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Stupid Competitors (Moderating 101)
dutyje
Posts: 2,263 ✭
On this forum, we as well-intending members regularly seem to run into posts which are nothing more than an advertisement from a competitor. As we have expressed in our angered responses to those threads, our policy as members of this forum is that we will not ever visit a merchant which feels the need to leverage a competitor's public forum as a vehicle for its own free advertising.
At times when this has happened, as good citizen forum members, we have responded repeatedly to the original post in order to point out our anger and frustration that a business would stoop to this shocking breach of ethics in order to drum up some cheap business.
The problem with our repeated angry responses is that they continue to move the competitor's advertisement to the top of the recent post list. Ironically, by telling the merchant that they shouldn't come on here to advertise, we elevate their post to a greater level of visibility and an increased theoretical market. The best thing we can do is to ignore the post and let it disappear rapidly off the recent post list. In order to accomplish this, I propose that whenever such a post exists, we create this very simple reply (you can just copy and paste this)
The result will be this:
Last Post
Let's try to do our part to keep the traffic off these posts.
At times when this has happened, as good citizen forum members, we have responded repeatedly to the original post in order to point out our anger and frustration that a business would stoop to this shocking breach of ethics in order to drum up some cheap business.
The problem with our repeated angry responses is that they continue to move the competitor's advertisement to the top of the recent post list. Ironically, by telling the merchant that they shouldn't come on here to advertise, we elevate their post to a greater level of visibility and an increased theoretical market. The best thing we can do is to ignore the post and let it disappear rapidly off the recent post list. In order to accomplish this, I propose that whenever such a post exists, we create this very simple reply (you can just copy and paste this)
<a href="http://www.cigar.com/cs/forums/thread/14265.aspx">Last Post</a>
The result will be this:
Last Post
Let's try to do our part to keep the traffic off these posts.
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Another benefit of this thread is that it's entirely impossible (because I say so) to derail the thread. Post whatever you want here. The point is just to have a place where we link to get traffic away from a competitor's advertisement.