Other forum bashing ours
Hi,
I'm new here and would appreciate some advice.
I have been running our forum for 3 years and we have grown to be a well-established, solid forum.
We have naturally also had our problem members.
We have one member who has been with us since near the beginning and has been an advertiser for a long time. Since she joined, she has been quite troublesome and caused many debates and flame wars. We have defended her to our admin and she was even a mod.
Anyway, recently, a big debate blew up (partly because we fired her from her mod duties because she wasn't keeping up with her posts). She proceeded to start her own forum and recruited many of our members to join her. (She claimed she did not spam but only invited her friends). One of our mods found out and posted about her new forum in our private mod forum. That started a heated discussion which she somehow found out about. We ended up getting rid of the mods we had who also modded her forum.
We also asked her to leave our forum and refunded all her advertising money. We have another chapter of our website that is related to us but administrated separately. She continues to be an advertiser there.
Recently, there was a debate on our forums (started by a member who is also a member on her site and has said nasty things about us there). She posted in her forums asking her members to draw the debate into the Chapter where she had access to saying she really wanted to throw her 2 cents in but could not post in our chapter.
One of her members replied that she did what she requested. Another hared membe asked her why she had to create this big conflict and why we couldn't live happily together? She replied that she wasn't out to create a conflict...that we were the ones because we kicked her off because we were jealous of her, etc etc.
I generally do NOT go to her forums...but my admin (who lurks there)brought it up to me. I was very upset and disgusted with the picture she is painting of us. We will NOT allow bashing of her forums on ours and have worked hard to keep this craziness out of the public eye.
I feel frustrated that they are badtalking us and I can't even defend myself.
Should I post there ONCE asking them very politely not to talk about us anymore? Can I say something like:
"I am posting here just this one time and I want to make it clear that I do not lurk on these forums. The only reason I am aware of this is because a concerned shared member approached me. I would like to respectfully request that there be no further discussion or mention of our forum on these boards. It is not fair to us as we have no way of defending ourselves as we have instructed all admin & mods of our forums NOT to lurk on these forum or cause trouble here as we can certainly coexist in peace. We do not want this to become a big battle and we just want to concentrate on what we are doing on our forums and not worry about anybody else. There are always two sides to every story and its not fair to talk only about one side.
We certainly wish your forums the best. We do think it will be better for all of us (because this keeps coming up again and again) for us all to leave each other alone and not keep stirring the pot.
Thank you for your consideration."
What do you think? or should I approach the forum owner first? (our former disgruntled member)
By the way, she has cost us several advertisers and given us a bad name amongst quite a number of people.
Its frustrating because she constantly accuses us of censorship...and yet I have noticed she censors too!
Thanks for the help. Sorry for the lengthy post.
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