[natickdan]

Originally Posted by tony

We have had members take unfair advantage of the exposure they get on the forum.

One member used his screen name to promote his specialty. He advertised for a short spell, and was thrilled with the response. Then the advertisement was withdrawn because of the the amount of business was overwhelming. He praised the forum for that.

Some time later he began entering self promoting posts. We asked him to stop. He accused of of being greedy.

We don't want any business self promoting, previous advertiser or not. If we allowed businesses to toot their own horn in the open forum members would tire of it and leave.

We don't want to offend our paying advertisers, either. Why should they pay while somebody else wants to get it for free? And when he can't, accuse us of being greedy?

Next case was an "expert" we permitted to post and asked if his business would be opened in The Villages. He said no. He, too, used his name to promote his specialty.

Finally we found out second hand that he, in fact, had planned and ultimately opened in The Villages and advertised elsewhere. That was after we granted him entree to our members. After he repeated declined to support our forum, we declined to continue supporting him.

Third case, we accepted an advertiser and worked hard to please him. Shortly thereafter we learned that he was on another site trashing our forum. We issued him a refund, and removed him from the forum in all forms.

Cases like these three led us to prohibit use of a business name in a screen name, and to check for self-promoting posts and stopping them. There are more than these.

Next time you hear of some forum action of which you don't approve, ask the person who is barred for the complete and unvarnished truth. Do you think we would block a person just because we didn't like him? Usually there is a long, long story behind that, and we don't take that action lightly.

Same goes for banned members. I can't tell you the number of times I heard of how we had unjustly banned a person for no reason at all. You should ask the person to explain in detail why he or she were banned, what type of language was used in Private Messages and in email to us. And be discerning about what you hear from that person. Ask the person why he thinks we would ban him or her for no reason at all while we have thousands of other members signed up.

Think again, and question whether we would ban a person simply for no reason at all.

Our advertising depends almost solely on how many times people see it. Why would we block a person from seeing it?

Why would we block a person from advertising his business? If he or she attempts to take advantage of us, we see no reason why we should not protect ourselves from our business being used to promote his.

Those who decline to understand that are short-sighted and unjustly critical.

I asked for an explanation and I received it. Thank you.