You bring up an excellent point which I think applies to other areas of the web as well – businesses buying into the “wrong concept” and end up messing things up. I’ve seen a few gaming communities literally revolt against the forum admin because they added unsavoury advertising to the forum! In that case, the community split into groups, some staying with the forum and others leaving to setup their own competing forum. Actually thinking about it, I’ve seen similar things happen in SEO communities over the years as well.

That said, if you look at gaming forums as an extreme example – lack of openess and freedom of expression are far from being the problem – in fact, if anything the members are TOO open and express themselves TOO much – to the point that 30 year old men seen to devolve into a something between a virtual version of Lord of the Flies and a Clockwork Orange.

So based on that I would say that to a good extent we have a reasonable ability to express out opinions but as a (virtual) society, many communities still lack the maturity and responsiblity to exercise that right appropriately.

That said, it was immensely stupid for the company you mention to start trying to silence people – they clearly bought the forum over with no idea or experience of how to run a community like that. It was just a dumbass marketing decision that ended up going sour. IMO, your friend would be better off starting his own competing forum and inviting as many members to join him as he can! If you can get even a small group of regular posters to go with you that’s the hardest part of setting up and establishing a forum accomplished.

Cheers for th interesting comments!
Scott

Actually, I am commenting here for another reason, not spamming itself. It looks like (although the situation you describe is pretty clear and well-known)… Spammers and spamming tend to obscure other serious problems, that are much more important. E.g. a friend of mine, moderator for a number of years in a very decent forum (about plants and ecology) told me that the whole forum was literally SOLD, to a company nobody has a clue about. That forum’s posters and moderators had done a very nice job, dilligently working paylessly to produce worthwhile reading material in their field of interest. The only thing they enjoyed as a reward is freedom of expression and information among them. Now the forum was bought; all the dissident voices were shut down (e.g. anyone speaking positively of businesses the new owners regards as their competitor), and so on.

Spammers are not THE problem. Lack of openness and true freedom of expression, in many cases IS, THE problem – i think.

Best regards, I’ ve added you to my blog-roll. Keep the good work goind.

The problem with some forum spam is that it is beginning to become a little more subtle. I’ve noticed an increase in fairly innocent posts that are made so the spambot can edit the post a few months down the line and drop a link without admin noticing it. I must come across as the most unwelcoming forum admin ever because I tend to delete anything I think is spam or could be spam!

The annoying stuff is people spamming services that blatantly rip people off – I’ve seen a lot of spam aimed at small businesses which make wild claims (usually centred around Google rankings). I have (successfully)raised some issues with Trading Standards before and that usually helps.

The world is full of muppets. I work on the basis that for every bit of spam I get email, forum or otherwise that the ratio is 300:1 spam to legit or interesting.

I did a post on a tenders section of a business site offering legitimate members (post counts 100+) free space/advertising within a business I run, it’s pretty specialist so I did not expect much of a response. The only response so far is some tosser who registered on the forum, has made no posts and wants us to buy his shitty product… Beyond belief I can’t decide if I should out his naff company?

BTW. Like the new look!!!