[FlyBoy73]

Ashley,
I feel for you. I actually have about 3 "new" hater communities that live to bash us and think they can do it better - though they have been learning the hard way it isn't easy. The vast majority of their members have been banned from our site over the years after multiple incidents against other members. Most of them don't like our "rules", especially when it gets in the way of their "fun" and abusiveness to others. They are basic forum trash, and unfortunately I have learned hard lessons that there just isn't enough hours in the day to hold their hands, so we do a lot more banning and less counseling. Fortunately, their numbers are well under 1/10th of 1 percent of those that come to our community.

It used to get me very upset to see people smearing both my good name and that of a community I/We worked so hard to build, but in the end paying attention to these problematics will only cause you pain and waste time you could be putting to more constructive use - making your community better.

The best thing you can do is ignore them and never mention them at your own community. If they are slamming or flaming you elsewhere, it actually turns off good members that may visit that site. It backfired on most of the hater-boards that tried this with us.

Frustration is part of being a site admin/owner, but hang in there. The hard work pays off. And your determination to find new ideas will help ensure that as well.

PS. I don't know of any shoutbox that adds to the post count of your site, and chances are the content won't be indexed either. After looking at that plus the time used dealing with some people that wanted to use it for their own nefarious purposes, we got rid of it and we did see a slight increase in post statistics during that time.