Looking after your forum is good for business

We had a call today from a very well known general dance scene website (I wont mention which one a its nothing personal) asking if we would like to advertise Fantazia Allstars and other future ones on their website. With only 2 week or so to go and it being pretty much sold out anyway there isnt much need, but I also had to tell the caller that even if we were interested in getting more coverage we wouldn't advertise on their site at this time as they seem to take little interest in actively moderating their forums that make up so much of their sites content....

Now no one would support sensorship on a forum and we would never remove fair criticism, however we would never allow ranting and raving and general slagging off as we have witnessed on this guys site and many others. It seems very much sites become a place for bullying, aggresion, mischief making and much worse.

If people are going to run forums then they need to read them and ban people if necessary, it wont increase your traffic in the short run, no, because some of this stuff can be very enertaining for a while, as long as you are not directly in its path, but in the end it will always leave a bad taste...

Another advertiser, frequenctly sends us last minutes offers for full page adverts at what I would still consider massive prices in this day and age. Yet this mainstream dance mag, never covers the hardcore scene or Fantazia (even though we are putting on the biggest parties in the UK) and as far a I am aware looks down on it all. Now why would we wont to support it? Surely far better to use word of mouth that has always been the main stay of the rave scene. I also hear even the biggest of the magazines are in trouble, with readership numbers falling rapidly. Will it be sad to see them go....