Is shameless advertising for a rival forum actually allowed here?!

Economy Forum, topic: how the brain drain affects wage growth...

A little story: some users who used to be thread starters "left" this forum because the mods wouldn't give them enough freedom, plus other users kept hitting them with counterarguments they couldn't beat.

So they moved over to a rival forum to start the exact same discussion, thinking they could escape being "restrained" by moderators and finally censor anyone trying to shut down their wild, baseless hypotheses with actual empirical data.

And now, every single time, user Bear Grylls pops up in the thread to shamelessly—and pretty unsuccessfully—subtly plug that rival site, hinting that's where the "real" intellectual debates happen.

Like this:

Bear Grylls said:You aren't reading Monsieur's forum, you aren't investing any effort into learning, everything is laid out there... that's where the true chronicle of the "exodus" lives.☕🎉

For instance, you haven't even read my post here...

To make things even more ridiculous, the same guy has a link to that competitor's site right in his Signature. So whenever he happens to wander into a thread, he responds to someone else's question with stuff like: "you have to visit us for things like this."

It happens every month or two... just enough to keep an eye on. It feels like a targeted hijacking of our users.

So I'm wondering, what does serious administration think about this? 🍿
Is this okay with you guys? 🤔

Hey everyone, just a quick heads-up: please don't go posting links to other forums or social media sites, and let's not try to pull people away from here to join them elsewhere. If you see someone breaking the rules, just hit that little triangle icon to report the post.

Lisa Young83 said:Advertising other forums or social media sites isn't allowed, and you can't invite people here to go there. Use the report button if you see something.

Well... I mean, it would be pretty funny if the moderators who actually see those reports aren't even active on this board... 🕺

And honestly, I'm pretty sure a whole bunch of mods have noticed there’s a link to a rival forum right there in the Signature.

It's not like this started yesterday, either. It's been going on for months, so I'm starting to think their crew over there thinks it's totally fine.

@wanderingdriver17/">@@wanderingdriver17 You're right—my Signature isn't actually following the rules. I didn't catch it this morning (I haven't really been posting much lately, anyway). I'll get that changed.

As for the whole "agitating" thing, I see it as a bit of a gray area—it really just depends on the specific situation. We'll just have to play it by ear as we go.