Fred Zed said:
Actually many US boards are member supported, not advertiser supported.
It's doable. And if you take your ad $$$ away I could always organize a TERB member strike in retaliation - get all our thousands of members to abstain from the hobby for one month.
I guess the issue at hand here is how much control the advertisers exert.
There are many who mutter under their breath that they know of someone who has been banned because they posted too many negative reviews. I have recent a few PM's about this. Now obviously the other side is that those people were banned for other reasons (not going to mention the Captains name).
I CAN see the advertisers side though. If they are contributing lots of $$$ and they are getting negative reviews they are going to say wtf am I doing that for. RIGHT? And then board loses revenue... RIGHT? It is not a hard leap to see that constant negative posters maybe deleted or banned. I mean this kind of thing could happen, not saying it does, but it could. (others have told me it does). If the advertisor says... look I this isn't working for me, that is one thing. IF they suggest that a review be edited or removed or someone be banned OR ELSE, then I think most of us would have problems with it.
I don't beleive that the advertisors are not getting a good return on their investment. Come on, if the SP gets a good review, they are going to get business. And for the SP to get that initial good review they have to be discovered. In terms of hittting your market, this is the place to advertise. You have a bunch of "Johns" scouring reviews. What better place to post an add.
As for the threats to pull advertising unless a reviewer is banned (if this happens and I only think it might happen) I would respond in kind with a post of the agency.
The power here need/not be the women/agencies it could be with the men.
I like the idea of working together though. In many ways we are all on the same side. I will say it again though. There ought not to be banning of people at the request of agencies or SP's.