The online marketplace has become a super-charged minefield of opinionated "professionals" and heartless know-it-alls. Playing their game is deadly, and if you don't watch yourself, you could lose a leg.

Although all of e-business is suffering, from customer service to how customers treat YOU, I think the worst of it is discussion forums. Since when is it a commonly-accepted practice to toss around insults and criticism like rice at an American wedding?

It's agonizingly difficult to get problems solved on discussion forums with these insult-slinging predators poised and ready to pounce, seemingly at every turn.

It amazes me.

It upsets me.

It down-right ticks me off.

But I'm not lamenting over the way people are treating ME. I'm protesting against the way people are treating YOU and the rest of the public at large.

Here ... let me give you a "for instance."

On one highly popular forum, a seemingly respectable marketer sent a polite query to regular contributors of the board, asking how he should handle an offer to sell his current domain name. Surely not too much to ask.

Even so, the very first response to that post was more than a little bit unreasonable. The very first part of that response read:

  "Your site right now is BS. A useless site redirected to another junk site."

Ouch! If that was *your* site, you probably would've been left feeling hurt. Smaller than small. And you'd likely have been asking yourself, "Is my site really this bad? IS it truly useless?"

And despite the common advice that entrepreneurs should have "thick skin," is it really necessary to treat our peers like garbage because of it?

Wait, wait -- let me answer this one.

Beating yourself up about the poor quality of your site ISN'T helping you to IMPROVE the site. It isn't teaching you what you SHOULD be doing to master the creation of professional sites.

What it IS doing is making you feel like a schmuck, and conveying that, despite all the hard work and long hours you spent with your HTML editor "in one hand" and your graphics software in the other, you're...

JUST
       NOT
             GOOD
                   ENOUGH.

Now tell me ... what good is that?

And please, let's not forget what this says about the POSTERS of responses like those. What can be their main goal?

To generate a silent "laugh" from onlookers?

To publicly ridicule a colleague?

To let people know that they know their stuff -- indisputably?

Maybe so.

But, I ask you ... what good is THAT?

Come on, "gurus." THINK before you speak. Take people's feelings into account when gracing them with your oh-so-valuable advice. Realize that they've likely worked hard to get where they are, no matter how UNLIKELY that may seem to you.

But if nothing else, at least foster a bit of common sense and realize that THE MASSES ARE WATCHING. An enormous LOT of them. And they're watching YOU.

And let US also not forget how to conduct ourselves when we're unfortunate enough to get ensnared by these forum predators -- because it certainly doesn't take much to fall victim to their venom. Request a website review and you could be asking for public ridicule. Post a tip to the forum and you could be openly and harshly bashed.

And why? For sport?

In any case, don't let yourself get riled up. Realize that some people ARE going to be lying in wait for an innocent victim like you or I to bare our virtual throats to their sharp claws of relentless ridicule.

Don't allow yourself to get caught up. Be polite, or choose not to respond to the verbal assault. Remember -- the masses ARE watching, and they'll be watching YOU make as big a fool of yourself as the person who started the mess.

Now, let me leave you with this:

What about us, the onlookers? Should we intervene when we see a fellow marketer getting slayed on a forum? Or should we bite our tongues and lay low so as not to get sucker-punched ourselves? It's a tough call.

What would YOU do?