The importance of morals

Advice given to me elsewhere: blackhat methods, starting fights with other sites, spam bombing them, doing other mean things to get members.

It worked for him. But a lot of admins would take something like this as really, really bad advice. Their moral compass is strong, shall we say... I actually considered trying some of them, and going even further-I would've done some pretty nasty stuff if I had the means. I don't know. How important is a good moral compass outside of your own forum, and on your competitors?

 

I personally think it's hypocritical to follow the above advice and then turn around and ban members of your own forum for the same behaviour - I'm not pointing any fingers nor am I saying anyone in particular is doing such a thing, but generally the rule of thumb is when people advertise a competing site you ban them. If you're performing this kind of behaviour, you cannot, in good conscience, deny people the right to do the same thing on your own site so therefore you are setting the standard and cannot expect to be taken seriously as a forum administrator, but you will be taken very seriously as a spammer.

Incidently, copying posts word for word from other sites is viewed the same way by most. You may want to keep that in mind. . .

 

I think you are confusing morals with ethics.

Morals are the principles of knowing the difference between what is right and wrong within a society.

Ethics is the application of morals within the acceptable limits of the society or sub-culture that one is working within.

The above may be against the ethics of the webmaster society but doesn't imply anything about the personal morals of the person that wrote it. He may fully be aware that is it considered wrong to participate in those actions but chose to ignore that and participate anyway.

 

Honestly? These are silly methods that may work if the forum you're spamming is unmonitored. If not, then it's only a matter of time before you and your team is banned from being able to engage in such filthy techniques.

Also know that if the content you pasted here was done so without the author's permission, it's going to have to come down. This wouldn't be the first time we've been asked to remove a member's post containing copyrighted material.

 

Low brow tactics are a turn off to good people.

 

I've occasionally had people suggest/offer to help me beat the system in some way in order to promote my forum, but have always turned them down. Shady techniques might bring you short-term gain, but in the long run (after someone covers what you're up to or Google penalizes you) it could come back to bite you.

 

Ethics? Yeah I have 'em. Heck I won't even promote my sites on other websites that allow promotion unless I'm a contributing member. I've flat out banned staff from my forum who've tried to recruit in unscrupulous manner.

I won't take any work from a forum that I may compete with in the future just because just by me working on the board doing whatever, then I'd gain 'insider information' and that wouldn't be right.

 

I do find websites that allow links in signatures, or have a web links area on the website.

However allow the same thing on my website - it is only fair - if you advertise on other websites you should allow them on yours.

If I or anyone of my members post an article from another website I make sure they are sourced - if a member posts one and it is not sourced I infract them and remove the article immediately.

However in saying this I was annoyed a couple weeks ago, seem I run a sports website I am signed up and registered on other websites, and what I do is post my articles on their forums and source them directly to my website - however on one certain website - that has advertised on my website on numerous occasions in the past - they removed my source link from the articles stating that they were already writing an article about it.

And although i know they would post their own articles I thought the whole aim of a community was to discuss and share etc - my views on the game were different to theirs and so its not like the articles were the same one, the only simularities were the end result.

I was annoyed that they removed my source code because it linked back to my website.

And so therefore removed all of their advertisements and/or articles from my website. I am one that believes in credit due where credit is deserved and therefore their articles deserve credit because they wrote them just like my articles deserve credit.

 

i have a lot of morals about methods of promotion.

i would never spam or pm advertise on other peoples forums, because its hypocritical to ban members from your own forum to do things that you do yourself.

unfortunately my competitor uses every bad method that is possible and probably ones most people havent thought of...

 

Absolutely agree. You could turn off some of your best members and in turn attract the type of crowd your not looking for.

A forum gives a sense of community and belonging in my opinion, and going down a bad path will yield bad results.