Ackkk, SPIES!

[tsheridan]

I have a niche dating site, just a start-up at this point, with a forum added; I think of the forum as the core of my site, which is the opposite of any other dating site I've seen. I get lots of great feedback from the members, and actually more than 25% of the members who post on the forum regularily are from another dating site, same niche, which is declining rapidly; I used to be a leader of their forum till I left 18 months ago.

The trouble I have lately is that 3 or 4 members of the failing site, which I left to start my own site, seem to be obsessed with controlling my site, and are on there cutting and pasting and passing around posts from my forum every two days or so (for the purpose of getting people to blackball my site and everyone on it), and writing flaming emails about me and to me.

They used to constantly flame and slander most of the members who left the other site for mine and admin there let them, which is one of the reasons that site is failing. Virtually every time a newbie got up the nerve to post on that other site, they were attacked en mass, and the admin ignored it. The people who are attacking me now are the same ones, and they are stupidly complaining on the other site about how no-one posts!

Naturally, the people who were forced off the other site and are very happy on mine, gossip about it and express relief that they are free of the hatred now, and I have set up a private password-protected forum where they can gossip no-holds-barred & uncensored, because they really have been badly attacked and want to share their stories.This way, my forum is kept pleasant and welcoming for the other members. It works well, but the spies know they are being gossiped about privately and can't stand it & are going mad, threatening to tell the FBI and everything..... LOL, we consulted the FBI just as a formality so we could stick it to the flamers and get them to back off even for a short time before they start hating again ;-) and the FBI guys said thanks for the big laugh!

I guess I just have to deal with the jealousy of these unbalanced people as my site gets more and more successful, so I am not asking for a solution, maybe there is none -- but has anyone else here had to deal with this kind of envy and sabotage and such, where members or former members try to control or destroy your community?

[Grassroots]

I've had simlar problems in the past from a 'rival' forum. Ban them, their I.P or hostname and make it clear to them in no uncertain terms you will not tolerate this, maybe even contact their ISP as this is akin to SPAM.

Word of advice: Whatever you do, do not get involved in a war of words over an open forum with these miscreants, use your head and seek counsel maybe which I suppose you're doing with this post ;)

Good luck with it as I know how much a pain these things can be.

[rogerd]

Let them know their behavior is a violation of your TOS. (Be sure you have a good TOS on the site.) If the continue their disruptive activity, contact the abuse departments at their ISPs, assuming they aren't sophisticated enough to disguise their origins.

Banning usernames and IP addresses will slow them down, too.

There's little you can do about their behavior off your site, though.