Awareness And Critical Thinking Breeds A Positive Community
You've been directed to this page for the purpose of helping inform you about the behavior of a small subset of members who otherwise abuse the intent of the site (and most particularly the mASF forum) for their own self-interest, then try to re-envision their abuse, disruptions, flames or spam as representing a higher purpose.
This Site Does Not Tolerate Any Form Of Abuse
There are two forms of abuse: Abuse of other members of the site and abuse of the site itself, including its rights. Regardless of what kind abuse it may be, no abuses are tolerated and it is in YOUR interest and the interest of the MAJORITY visitors and members of this site that you be informed of behaviors of the following type which this site, at its discretion, does not tolerate. When such behavior takes place, all opportunity is given to the parties involved to act in a reasonable and rational manner. Unlike most sites, except in the case of clear spamming or trolling, the benefit of a doubt is always given to the parties involved. However, when it's clear that rational thinking and reasonable behavior is lacking, and when the behavior begins to undermine the positivity of the environment for the majority of other members, when there is a total lack of respect for the resources and audience is displayed for the intended self-interest of the parties involved, this site is left no other option than to act on the best interest of both the majority as well as for the site itself.
Here Are The Behaviors Not Tolerated
These behaviors are not spelled out within the forum guidelines itself, it would be too difficult to conceive of every possible scenario which may come up. However, there is enough consistency to offer up an explanation on this page of what is considered "repeated bad behavior".
- Soft-Sell Marketing
This is where the person who is posting gives the appearance of having normal discussions, but really is carefully calculating how to maximize the marketing potential of their post. Most people seen to do this are not banned, the main actions taken are to contact them privately and ask for the behavior to be curbed. Forum members with commercial interests are allowed uncensored signatures so long as the signatures are reasonable (not too long, only 1 commercial URL, no overt solicitations, respectable taglines). Forum members with commercial interests are not censored or banned unless they overtly abuse the site or disrespect the intent of the site regularly enough to lead to moderation of their posts or account.
- Constantly Lambasting The Site
If someone truly has an interest in improving a site, or requesting improvements of the site, then they will at least try to take an active roll in helping in some way. If all someone does to "help" is to complain, repeatedly, and lambast the operators of the site for otherwise doing the BEST that they can, then usually that person is not interested in anything but glorifying the equivalent of a political position. Sometimes these complaints are to gain a following, sometimes they are to subtly market and draw members to an off-site resource, and sometimes the complaints are to simply aggravate the operators. When this sort of behavior is repeated, it only leads to forum disruption and the most responsible thing to do is ban the member unless the member returns to rational behavior. If they hate the site they're complaining about so much, yet not willing to help in any way, nor acknowledging the regular genuine efforts of the site operators to constantly improve the site.
- Using The Site To Launch A Copy-Cat Site
This is often-times more comical or humorous than serious, and is usually not even moderated unless it's blatant and regular. Typically when someone tries to do this, they create fake drama, make regular complaints and try to stir up a following of people to initiate an audience for what is otherwise a cheap imitation site. Usually the goal of the cheap imitation site is to market to it's members. Common traits of the site are duplicated forum themes, no link backs (even though their small audience found them by way of this site), marketing-drippy "blog posts", claims that their method is the "best", and no way for someone to view their discussions publicly. Often these kind of sites become black holes of uselessness and serve little purpose for their audience except to fragment their attention. Keep this in mind: Since this site does not censor members (even commercial ones) and the only real rules/guidelines exist to curb or halt what is otherwise trolling or spamming behavior - why would a member of the site want you to migrate to THEIR site, an otherwise cheap shadow imitation? The only valid possible reason is that their site offers a very specific focus of topics that aren't otherwise already a common topic of this site's forum.
- Constantly Testing The Patience Or Good Will Of The Site Operators
There is no greater disdain felt than the attempt of some members to wear on the good will of the operators of this site. So many behaviors can fall under this category, but the most common ones are threats (whether empty or real), making false claims with no verifiable source, creating "posses" or cliques of people (almost like a mini-cult) to sling ill-will as a group, constantly challenging what is otherwise common sense to the vast majority of others in the forum, or spurring flame-wars for the sake of creating drama to fuel ulterior motives.
So... all of this explains why you were lead to this page, and hopefully this will allow you to see certain people and their behaviors for what they are and not necessarily or immediately presume such people don't have ulterior self-interested motives. There is a reason this site and the forum on it, mASF, remains the most-trusted and objective resource in the pickup community for over 10 years, and this page provides you reasoning behind why SOME people who may otherwise SEEM to act in behalf of a greater good are really on a plotted course to capitalize on your trust. With an open mind and critical thinking, this is easy to observe when accessing the forum - there is nothing hidden or unexplained, the people who lose face against the general good will are the ones who shoot themselves in the foot.
