Here's the situation. (and it's long)
I found a forum while surfing the 'net that's in the same niche as mine, it seemed like a nice place so I joined on the off chance that it might close someday and then I could direct the wayward members to my forum. Who knows it could happen.

Anyway, I PMd the Admin, told her I also run a pet forum and would it be okay if I put a link in my sig to my main site with the articles on it. I told her if she said no I would udnerstand, but I wanted to ask first anyway.

She was very nice on the return PM, said that normally she wouldn't allow it, but that if I wanted to stick around a while and contribute to the forum I could have a sig link, and eventually even promote my forum in one of her sections. She also suggested we do a link exchange which we did. We PMd back forth a couple times and had some nice converstations about google rankings, getting members etc.

It was actually really nice to chat with someone who started up from scratch like I did, and we have almost the same amount of members.

Anyway, she said she might also join my forum, which she has, We've both posted a bunch on each ohers forums and all seemed to be fine.

Fast forward to a few days ago and she starts posting links in some of my threads to her website articles. The articles are relevent to the topic, but that's not the point.

I didn't specifically say, "don't post any links to your site on mine either", but I assumed it was a given since she doesn't want me posting links on hers either yet.

So I was kinda shocked to see two links in two different threads pointing to her site. To be honest I feel a little betrayed. Although looking back now, I kinda set myself up for this didn't I by not making it clear what i expect of her at my forum?

How do I handle this, or do i not do anything at all? I don't want to drive her away, she seems like a nice person and has contributed a lot to the forum minus the links she posted. But I also don't want her dropping links on my forum every chance she gets. I'm not worried about loosing members, people will go where they want and stay where they want, if they wanted to leave my forum there's plenty of others they can find right on the first page of google.

It's more the principle of the whole thing that's bothering me.

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Pet Forums
Dog Training Information
Supernatural Forums - Discuss the show!

You set yourself up like you said.

It's really not her fault at all and she contributes to your forum.

What you need to do is write articles of your own. All she's doing is taking advantage of content her site has that yours doesn't.

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I have plenty of articles, but obviously I cannot write one for every single subject, it's just by chance that the ones she posted, I don't have a counterpart too.

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Pet Forums
Dog Training Information
Supernatural Forums - Discuss the show!

How long until you can unleash links on her site pointing to yours?

If things are good between you perhaps you could just ask that she return the favor and allow you to do the same on her board. The question is, though, does it become a post-and-link war between you two if that happens?

I guess what I would do is start paying attention to the link to post ratio and if it starts getting out of control maybe shut the whole thing down.

You could also write or buy articles on the same topics she is linking to and follow her posts with links to your new content so when she says:

"check out this article on widgets at ACME.com"

you could post afterwards:

"... or see our own article here"

I understand why you might feel a bit betrayed, but at least she is pointing out areas of content you might consider expanding on your site. Try not to ruin a good relationship. Who knows? Perhaps someday you two can actually merge and be a stronger team together.

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TalkWhatever.com - Blogs, Social Groups and Forum

I think that if she considers it fine for her to post links then you should be able to as well. I would check with her first, but based on what has happened she ethically can't say no. What goes around comes around.

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The Student Help Forum

I think that if in your rules you don't allow promoting of other sites by posting links to direct traffic to them that they should apply to this member as well. Since you want to keep your relationship, I would shoot her a PM just explaining your view on this and come to a solution of either not posting links on each others forums or the opposite, allow posting links on both forums. But it's unfair to you if she keeps this up but doesn't allow you. She might be trying to see how far she can get before you say anything.

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Just talk to her about it honestly and openly...she sounds more like a friend than a competitor to me

If you've got a clause in your terms of use that allows staff to 'remove any content they feel does not follow the guidelines', or something like that, then perhaps you might ask one of your mods if they wouldn't mind taking the heat. It may be better if someone else deletes it, and not you. If she asks why, just say your staff are doing their job, and you'll stick by them.

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