So I originally set up my forum because I had been on a forum that had died a death. There were a few old hardened members like myself left - no admin on the forum, it was full of spam and software broken (no new sign ups for about 18 months). I was a moderator on there with a couple of others. We managed to track down the owner and ask if he wanted to hand it over as it wasn't really working without any admin. At first he said he was happy to offload it. Didn't have time. But then changed his mind and wanted to sell it (for rather a lot of money).
So in the end I decided to set up my own (my xenforo forum). Which started off very slowly and has slowly but gradually been building up with its own new members, along with a few I had known on the old forum who I discreetly emailed and told them about the new one.
My forum has been going for about six months. The old forum is just sitting there filling up with spam! I quite liked the domain name and thought I'd try again to see again if the owner of the old forum wanted to offload it (or just sell the domain for a reasonable price) with thoughts of merging them. As by then one of the old mods had managed to fix new sign ups (although most of them were still spam). But the owner had already sold it on to someone some time ago. Apparently it was making quite an income annually, just sitting there, despite being like a graveyard with very old software.
So at the point I thought - what the heck - and I emailed the remaining moderator on there discreetly (again - he had decided to try and improve the old one initially, hoping the new owner would knock it into shape) and said - a lot of us have moved elsewhere - come and join. Which he did. Suddenly I was getting loads of sign ups every day. He said - ah that's because I put a sticky on every thread on the old forum telling everyone to come here.
So my point is - should I be concerned?!! That I am basically getting loads of traffic and new members to my forum, via members signing up to another forum and seeing the messages to come to my forum! I haven't done it myself so presumably am not liable and if he hadn't told me I wouldn't have known. I'm not particularly concerned that the spam people will sign up on my forum because they seem to just post rather than read stickies - and the spam filter on xenforo has weeded out the odd one that tried.
The old forum is so dead that nobody has even taken the stickies down or even seems to be involved with it. But just wondering if that kind of poaching is in any way illegal - or just bad form. It's more than poaching actually as it's basically using the old forum as a redirect.
It was one thing to tell existing members (who were as frustrated as me) about the new forum - but another thing to poach sign ups to the old forum.
The old forum - being old and well placed in google - picks up traffic very easily. But people signing up find they post and nobody answers! Because the only members there are new members in the same boat - plus masses of spam posts. So it's kind of doing them a favour - but ...
So in the end I decided to set up my own (my xenforo forum). Which started off very slowly and has slowly but gradually been building up with its own new members, along with a few I had known on the old forum who I discreetly emailed and told them about the new one.
My forum has been going for about six months. The old forum is just sitting there filling up with spam! I quite liked the domain name and thought I'd try again to see again if the owner of the old forum wanted to offload it (or just sell the domain for a reasonable price) with thoughts of merging them. As by then one of the old mods had managed to fix new sign ups (although most of them were still spam). But the owner had already sold it on to someone some time ago. Apparently it was making quite an income annually, just sitting there, despite being like a graveyard with very old software.
So at the point I thought - what the heck - and I emailed the remaining moderator on there discreetly (again - he had decided to try and improve the old one initially, hoping the new owner would knock it into shape) and said - a lot of us have moved elsewhere - come and join. Which he did. Suddenly I was getting loads of sign ups every day. He said - ah that's because I put a sticky on every thread on the old forum telling everyone to come here.
So my point is - should I be concerned?!! That I am basically getting loads of traffic and new members to my forum, via members signing up to another forum and seeing the messages to come to my forum! I haven't done it myself so presumably am not liable and if he hadn't told me I wouldn't have known. I'm not particularly concerned that the spam people will sign up on my forum because they seem to just post rather than read stickies - and the spam filter on xenforo has weeded out the odd one that tried.
The old forum is so dead that nobody has even taken the stickies down or even seems to be involved with it. But just wondering if that kind of poaching is in any way illegal - or just bad form. It's more than poaching actually as it's basically using the old forum as a redirect.
It was one thing to tell existing members (who were as frustrated as me) about the new forum - but another thing to poach sign ups to the old forum.
The old forum - being old and well placed in google - picks up traffic very easily. But people signing up find they post and nobody answers! Because the only members there are new members in the same boat - plus masses of spam posts. So it's kind of doing them a favour - but ...
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