UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Chit Chat What to do with competitors posts

I've seen a couple of my members use my forums to advertise their own websites that directly compete with mine. I'm sure many of you have come up against this in the past - what do you do?

So far, I've tried my best to fight my urge to delete them and be tolerant... but I'm not sure if that's what is best.

https://ubbdev.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=31;t=000123#000008

Personally I take UBBDev's stance on rivalry and forbid posting of rival sites unless they genuinely must accompany the user's post to make sense... That's just me though. There are some instances where that either isn't neccessary or needs to be changed.

(LK): But the problem comes when senior members start to post rival URLs for no reason...

Is useful information being posted, just a link that could have the information or do you consider it blatant spamming?

I might allow it on occasion but not continually and I'd probably disallow it in a signature.

My Community\'s Standards Linking Policy doesn't allow links to other message boards, period. I'll remove posts with them and add those URLs to the censor right away.

Over three years it has only been an issue once and I had to ban that member to resolve it.

Its your board so you get the chance to be The King. Set the rules and enforce them with an iron fist.

We've mentioned this sort of thing in the Showcase Forum before.

The best thing is to have clearly defined rules of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable behavior and enforce them (as a team).

That being said, approach the person privately and state that is the board's policy not to allow any spam-like threads and ask that they refrain from doing so in the future. Better to approach them privately than making a public scene by banning someone right off the bat.

You don't want to put any negative image on your site and what you have worked toward, and certainly don't want any conflicts between competing communities aired in public. The other person may see this as a way to drive a wedge in your community.

If the person refuses to stop, then you need to edit/close their posts and if that still doesn't stop them then remove their posting privs for a while. Still a problem, then a ban is probably the last resort.

If you are consistant with you policies, your members will be understanding.

Luckily we don't block URLs to other message boards :rolleyes:

Edit: because I don't want people to say I'm spamming, I'll add another way: maybe moderate registrations?

Excellent posts everyone. I've taken the liberty to e-mail the offending party - even before posting about it here.

It's hard for me to enforce a non-competitive clause since many of my member talk about my site on other boards all the time. It would seem hypocritical.

I've brought the matter up with my moderators and am letting them discuss it in our private forum.

The catch is that if you prohibit competitors' ads, then your members may feel you're placing your own goals ahead of their needs, by depriving them of information about resources that could benefit them. The competitor might then publicize the fact that he doesn't use such an "unreasonable" policy, as a device for "stealing" your members.

Life is complicated on the internet.

Warn them on advertising such sites as these, and if they don't comply take action. Being too soft will make them see right through you so be careful.

Persoanly I like it when competitors are mentioned as sometimes I do not even know they exist. Most of the time Hostboard out shines them in what we do. The few occasions that we don't I take notes on what they have and make plans to bringing that feature(s) online.

I think if you're a small fish in a big pond, :rolleyes: , it's unfair to advertise bigger sites. Your members probably know of them anyhow and maybe it's a spoiling tactic.

My site was small compared to the established and dominant player in my area of the Net. Part of my promotional goals were to advertise my presence on the larger site. When we launched we posted, whenever we had useful information or pictures that we thought would be of interest, we posted. If we knew the answer to something that was being asked, we posted with a link.

It all helped to build up our presence and I didn't feel too guilty for doing it.

However, my site cornered our market 9 months after launch and we're the domininant site (for the time being). Other webmasters do advertise their sites and I let it go as most of them are small sites and couldn't compete.

As others have said I use it as competitive information. If other sites are more attractive than mine, I want to know and understand why and then add those features to my site.

My biggest advantage is that I have the premiere spots on the search engines. Anybody looking for information is bound to hit my site at some point. When they see the size of it, they often stick around.

I never banned, I just seethed inside and stuck with it but took advantage of my site's strength. Its ability to get news and information out there faster than the bigger site.

We don't allow blatant pimping of competing sites: as Tacks said, handling that privately and progressively has worked great for us.

In return, we do not pimp our site on competing sites. If one of our mods were to do, I would contact the other site admin and ask him/her to remove the posts and our mod would be removed from the mod status on our boards.

We do allow links in sigs to competing sites.

In the end, we feel we and our competitors will succeed or fail based on quality and communities and content. I'd rather spend my time making our place better instead of telling everyone how much better it is; people will notice the former and disregard the latter if there's no beef.