An end to competing advertising on this site (Rescinded!)

All along I've felt it was in everyone's best interests to allow complete freedom for everyone to more or less do what they please here. That includes allowing people to advertise their websites and services even when they directly competed against what I am doing here on this site. Yeah, I allowed people to advertise website hosting services and other message boards, figuring, hey, more power to you, and good luck. My wife has always said I am far too trusting an naive about people. I don't really mind competition, but it needs to be of the more "friendly" kind. Kind of like gentlemen's agreements on how to peacefully coexist without blood letting that such things can apparently come to. I thought (naively) that this could be maintained here if I extended the offer to people to freely advertise what they will, and in so doing, there would be some level of trust and respect involved.

But lately it has just been getting out of hand. So much so that I see some people taking jabs at what I have built here with such things as "Drama Free Zone" in their signature area, obviously a back handed slap at this site while trying to solicit members to leave this site and go to theirs. And certainly there have been some sites very uncomplimentary about this site on their own, and yet, with some notable exceptions, I just let things run the course they would run, and things will be what they will be.

Of course, recently (like in the past year or so) I have just been in a funk about things in general about this site, so I really didn't care one way or the other if people were intent on raping this site into oblivion, figuring that if that is what people want, then so be it. But when that DDoS attack slapped me along side the head, THAT really got my blood a percolating. Someone REALLY wanted this site dead and gone BIG TIME! I just was NOT going to allow someone to just take this site down after all the time and work I have put into it. I was NOT going to go down without one hell of a fight. And whoever you are, perhaps thanks are in order for pulling me out of the funk and getting my head back on straight.

So yeah, now my blinders are OFF, and I look around and see some people trying their damnedest to drain the blood from this site by siphoning off memberships to their own. So I started thinking, WHY am I allowing this to happen? Why am I just sitting by while every Tom, Dick and Harry goes out and creates their own message board site or web hosting service, and then comes around here soliciting MY customers and the people contributing to THIS site to try to help keep it viable? Should I continue to allow that to happen? Well, not just NO, but HELL NO! Party time is over with, my friends. No more Mr. NICE GUY.

You can go build your website or the like, with the intent of raping and pillaging this site, but do NOT ask me to assist you in that endeavor by giving you the resources I have built in order to do that. The straws have been building up on the camel's back for quite a while now, but fortunately I got shaken out of my funk before the back broke and it was all gone, and everything built here was wasted.

Yeah, some people are going to be pissed about this and others are going to feel I am being unfair to not allow them to continue on their path. Well that's just REAL tough for you. Wail away. I am NOT going to just sit by and allow YOU to take what this site has proven to be worth to people and just flush it down the toilet. I am NOT going to allow you to step on my head in order to get to that next rung up the ladder any longer. It's bad enough that I have to be slapped around by bad guys, but now the good guys want to yank the rug out from under me as well? When all the members and advertisers are gone, then what is left? Is that your goal? If that is what you want, SORRY, but I am NOT going to stand by and allow YOU to accomplish that.

Moderators are hereby requested to analyze any and all links within signature areas, avatars, or text within postings, and delete those that are blatantly soliciting members from this site to go on to a similarly constructed and competing message board site. A new warning level will be put into place for such infractions. Any advertising via FaunaAds that is noted that proves to be a problem needs to be reported directly to me to deal with.

I've given a LOT to this site and gone through more than most people would ever dream of keeping it running and viable. So, seriously people, enough is enough.....

Yeah, I know, this is going to turn into a REAL bash fest.... But bring it on. I'm pretty irritated from the last several days and ready for a good fight.