Freelancewriting.com was considered fair before. Despite the spammers who could not be controlled, intelligent writers were able to discuss issues on a high level. Moderators kept some healthy distance.
However, when ND, a moderator, appeared, the good writers eventually left. ND was a very much-involved poster. By the time she was there, writers were fighting against writers, encouraged by her.
Eventually, some members found themselves waiting for other members to come and review their work. They kept posting chapters and chapters hoping for some feedback. However, what they thought was busy-ness on the part of those who did not appear anymore was actually a vacuum created. The more experienced writers had gone away.
A site that uses the words "freelance writing" is smart, but then its choice of moderators is an altogether different thing. Moderators are the key to good maintenance and longevity of a site. For example, they can do something to control spammers. They can always effect balance in the way they handle situations. If they, themselves, however, cannot do it because of their own promotions; if they have no sense of balance because of a wrong sense of heroism, some segments of the membership will not be fairly represented.
In that site, the more mature members kept pleading the spammers to stop. In that site, writers dumped their sob stories against other sites and freely vilified other sites.
Freelancewriting.com does advertise itself at the expense of others - not upon its merits. Names of writers who had deleted their accounts from discouragement are still being used as metadata to that site. Vilifications against other sites stand to its own advantage – like, BEWARE this or that site! To the consternation of some writers who had deleted their accounts, they were described as "banned" by ND in her posts.
If spamming could be controlled, if moderators were more intelligent and more of writers than sellers, who were conscientious and not competitive, and if the Forum were cleaned of its dirty war against other writing forums, then perhaps Freelancewriting.com could be revived as one vibrant site attractive to writers.
For the sake of writing as an art, it should.
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