general opinion. "The number of veterans" who casted doubt about Avalon were almost all posters with no credibitily, no trust, and a history of trolling and making wrong guesses. Just because someone is a veteran (has a high post count) does not mean he can be trusted.
I challenge you to list 5 trusted veterans who expressed a high certainty that Avalon was a scam -> you will not find any.
That's a skill you have to learn on a forum like this: determining who can be trusted in what they say/think vs. who is uninformed. A good starting point is to look at how dark the poster's "ignore" link is (the darker = the more persons chose to ignore him because what he says is not valuable).