The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

I would like to take the opportunity to clear up some misconceptions in your post, as well as your newsletter that was sent out the other day. I will also address some of your “member” comments.

DemolitionNews was not “banned” from DemolitionForum.com. You were moved to a Limited User group, which means you could still read the forum, but you could not make new threads or reply to them. If you were actually “banned”, you wouldn’t have been able to see the forum at all. Instead, you would have received a message that read “Move along little troll (or “spammer” or whatever, depending on the users action) there is nothing for you here”.

The reason for being changed to a Limited User was stated in what I thought would have been a confidential email between two adults and businesses. It was because you were beginning to cover US demolition projects that caused you to be in direct competition with us for our readers and members. I think any businessman would have done the same thing.

When you signed up, you agreed to the rules of our website which can be found at http://www.demolitionforum.com/faq.php, dated March 2007. I would suggest you review the rules again, particularly in the Advertising Section: “Advertising of websites in direct competition with Demolition Forum is not allowed.” You were in clear violation of this rule which is why we took the appropriate action.

Your newsletter stated the following: “We are not aligned to any trade association or federation so our readers are free to comment without fear of censure or condemnation, which is why our stories consistently attract a higher level of comment than our rivals.” If you were implying that DemolitionForum.com is part of a trade organization or federation, I can tell you that we are not and I believe people that know me know how I feel about certain associations, particularly the NDA.

Don, were the times that we protected some contractors when someone posted something negatively about a company all without cause? Yes, we would do it for anyone, including you. If you knew the stories behind the scenes, then you might be able to understand. Most were from members having multiple accounts, which are not allowed. These “duplicate” accounts were banned and the posts were removed. Also, anytime someone continuously and maliciously slammed another company without merit, same thing.

Stig, you implied that I have so-called “back door” deals for the Washington State jobs with my friends, which is false. Most, if not all of the projects came from the different branches of the US Government. If the government is not asking for bids here in Washington State, I can’t just make them up. There was a company that was posting tons of projects from all over the US, including Washington, but I guess you missed those.

Oliver, people comment freely as they so desire. If someone doesn’t want to comment, they don’t have to. That’s their choice. We don’t regret our decision to restrict the usage of one of our competitors on our site or any other decisions we have made. If you read the email, we stated that there was a possibility of working together again in the future, but since they took our personal business dealings with them public, which we feel was highly unprofessional, I doubt that would happen. In response to your comment about the use of Google news, Google news is one source of information, of which Demolition News also uses to gain information, but there are other sources, too.

I would like to thank Demolition News for all the free publicity, advertising, and attention they have brought to our site with this blog post, by posting it on Twitter, having Ron Sutton, Editor in Chief of Construction Equipment Magazine re-tweet it, and now all the mentions in your newsletter that was sent out recently.