Hostility or Insecurity?

Tom

An Old Friend
I just experienced a very rude action from another community I belong to.:mad:

I received an eVite to attend a live chat at another community. So I go sign in and enter the chat and we were discussing what we have been doing lately while we waited for everyone to show up.

I mentioned I had been busy at another community and typed the name. :(Immediately my entries were deleted and the members turned hostile.:confused:

I wont mention the community I wrote but I didn't link it - just mentioned it.

An example of what I wrote is (Using Coolscifi as an example)
"Yea, I have been busy over at Coolscifi doing staff duties trying to ready us for some Db cleaning" then WHAM - deletion of my entries.:mad:

I am wondering how insecure a staff member must be that they would think that just mentioning another community would be a bannable offense? Unless there have been other members that caused hate and discontent I am unaware of?:confused:

Now I believe people can run their communities anyway they wish but this incident tells me they don't care much to have me around so I will stay away.

In reality, I understand that people have memberships to more than one community. Hell, my own community is based on promoting other peoples sites!
I am not sure how Kevin feels on this matter but its my belief he is as open as I am on the issue. (Let me know if I am wrong:eek:)

There is a solid line between spamming a board with adverts and just mentioning another site in idle conversation.
While we all want our members to be dedicated to our communities its unlikely our communities are their sole participation. I am not so afraid of losing my members that I cannot bear the mere mentioning of another community. I even embrace it. I am sure many of us here at CoolSciFi have multiple memberships elsewhere. To me that just makes our community stronger.

As proof in the face of adversity I ask all of you to link me to your other communities. Kevin, CoolSciFi moderators, this is NOT an attack on CoolSciFi's integrity. This is a chance for our members to share their interests.

I will start, If I get banned for this then I guess I was wrong.

http://z10.invisionfree.com/SF_Explorers/index.php?
This is my community and you are all welcome to join me.

http://sfexplorers.lefora.com/
This is a sister site to my main community that offers a live chat. You are also welcome to join me.

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This is my facebook community based on the above communities. LOL - Like me

Notice that my communities are the free ones - yea, I'm broke

on to my memberships

http://gotohelltown.com/index.php
This is a horror community where I am lead staff
I have recently achieved my 10,000th post
this is the community I mentioned

http://horrorclassics.46.forumer.com/index.php?noportal=1
This is the offending community that inspired this topic

http://z10.invisionfree.com/The_SciFi_Station/index.php?act=idx
This is mlittle's community in which I am honored as a moderator - thanx mlittle

quicksilverscreen.com -&nbspmovies download,watch movies online Resources and Information.
This is a movie community with 549,605 members

http://www.horror-hill.net/
This is a horror movie community where I am a moderator

http://www.horror-vision.com/
This is a horror community where I am a member

http://www.horrorflixtheaters.com/
this is a horror movie community where I am a member

Monsterland Forums
This is a monster community where I am a member

IMDb: Ratings, Reviews, and Where to Watch the Best Movies & TV Shows
This is a movie community where I am a member

http://gojirasanctuary.com/index/
This is a godzilla community where I am a member

Speculative Evolution
This is a science community where I am a member

Freecycle: Front Door
This is a bartering community where I am a member

http://www.allexperts.com/
This is an answers community where I am a member

http://www.bautforum.com/index.php
This is an astronomy community where I am a member

http://forums.chillertv.com//index.php?showforum=3
This is a satellite channel community where I am a member

http://forums.gamershell.com/
This is a gaming community where I am a member

http://www.gearthhacks.com/
This is a google earth community where I am a member

http://www.school-for-champions.com/default.htm
This is an education community where I am a member

I have about 40 more...

Now you list some of yours!
 
I am wondering how insecure a staff member must be that they would think that just mentioning another community would be a bannable offense?
Just mentioning a site resulting in a banning is definitely a sign of insecurity. If you were a brand new member to that other community and your very first public posting was about another site, then, yeah, I could maybe see that being a possible 'spam' action but from what you've posted so far, it sounds like you just casually mentioned what's going on at one of the other sites you visit.

I will start, If I get banned for this then I guess I was wrong.
Nope, you won't get banned or even admonished. I know that you enjoy visiting a bunch of different online communities, Cool Sci-Fi amongst them, and that your intentions are not to spam your site.

Now you list some of yours!
These days I don't have time to visit a lot of other general communities. :(

In no particular order, here is where I can usually be found these days...

Cool Sci-Fi
-- Hah! You guys/gals knew that had to be coming! :P Seriously, though, Cool Sci-Fi is primary personal site and helps to keep me sane by working on it after a long day of working at the Day Job.

v3 Arcade -- I am the owner of v3 Arcade which is an arcade add-on for vBulletin. It is the arcade that we use here at Cool Sci-Fi. My Day Job has me primarily in the Microsoft .net world but v3 Arcade is one of the ways that I get to do some coding in PHP.

CinVin -- Once upon a time I used to have a thriving business of selling vBulletin styles and CinVin was the site for that and any misc. vBulletin add-ons I released over the years (except for v3A which has its own dedicated site). After I exited the vBulletin style market the site was dormant for the longest time until I recently relaunched the site as a general discussion forum. It gives me a chance to work with vBulletin 4.x (as opposed to vBulletin 3.x that we still run here) and to do some experiments. The full story can be found here. If I am doing development work and it isn't for the Day Job, isn't for v3 Arcade, isn't for Cool Sci-Fi, and isn't for helping somebody else out, then there is pretty good chance that it is for something I'm doing under the CinVin branding.

... -- There are some more websites that I maintain but are either test sites or are meant for dedicated purposes so no point in listing them all out. ;)

vBAdvanced -- They make a series of products for vBulletin. I'm a staff member over there but am not as active as I used to be there.

Admin Extra -- A community targeted towards forum administrators. Relatively small but a friendly group of people.

vBulletin.com & vBulletin.org -- The official sites for vBulletin. Yeah, yeah, I know... boring, corporate support sites.

XenForo -- A new forum package by a group of former vBulletin developers. Currently a lot of drama going on because the corporate owners of vBulletin are suing the XenForo crew but underneath that the XenForo software itself is pretty slick. If you follow forum software, you'll be seeing a lot more about this one in the days ahead.

That is about it for forum based sites. Sites like CNN & /. I visit daily and now thanks to my Droid 2 phone I can be found on Twitter as well.

I should mention that thanks to my involvements with projects like v3A I do end up visiting a lot of forums... I mean a *lot*... but because of time constraints I just don't visit many on a daily basis.
 
Thanx for sharing Kevin and thanx for understanding!

If I recall correctly you are IT specialist. Looks like you belong to a lot of WORK related communities.

I was a mechanic for 30 years and I barely even visited trade sites let alone became a member. To me, The internet is about fun and education. "Where Do You Want To Go Today" defined my my surfing and still does.

I am wondering how many other CoolSciFi members belong to more work related communities than pure entertainment?
 
If I recall correctly you are IT specialist. Looks like you belong to a lot of WORK related communities.
Yep, the Day Job for me is a Microsoft .net developer for a division of a major US communications company. I've been involved with computers since I was quite young and so my personal enjoyment comes from working with code in one form or another.

I was a mechanic for 30 years and I barely even visited trade sites let alone became a member. To me, The internet is about fun and education. "Where Do You Want To Go Today" defined my my surfing and still does.
To that end, even though I spend a lot of time at coding/development sites related to forums, that activity has nothing to do with the Day Job since that is a totally different environment. It is kind of like chefs who prepare classical dishes for work but still enjoys standing over a grill in their backyard on the weekends.
 
People can do whatever they want with their own websites. They need to work to a code of conduct though, so deliberate harassment you capture can be used against them in the courts. That said, it's normally not worth the hassle, and better just to walk away. I myself walked away from a major games community site where the staff failed to act to remove a member for racist language. That would have gotten them into legal trouble for sure, but I just couldn't be bothered fighting the situation.

There are times to stand up and fight for what is right, to keep your integrity. Sometimes it's just better to walk and protect yourself.
 
This kind of behavour (the deleting not the hostility) from forums is pretty common (at least on the forums that I am a member). If someone mentions another forum in their post then the post is normally deleted, it is their code of conduct that is normally mention in the forum's rules (where ever they are).

I personnally avoid mentioning other forums in my posts more out of habit now than anything else. It's unfortunate that the forum where you posted became so hostile, they could have resolved it by simply calling your attention to the situation.

I agree with Tim when situations like this arise it is best to simply walk away.
 
Thanx for contributing Wolfrunner!
Why is it that forums are so touchy about mentioning other sites?
Are the memberships so tenuous that they must be protected against subversion?

If you were a member on one of my forums. I would understand that you have other interests and enjoy the variety that the internet brings. I am not so petty or pompous that I would insist that you fore go your favorites just so you can attend my discussions.
Just the opposite, I encourage my members to share their passions. I say put a link in your signature to your favorite place, Post a topic about why you like the forum you like, Give me a link - I might join you. I mean, WTF?
It kinda irritates me that people can be so close-minded when it comes to this. For instance, I love CoolSciFi. I tell as many people about this community as I can. My own forum is based on Science Fiction (Well, Speculative Fiction) and treat CoolSciFi as a brother not an enemy. I encourage my members to come here and join. If the leave my forum to make CoolSciFi their number one its OK. I do not feel threatened, cheated or angry. Actually I am happy you found something you enjoy. You are free to come back to mine and tell me how much you like CoolSciFi (Or any other genre site).
I have a member that is really into racing. My forum is about Speculative Fiction but I encourage him to post racing links and interesting articles as long as he posts them in the proper sections. I made him a plank owner and gave him his own forum. But he likes Speculative Fiction too. He provides a nice mix to my forum. I appreciate his posts and have also joined his forum.
it is their code of conduct that is normally mention in the forum's rules (where ever they are).
What does it say about the personality of the site owner that feels he needs to protect his site from diversity in the Code of Conduct?
 
Hostility + Insecurity = No fun!

Sounds like their insecurity lead to their hostility, and they only want you to spend all of your time with them, which is creepy to me. I belong to a few other sites and I am a moderator on another forum, when things are slow I jump around and see what's new, or I add a topic or comment on threads. Basically I just like chatting with people.

But I understand what you're saying Skwirlinator, on one site I added a photo to one of their threads which was a member created contest with a few rules. Nothing in the rules mentioned anything at all that I had to take the photo myself, and man-a-live I'll tell you that the guy who created the thread was ranting and raving at me, calling names and saying awful things about me, sheesh! Fortunately I am a gentleman, I explained nicely to the thread maker to set down all the rules clearly and I politely said I won't bother him again and kept my distance from that thread. I stayed on the forum because I had made a bunch of friends there already, but I kept in mind who to avoid and everything was cool again.

I'm glad you didn't take it personal when you left that site, I've learned to do that quickly once I began looking for forums to join, cause you can't please everybody. I've seen some real hostile talk from people on Youtube and other sites were administrators seem to look the other way when people get angry and stupid with each other.

At this point, I'd like to take this moment to say I enjoy being here because the administrators are cool as well as the members who visit here when they can, I know I'm amidst good company. :smiley:
 
Thanx for sharing Starbeast from Planet X,
which is creepy to me.
Yea, me too!

I have always believed in the motto "Give credit where credit is due"
You might notice that lots of my posts have sources sited. Its only fair.
I wish I was as talented as some of the people I find on the net!
 
Re: Hostility + Insecurity = No fun!

... and they only want you to spend all of your time with them, which is creepy to me.
So if I start calling you guys/gals "My Precious!" it'd be creepy? OK, won't do that then. :P

gollum.jpg
 
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