Quote Originally Posted by ridebikeme View Post
I agree that posting here was a bit unprofessional, although it has happened before. I thought that I would be open minded enough to check out the site only to find out that I needed to become a member in order to even read text What's up with that? I often times read sites without logging on, and if I have something that I want to post or reply to then I'll log on. Not a very friendly or encouraging way to start a site...
I run an online music community. There are always a few troublemakers around, or spammers just dying to join and spam everyone's home pages.
I have had to tighten up my site over the past several months due to people joining and doing bad things. These safety measures include using captcha, email verification, and joinup questions. This past week i had to go further, and (temporarily at least) set the site to be publically viewable only on the main page, so non-members would have to join in order to view everything on the site. Yes it's a turnoff to some, but it's not that unusual, I see this elsewhere on web communities. My site is extremely friendly and welcoming, but I have found it's necessary to prevent spammers and trolls from taking advantage by putting into place various features which allow only sincerely interested people to join. We get several new members per day, and I usually head off a spammer per day as well, and prevent them from joining this way.

I personally don't see Spokesnet's intro and solicitation here as either rude or inappropriate. Their community is substantially different from TE- whole different structure and functions, different feel and content, and most importantly- a whole different audience. Their site is not specifically targeted at women riders. Thus, they could never be true 'competition' to TE as I see it. I think their original post and intention was neither sneaky or rude, I found it polite and forthright. Just my opinion.