Forum Advertisers

[Jazzy]

What are your thoughts on other forums joining your forum for the sole purpose of them advertising? They make the required posts necessary to advertise their forum and make no contributions to your forum. They only come back to 'bump' their thread and then leave.

If they are not contributing to your forum, should they be allowed to continue advertising?

 

[.Xstinct]

One of the main reasons why we don't have advertising topics.
Heck I don't even update my own half of the time

 

[Red Herring]

So long as their advertisements stay within the advertisement section and within their signature, then I don't particularly care. Of course, I would much prefer they stay and become an active part of the community. And I feel that it's common courtesy that if you use someone's forum to advertise, then you should at least make a few legitimate posts, but they aren't hurting anything really. And there's always the possibility of coming for the the free advertisement and staying for the community. It happens more than one might think.

 

[Fayble]

Unless you're a promotion based forum I don't see the point of having an advertisement section.. That's what affiliating is for! At least both forums benefit.

 

[LegendHidden]

I think it shouldn't be aloud because if other owners or members of other forums come on this site advertising and your members take a liking to the forum they are advertising about you will have no members!

 

[Fayble]

You shouldn't be afraid of competition, but instead embrace it.. It can only better you in the long run. If a forum is taking all your members then it will motivate the admins to work harder to get them back! It maintains the incentives of improvement. As an admin, you should never be content with what you have.

 

[Evil Teddy Bear of Doom]

I think stopping people who are following the rules from enjoying the benefits of the site would disenchant quality members who do contribute.

Before I took any heavy handed action against someone that used my community in such a manner, I would consider who else on the community might misconstrue what I'm doing as an act of insecurity.

Admins that appear threatened over inconsequential competition hurts the overall image of a site.

Unless these little leeches were having a negative impact, I'd just let them be. Besides, one never knows when they might come along to post their regular ad and get hooked into hanging around.

That's the ultimate revenge.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

We have members who only come around here to bump their ad thread. We used to have a "make 2 posts between bumping" rule to force people to contribute to the community, but it was a lot of work and trouble checking to see if people were following the rules or not. More trouble than it was worth really.

Now we only require people to wait 7 days before bumping. So if people only want to use us for advertising, at least they wont be here doing it every single day. It also slows down the advertisement forum so everyone's topic has a chance to stay on the 1st page for a while.

 

[identityissues8]

Unless you're a promotion based forum I don't see the point of having an advertisement section.. That's what affiliating is for! At least both forums benefit.

And this is the post that wins.

My forum isn't a resource forum, people are free to use their sig. The more they post, the more exposure they get.
Awesome.

 

[Evil Eye]

If they are not contributing to your forum, should they be allowed to continue advertising?

I suppose if that's the only thing they do, they won't get too much exposure anyway so it shouldn't matter.
Going by Off Topix's advertising rules anyway. Even if they'd be allowed to bump daily, there'd be a ton of other threads (in other sections) that people might be more inclined to read.

 

[Death]

I will probably have an advertising section on my forum when it gets a bit more popular. I personally wouldn't care if someone joined the forum just to advertise.