Intro

I've been trying to keep this matter private, but I see there's been some questions about some recently deleted threads and posts, so I'll do my best to explain. I'm always for openness and honesty and transparency, so I feel I owe the community an explanation as to what's going on.

About 2 months ago, a longtime PFA user (and good poster) started his own forum. Let's call him "Jerry". While I don't have the monopoly on forums in this community, any "new" forum started with a similar purpose to PFA always makes me concerned, as frankly this community is too small to be splintering further. So when I see a new forum is being started, I always suspect "replacement".

Now, again, I don't own monopoly rights to this community. If someone wants to start another forum and traffic organically shows up there, and eventually leaves PFA, that's the way life goes. I understand that.

However, I would be a fool to allow spam or advertisements for a forum which is meant to harm PFA and basically steal its traffic. I've put a lot of time and work into this place over the 8+ years it's been running, and haven't even attempted to monetize it. I'm not handing the traffic over to someone else who feels it's time to replace PFA with their own site.



Much Ado About Nothing

Upon learning of the almost-completed forum, I contacted Jerry in May. Fortunately, Jerry assured me that my concern wasn't warranted. He claimed that his forum was about one very narrow topic (which had nothing to do with poker, Vegas, or gambling), and was not meant in any way to compete with PFA or steal its traffic. Given that Jerry had always been straight with me in the past, and was a longtime good poster here, I took him at his word.

I told Jerry that he was welcome to promote his new site on PFA, and he thanked me, telling me that I was much more agreeable about the whole thing than he expected.

For the moment, everything was good.



Here Come the Agitators

"Tim" is another longtime member of this community. He quit PFA 2 years ago because he was unhappy about a moderation decision here. Of course, that's Tim's right, and I never held it against him for quitting. Occasionally Tim would appear under a known dupe of his and post -- often to promote something else he was doing -- but given Tim's longtime history in the community and the fact that his promotions weren't at all competing with PFA, I was still okay with it. Still, Tim would tell people he had "quit" PFA and would have not-so-nice things to say about the site and my moderation style when people would ask him why he left.

Tim was very excited to see Jerry's new site. See, Tim didn't really want to quit this community, but he felt he had to out of principle. But he missed it. He wanted to be part of it while not actually being on PFA itself. Here was his chance. "Perhaps if I promote this new forum, the gang will move over to this new place", thought Tim. "That would be ideal. I could be part of the community once again, and won't have to be on a site Druff runs!"

"Andy" is another friend of Tim's. He's also a longtime member here. Andy also quit PFA awhile ago (for reasons unknown), but has been posting very actively on a dupe. The dupe's real identity is essentially an open secret. It isn't clear to me why "Andy" will only post on a dupe, but again, given his longtime good posting history here, I didn't question it.

However, Andy must also have issues with me, because as soon as Tim attempted to blow up Jerry's new site, Andy mostly stopped posting here (even under his dupe), and only started posting on Jerry's forum.

At this point, despite the participation of Jerry, Andy, and Tim, the forum was mostly dead. For the most part, it hadn't caught on yet. They needed more traffic.

Tim and Andy went on to create threads on Jerry's forum which were identical to the most popular ones on PFA.

"ELON TUSK IS GOD"

"Songs you like, post them here"

A Trump thread was then created by another user, with an almost-identical name to the one here.

It was clear was what happening. However, I still said nothing.



Then Tim decided he was going to take it to the next level. He bumped three different threads on PFA, blatantly and obnoxiously spamming ads for Jerry's forum. The language of this spam was encouraging people to leave PFA and go over to Jerry's site.

As you can imagine, I was furious. Keep in mind that I have met all three of these guys in person, and always maintained a friendly relationship with them. While Jerry and I didn't really talk privately, Tim and Andy did talk privately with me on and off, and I always thought we were friendly acquaintances at the very least. I was pretty shocked to see this sort of behavior.

To be continued...