Bann'd!!

I have been BANNED from Fertility Friend!

"Oh, hell, Blue", I hear you saying under your breath, "What heinous thing did you do? Did you curse at an administrator, Blue? Post dirty pictures? Threaten someone??"

Uh ... no. I tried to help a group of moms - who'd met on the site - stay in touch.

Get out your torches and your pitchforks, people! I'm eeeeeeeeeeevil!

I have been on FF for years. The features are ok. In case you're unfamiliar: they provide online charting, a slightly frustrating fertility database (every entry basically says "everyone's different, this may or may not be accurate for you"), and a series of bulletin boards.

It's these bulletin boards that kept me coming back. Having suffered infertility then gone on to have several children, I felt that I could help a lot of the other members by relating my experiences. I enjoyed being able to talk to a wide variety of people at different stages of TTC.

I tried very hard to be a good member of the community. Seriously. I read the charter (not well enough apparently, by golly!), I was nice to everyone (despite a few twinkies who were not mature enough to keep their pregnancy-hormone-fueled-self-indulgent-whineyness in check) and I tried to follow the rules. If I messed up, I quickly changed my errant ways. Example: I posted a URL once (to a site that I thought would help a fellow breastfeeder - services not offered by FF) and got spanked for it. FF is hyper paranoid about URLs. They prohibit posting links as they may be to for-profit sites and they are an advertising free site. At least this is the supposed reasoning.

Fast forward to about 6 weeks ago.

I was a member of the June board. Well, they only have ONE June board. We ladies who had our babies in June 2005 would have to share the board here soon with the ladies who are getting preggers and expecting 2006 June babes.

FF does not provide mommy boards. "FertilityFriend.com is devoted to charting and pregnancy tracking" as they archly told me in the You Are Outta Here email they sent me.

Fair enough. So a member of our June board made us an EZboard so that we could all stay together as our babies grew. I'm a member of a community exactly like this - on BabyCenter - that I joined when I was preggers with my first. I can tell you how beneficial it is, how comforting to know this group of people who've been with you through the whole journey of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.

But then that Mom made the mistake of posting the link to the new board.

They banned her ... then terminated her account.

So, when the topic came up again (other June board members requesting the URL to the new board), I was very leery about breaking any anal FF rules. I decided to just ask people to email me. What harm would that do? It's not like we were trying to make money or steal business from FF. We just wanted to stay together. I carefully never posted any links or even mentioned any other site. Just: "Email me" and a smiley.

So they banned* me ... then terminated my account.

Apparently "soliciting emails" is also against their charter. (and sounds kinda dirty)

Here's my thing: if you want to keep your knickers up your arsecrack over possible links to for-profit sites then police your boards. You're obviously doing this now. What's the harm in links to sites that are potentially HELPFUL to your members? Get your little snitches who report any and everything or your forum moderators who do bugger-all to whisper back to you. Clearly this 'service' is already in place. Just prohibit links to certain types of sites.

Let me make myself perfectly clear. It's Fertility Friend's own site. They have their rules and can do whatever they want, whenever they want, to anyone (and they do). Their perogative. No problem. But, if it was MY site, I'd definitely think twice about abusing and alienating women who are essentially good community members. And for what? They clearly spent much time and effort sniffing out us wicked wrongdoers. Wouldn't it be easier to use that (wo)manpower to enforce sensible policies and encourage people TO STAY?

Just, ya know, a thought.

And so, Fertility Friend: Qapla! I'm off to find another charting site as I'm about to TTC again. Too bad for you that my membership money is going elsewhere - but most of all - too bad my experience will no longer benefit members of your community.

*oh, excuse me: "suspended - not banned" as I was snottily informed in a subsequent misspelled email when I asked what I'd done wrong. Please explain the difference to me.

UPDATE: apparently I am not the only one burnt by FF! Check it out.