# Help! Forum rules breached!
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [January 11, 2025, 3:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609 "2025-01-11T03:30:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@anon16030817](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon16030817)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/1 "2025-01-11T03:30:50Z")
New Forum Help! Rules Breached!
SO, I’ve made this forum, and it’s great! There are like 50 users so far, until all of a sudden, someone sends links to their forum WHICH IS CLEARLY STATED not to do in the rules, and sends them through DMs. Quite a few people left! They made it so the admins couldn’t even see what they were up to! How do I report this forum, or what do I do?! It’s a fiasco!
They even IP blocked us admins so we couldn’t see what they were doing!
@tvavrda, I reached my post limit, but, the reason I was concerned about their forum was because there were some very harsh insults to staff members who were not allowed in, but what you said makes sense. I guess that’s fine if the community switches over or is over, but it was nice being in it.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/2 "2025-01-11T03:33:18Z")
Through chat DMs or message PMs?
Is the forum this user is redirecting users to a competitor of sorts?
You could send warnings to the user, or even suspend/silence them.
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### Author:  [@anon16030817](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon16030817)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/3 "2025-01-11T03:34:33Z")
They don’t care, because they made their forum and don’t really care about ours anymore. But from what I heard from one of the moderators was that they were sent a link to the other forum through PMs!
Their main form of communication to some of the users was through PMs.
It’s not even a purposeful forum, a moderator who is cross-communication said it was just a chat forum, and I’m not sure if those are allowed.
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### Author:  [@anon16030817](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon16030817)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/4 "2025-01-11T03:37:26Z")
What should I do here?
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:38am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/5 "2025-01-11T03:38:45Z")
Since you are an admin, and can access these PMs, you can delete that, or suspend the user so that they cannot log in.
If they create another account, you may want to IP block (blacklist their IP).
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### Author:  [@anon16030817](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon16030817)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/6 "2025-01-11T03:41:30Z")
We- admins can’t access private PMs, we admins banned them shortly after the incident.
How do we report their forums or have their forums observed?
And how do I contact discourse staff?
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:43am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/7 "2025-01-11T03:43:47Z")
I don’t think you can do anything about their forum. If their forum is hosted on Discourse, you could tell Discourse Staff about it, but it’s technically not illegal to promote their forum, so I don’t think anything can be done about it.
You could try talking to the admins if that site, but I’m doubtful if that would help.
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### Author:  [@anon16030817](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon16030817)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/8 "2025-01-11T03:45:13Z")
They did say hurtful things about staff in our forums, so would it be ethical to ask a discourse forum staff member to check their forums to make sure nothing hurtful was said, because they probably made sure we wouldn’t get in for a reason.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:46am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/9 "2025-01-11T03:46:31Z")
Discourse has little control over other user’s forums.
You could try making an account to browse their forum, to see what they said. If you’re doing this, use a different username and don’t post, as they may tell it’s you.
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### Author:  [@anon16030817](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon16030817)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:48am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/10 "2025-01-11T03:48:00Z")
But can’t the discourse staff promote themselves to admin on any forum, that happened to ours, a discourse staff came and automatically promoted themselves.
Also they have to approve your account or else you can’t see anything and they’ve IP banned me already.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:48am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/11 "2025-01-11T03:48:52Z")
Oh wow. I didn’t know they could do that. Is your forum hosted on Discourse?
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### Author:  [@anon16030817](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon16030817)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/12 "2025-01-11T03:49:18Z")
Yes, and it’s using a free trial.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/13 "2025-01-11T03:50:12Z")
Ah, perhaps that’s why; they have access to your forum.
However, the other forum could be self-hosted, so Discourse doesn’t have control over that.
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### Author:  [@anon16030817](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon16030817)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/14 "2025-01-11T03:50:52Z")
The other forum is on a discourse free trial as well- let me se about it.
There’s a mod that keeps me posted, which may be the only thing I can do at this point but thanks for your help!
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 3:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/15 "2025-01-11T03:55:07Z")
So there is a “good guy” there? I see. You could try contacting Discourse Staff. But like I said, there is no guarantee that they will take action.
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 4:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/16 "2025-01-11T04:25:00Z")
> [@NateDhaliwal](#):
>
> But like I said, there is no guarantee that they will take action.
We will almost definitely not take action.
If there is illegal content that breaches our TOS, that may be reported to us and we will investigate.
We will not get involved in disputes between forums.
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### Author:  [@tvavrda](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tvavrda)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 9:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/17 "2025-01-11T09:57:05Z")
Is their forum better? I think you must stop crying and keep working on your forum. You’ve learned a lesson. This happens all the time to any product. Business is hard. If your content shines, they will stay. The more you do it, the harder it will be for the competitors. As you both are starting, it’s rough. They are on trial. Maybe they don’t start paying. Just keep going 🤞
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2025, 8:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-forum-rules-breached/346609/18 "2025-01-11T20:21:57Z")