So I sign up at some cruising forum - they have over 11 million posts, so I KNOW the site will be slow (it is) - but I figure they must be doing something right.

I sign up with the username "CCLTalk". They ABSOLUTELY FORBID the advertising of "competing" cruise sites (personal or business) - that's cool, it's their site - their rules.

What frosted my balls was this email I received from them today:



[*insert multiple instances of major rants, cussing, name calling, etc*]

I gotta tell ya - they must pay someone to sit there and do nothing all day but view user names and see if they are somehow related to a website! I didn't use "CCLTALK.COM" - just CCLTalk.

What frosted my balls further was that THEY chose my "new" user name: TALKCRUISING

I just thought it would have been nice to get an email/PM from them explaining WHY I have to change my username and let ME choose a new one.

[/end rant]

Hmmm, perhaps I should register a new domain name... TalkCruising.com - and forward it to CCLTalk.com - yea, that'll show them!

Yea, we also don't allow URL usernames at our site. But, we do allow the people to change their names. Often, we do allow the names with the ".ext" extension, though.

I agree and understand that part - makes perfect business sense... but I had NO extension on my username (no .com, etc). Granted, it wouldn't take a brain surgeon to say "hmmm - that looks like an odd username - could be part of a domain! Hey, it is!

I guess the part that totally gets me is the part where THEY chose a new user name for me... just too controlling for my liking.

But you know what? I don't have to visit there anymore - so what am I complaining about?

Do it. That would make me laugh.

I can understand it but it's not like it's doing any harm.

I've joined as "kerrang!" under some sites because I got bored, although I had it changed to "joey" as "kerrang!" is meant to stand for "offensive rock music"... I'd just leave the place myself, ^ I did the above. Often it makes me wonder if they'd ever go to the extreme of, "you can't use the same username" because you can google it. (I'm joking) Well good for you watty. You should do your thing *wink ~Joey

The only people that annoy me are those that use their email or full website url as their username, but what you did isn't wrong at all.. And yes, you should register that domain.

Too bad, the .com is already registered. But the .net and .org are still available.

Yea, I pointed out to them:



Either way, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it - like I said, it's their site, their rules - I can certainly respect that. I allow other cruse sites/forums to place their link in their signature - I've no problem with helping others. Granted, I don't have an active forum (yet), but these things take time. If you search cruise forums on Google, I don't come up until the 18th page. Could be worse, could be better. But I know that a good way to improve my PR is to have links from legitimate (and similar) sites. The higher their PR, the better for me and eventually vice versa. So hopefully there are "like minded" cruise forums out there. I don't want to "sign up" at their forums with the sole intent of simply getting my link in my signature. I like being active at a forum when it involves something I love doing - even if it means I spend more time at their forums than mine.

Everything here makes you laugh...

Anyways thats kinda excessive if you didn't put the .ext in your name I really don't see what the problem would be. Personally I think its annoying to have the .ext because if someone was that interested they would google your site.