Advertising and Improved Discussion

The main problem with advertisements that ppl have been agonising over is not with long-time members doing a little bit of promotion in signatures etc, but with people turning up once to post an advertisement and then pretty much leaving. For this reason severe action, such as 48-hour IP banning, does not work because the offender will likely not be coming back anyway.

IMO the answer is to create a "member points" system. It works like this: Five or six people are appointed to assess members for their contribution to the board. Post count, promoting Entmoot at other sites, knowledge of LOTR, time they have been here....all would be taken into consideration. Post quality would be the biggest one. Each member would be reviewed every one months and the "points" they have earned would be in their custom title.

Now the points system could go from 1-10. Each level of points would get certain privileges. Now the relation to advertising is this: when your points got to three or four, you would be allowed one thread to advertise your site.
Possibly even have the option of a link at the bottom of the page when your points got to 8 or 9.

The point is this: people would be encouraged to stay and post, and to post with quality and quantity, in order to earn those three points. The potential advertiser would be less enticed to spam the board, where the thread will be edited and closed, and more likely to stay and contribute something to the board, with the reward eventually being that they are allowed to make a topic about what they want to advertise, one that will be left.

Of course, you will probably think this idea unwieldy, too complicated, or feel it won't work. I don't know - I'm not in the position of having to implement it. But it is an idea - one which I hope will be helpful.