Last night, while a the UNITED HKG mistake thread was temporarily locked, the signature that announced the lock included a link to MilePoint.
It looked like this:
***thread temporally closed***
__________________
FM Stats | MilePoint <hotlinked>
Naughty Airlines? Naughty Banks?
Without commenting on the relative wisdom of temporarily closing a thread at during a period of high activity (as that is not the purview of the TB, is a TOS violation, etc) my concern (and it is a deep concern) is that while the thread was temporarily closed, people were being directed to another commercial site.
Think of this from the perspective of a poster, because there were approximately 1200 posters logged on to the MP forum when this occurred:
You are actively following breaking news and are having a conversation about it.
Suddenly without warning the thread is temporarily locked.
Ok, you are frustrated, but whatever.
Wait!
What is that under the announcement that the thread is temporarily locked....a link to 'MilePoint'...interesting...let's go there. Hey, look, a copycat website with a copycat thread! Awesome. I don't ever need to go back to FT.
It is rather ridiculous that the very last thing on that thread for 30-40 minutes last night during the height of activity while the thread was locked was a link to a competing web site.
I see that the last post on the locked thread no longer has a sig line that contains a link to MP.
And while I am gratified that the barn door was closed after the stampede, I still would like to see this issue addressed on a systemic rather than one-off basis so this sort of ridiculousness does not happen again.
So I am highly motivated to see links in sig lines regulated in some manner, at the very least to prohibit links to competing IBBs.