Do you think your competitors have joined your forum?

Here, I don't think any of our competitors are members. I wouldn't be surprised if they are, but they haven't identified themselves.

But I myself am a member on my competitors' forums. In fact, I used to be a highly active member (over 800 posts in a month's time) on our biggest competitor until I got banned just for being a competitor.

I don't see anything wrong with it as long as no promotion is going on. Others don't seem to feel the same way.

 

Did you have your link in your sig, Nick?

Maybe they thought you would poach members via PM.

 

1) I had a link nowhere. Even if I wanted to add it, I couldn't because it's censored.

2) I wouldn't poach via PM. And the administrator would know exactly when/if I did (Magic ) so he shouldn't be worried about taking the precaution.

 

Were you open about who you were or trying to fly under the radar?

 

I just acted normal. As soon as he found out that I was participating in the management of AdminAddict, I was suddenly banned. Out of nowhere.

He bans anybody who poses any kind of threat. I've even heard cases where members of competing forums have been banned from his site, purely for lack of dedication to just him.

 

Whoa. I can understand keeping an eye on the competitor, but you don't need to start banning unless they start causing trouble or poaching. As for banning members of other forums, that's completely uncalled for.

 

Most of mine do but for some reason they join with their same username that they have on their site and then I catch them spamming after a while :pity:

 

My competitors visit my site and join from time to time. I welcome them. Heck, as long as they are not in direct competition with my advertisers, I even let them advertise with a sig link or something. I'm not worried about that. And, if/when I join their sites, they generally treat me well. I'm all about sharing the love for our niche and will do nothing to stifle it.

Our site has been growing month over month and we're getting more and more known throughout the online Disney community. So, it's been working out just fine to this point

 

No one can match Arny's awesomness site! Kind of thinking of joining, after all, Jasmin is my fave <3

 

I think you might as well let them join and participate, if they'd really wanted to they could have been sneaky about it. Hopefully they understand that poaching members isn't polite.

You might want to put a clause in your sig policy stating that any links to [topic of forum]-related sites must link back to you, though.

 

One thing I think people like about my site versus the others in my niche is that they actually know me and that I'm the owner/administrator. The other 2 major sites I don't know who really owns them. But I have one of the major moderators from a "competitor"

 

I kinda laughed when I saw this topic... I run a tracker site and there are many others like ours. The users seem to think we are all in 'competition' with each other little knowing that we have a private forum on my site where all the admins/mods from those other sites can talk about things going on that will effect our sites. We share info about users and bands and tracker code, whatever we want to. We are all quite friendly with each other and we all laugh at how the users think we should somehow be in competition with each other.

So yes, the 'competition' has joined my forum.

 

One of my competitors bans people from their site over what they say on mine

 

she's my fave too haha

 

She pretty, no?

And are you serious about the admin that bans the users about what they say on YOUR site?

If so, that dude is power trippin'

 

I know for a fact that some of my competitiors have joined my website - and I didn't have to look at what was happening on their site, or ip addresses to find out they signed up with @theirdomain.com email address so it is easy to see who from those other sites have registered.

 

yep, OT has really gone off of the deep end

There was a thread on there and one guy said "man stuff like this is why I haven't been here in over a year" and one of the supermods came in and said "well I'll help you hold to that" instant permaban

 

Wow, shitty and definite power abuse.

 

Yeah, that was definitely over-the-top abuse of power.

 

happens everyday there nowadays