You cant escape!

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Do you go to extremes to stop your members from joining other forums? Such as not allowing any links in signatures and even using your profanity filter to sensor out certain competitor's domains names? (Example.. I type in http://offtopix.com and what will appear is http://google.com or *****)



Ever been on a forum like this? Do you approve or disapprove?

 

[IcarusForde]

Been on one. Wasn't on there for more than ten minutes.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Ive been on a few and to add a competitors domain name to the profanity filter shows how desperate the admin is. You cannot keep your members from finding other forums no matter what you do. Besides if the forum is good, people will keep coming back regardless if other member's have links their signatures or specified their Homepage in their profile settings.

 

[Jazzy]

I don't own a forum but it sounds to me like true paranoia. Any forum that does this is IMO run by a dictator(s) and their own forum is going under and they are desperate to keep members. I wouldn't want any part of a forum that would do this.

 

[sbfc]

No I'm not, I'm not a Nazi admin, still you obviously want members to be active on your forum rather then competitors' forums.

 

[Alien]

I've never been on a forum like that. If they are so worried about losing members to other forums, they should concentrate on making their forum so good that the members wont want to leave!

 

[Evil Eye]

I know a forum where 4Chan's banned... but I'm pretty sure that's because it's PG13.

So, never seen this before.

 

[Jazzy]

I've never been on a forum like that. If they are so worried about losing members to other forums, they should concentrate on making their forum so good that the members wont want to leave!

Exactly!

 

[The Dragon Master]

That is too much like a dictatorship for my taste. If I came across a place that does that, I'd turn my back and not bat an eyelash.

Exactly what I'd do.



If a forum is good enough, better than their competitors, then they should have no worries. And as Alien said, if they are worried then they should concentrate on how to make their forum better.

 

[Ashley]

I don't approve of this type of behavior at all myself. It's absolutely pathetic. You can't make members join one or the other forum. For example, Chatting Time (my site) and Off Topix (this site) are both general chat communities. It wouldn't be fair for me to say something like, Don't join Nebulous's site for such and such reasons and it wouldn't be fair for him to not allow people to join my site for the same reasons. That's almost like where rivalry comes in, and I don't allow that on my board. Advertisements are allowed to be posted after 20 posts on my site, and yes, you are even allowed to advertise a competitive site if you wish. I'm not running a forum to beat the pants off anybody else. Like, oh, this person has this feature on his forum; maybe if we add the same thing, we'll have success as well. I don't think like that. I just run my forum the way I feel comfortable running it, get on with my life (both on and offline) and let everyone else do the same.

 

[McConnaughay]

As far as I am concerned if my members enjoy my forum they'll continue to pursue it, all the links could do is garnered them activity also nothing really says it has to hurt mine, I do however, not allow links to forums to be posted (spam) asking someone to join so and so site or to leave my site for theirs, we do not rival with anyone and we aren't an ad forum so don't utilize us as such.

 

[Bluezone777]

It seems like something a really sad person would do as far as blocking specific URLs tbh which doesn't describe me hence why I don't do that. XD

 

[EvanP]

I don't like this, and if it happened on any forums i joined, i'd most probably leave.

 

[Ashley]

I do, however, remember an incident in which this happened to me, although it wasn't advertising in my signature, it was advertising all together. When I had my brief stint with Forum Promotion Mania, I joined another advertising forum that was seemingly good, and I wanted to advertise my site there and hopefully gain more traffic. However, I was told under no certain terms that they did not allow forums of the same genera to be advertised there, as they would be competitive sites. I never went back there after that. I'm not even sure if the site in question is around anymore or not, to be honest.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I've never been on a forum like that. If they are so worried about losing members to other forums, they should concentrate on making their forum so good that the members wont want to leave!

Thats the truth. People need to get out of the mindset that everyone is out to steal their members and start working on a forum that people will want to return to.

 

[Ashley]

Thats the truth. People need to get out of the mindset that everyone is out to steal their members and start working on a forum that people will want to return to.

Or if nothing else, if you no longer want new members on your forum, you should just disable new registrations from occurring. Sure, it might tick some potential new members off, but at the same time you'll be able to concentrate on your current members as well. Although I'd never go that route.