Honestly I don't think it matters if we report hosts that are known for bad behavior or even mention that fact to prospective clients. The fact remains that the number of new hosting requests has reached abyssmally low levels, and now even a lot of the hosts that would have come here to advertise even if only to post in a semi-bot like manner advertising their offers are starting to dissappear. FWS is being deprived of much needed traffic, and without that it matters not what we do.
At the same time, I always felt the rule about hosts not being able to comment on each other's offers was a little bit silly. It's bad publicity for a business to openly bash another, so if people insisted on doing that to each other it was their own name they were dragging through the mud in the process. Not only that, but a client is likely to not trust someone who comes into a thread and bashes a competitor because they clearly have their own interests motivating them, so the hosts that do it are actually hurting themselves anyway.
However, by blocking that, we have created a situation where there is not enough active members anymore that are not hosts or prospective clients in order to give feedback on the offers being made and point out issues in a sensible and relatively respectful manner.
I think it all comes down to a manner of being able to respectfully inform potential clients about the risks attached to a particular host at the risk of them getting their own name a little bit dirty because of how they would be viewed for that vs people openly bashing their competitors, which incidentally gives them a bad name anyway. It may not be visible in the forum's community, the people doing the bashing will probably appear popular, but clients who see that behavior will almost certainly think twice before going with them if they feel a need to put down others to promote themselves.
And I know for a fact that a number of times now I've respectfully pointed out that a host's offering has it's website down or appears to have a history of stability problems and may need to be approached with caution. To date I have not been infracted for it, so if it is true that hosts are not allowed to post in another host's offer thread it certainly is not being enforced reliably nor does it seem to be harmful if it is approached in a respectful manner.
