Forum Wars....

[Devilbod]

Believe me when I say you don't want to get in a forum war, we have a slight one going on at the moment on a biker only site and it's dull.

I'm not going to mention any names, but basicaly a bloke turned up on our forum because his was down which is ok (don't worry it's nobody from here ) - except our forum is completely un-moderated so over the last year or some the swearing levels center around the 'c word'. It would probably considered bad and it is but...it is usally meant in a harmlessly and after all it's only a word, and the site is for bikers only so in thoery it has a 18 tag (more like 21) infact I think that I'm one of the youngest members at 27 .
Imagine if you like a local bikers pub, it's the pub you don't go into not unless you can cope with the people, and duck from the odd bar stool flying about, but generaly once you manage to get in the door and chat to a few people, ignore a few jibs, and don't start a fight, things are ok .

So anyway, in his first post he was a bit condisending and so he got called a 'c word' and then got called it again - now on this site if you just ignore it and muddle through without taking offence youll be fine, trouble was this lad came back by insulting you, ignoring your counter insult and then claiming victory, because he's really is very condinsending, with an "I'm better than you" attitude.
Now I know you are thinking 'I'm not surprised after calling him a c' but last night I was nice to him and still got the same replies, even after about an hour or two of being nice, with only a few people on the boards.

Well anyway it turns out that he came to the forum to poach people back to his site, because his is a bit dull at the moment and ours is always, shall I say colourfull and full of colourfull characters. Que loads of new members from the other site truning up and being greeted nicely and being suprised (even though they did try to delibratly wind us up ), because at this other site somebody had slagged us off actually on the forum.

Now to be honest I was surpprised at the next bit, we just all got on as normal (after a tiny bit of a witch hunt) and didn't retaliate, didn't appear on there site and slag them off we hardly even slagged them off on our site, we just got on as normal. And in turn within 2 days they all got board and gave up, instead we now have a few new members (from there site) and everything is back to normal, although where all still calling each other 'c'.

Anyway I was wondering if this was a new thing, or has someone had an experence of this Forum Highjacking where someone comes onto your forum to poach you highest posting members? or just general forum wars?

I've seen the one where they copy all you treads exactly word to word but that was just mildly amusing that someone could go to all the effort.

[lynni]

thats just confusing

[Knoxville]

I've seen people try and poach members before, goes on on some of the smaller forums i frequent and majorly a few weeks ago when one of the admin on a site i visit decided to delete all his mates forum content and start his own forum while using the mailing list from the old site to tell the members that the site had "moved"

[lynni]

Tumble sez: A certain forum, prior to some management alterations copied the GSV boards... down to the colour, board software and forum structure... it was little more than amusing tho

[Devilbod]

I just thought it was a bit odd, I know some people get a bit over enthusiastic of the amount of hit's they get on there websites. But on a free forum it seems a little weird it to go to another forum and cause trouble in an attempt to get people to leave and come to yours .

We will probably end up with virtual flyers soon, like the ones that you see people haslling you to take in city centers.

[Atomic]

Originally Posted by Devilbod

We will probably end up with virtual flyers soon, like the ones that you see people haslling you to take in city centers.

Could be quite an interesting idea...

[shiato storm]

sounds odd really. shouldn't where people post be left up to the individual concerned? just a bit of a joke really 'poaching' someone to post in another forum...life is too short, really.