Rival / Competitive Boards

[Zour]

So, currently there are 2 other board/groups have seen our Idea, and made their own off of it.

One is an ex Admin who left, as well as an ex member who left and wanted to start their own thing.

Any suggestions on how to stay ahead of them? They've set their forums to Private so we cannot access/view them. I don't want to anyways.

Ours is open cause we don't want to push anyone away, who might want to join.

Anyone have this issue before and have an idea how I can overcome it?

We've probably lost 150 members to them total, and it's gettin depressing due to the lack of experience our staff has, and their ambition to see us fall to the ground.

[Reeve of Shinra]

Been through this many many times...

1. try to ignore them. Your not in competition with them no matter what they say. Just continue to build on what you got and make the most of it.

2. Curtail the PM and link spamming. If you haven't checked already, chances are good that they are recruiting your members behind the scenes.

3. Make a general post or announcement to bring the practice out in to the open, let everyone know that this is unacceptable (I like comparing to it a guest in your house being rude) and offenders risk being banned. Explain that you are not competing with them, give their site a kudos or two in the process, and don't get caught up in any squabbles. Take the high ground.

4. Stay on good terms with members that frequent both sites -- they will help you bring over the new members the other site recriuts from outside your forum.

5. When their site closes down (most seem to in about 3 months), sit back and laugh.

[Zour]

That's what I've been doin, they keep messaging me tellin me about their advancements, and the lacks of mine. Basically syking me out, or attempting to.

A coder of mine got mad and left to go work with the rival, so that put us into a sad state for a while.

We check the PM's whenever we see one of them log on - is there a more detailed way to track it? I feel like they know, so they delete it out of their Sent Box..

We've been the ones takin the higher road. They've been talkin about how much our site is behind, and how fast they've done theirs to ours. They've actually gotten our Adsense removed since he was with us and had his buds massively click.

Quite lame.

[Reeve of Shinra]

grin and bear with it... advancements and flashy features get attention but if they dont have a community they wont go anywhere fast. Most of these 'rival' boards circle jerk for a while because there are no rules but they get stale after a while and the members end up bored and the forum itself dies out.

[stevectaylor]

That's what I've been doin, they keep messaging me tellin me about their advancements, and the lacks of mine. Basically syking me out, or attempting to.

A coder of mine got mad and left to go work with the rival, so that put us into a sad state for a while.

We check the PM's whenever we see one of them log on - is there a more detailed way to track it? I feel like they know, so they delete it out of their Sent Box..

We've been the ones takin the higher road. They've been talkin about how much our site is behind, and how fast they've done theirs to ours. They've actually gotten our Adsense removed since he was with us and had his buds massively click.

Quite lame.

Why not ban them or disable the ability for them to PM members?