Mistakes you made as an admin

[FoxFace 9]

Not addressing toxicity and bullying when it's first coming up. It's not fair to the bulk of members when one person begins holding the entire community hostage with their controlling or manipulative behavior, and can be especially unfair for any individuals who may end up on the wrong side of such a person's favor. I tend to want to see all sides of an issue and give people the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes there's just blatant negativity and acts of toxicity that just need to be addressed outright. 

[spu 2]

i've changed/tweaked/adjusted rules to soothe a member's complaint about something. or to make their characters' lives easier, somehow. and it always comes back to bite me. i try to be too nice in an attempt to keep players around and i learned to just stick to my guns and change nothing based on one or two people's whining about something 

[shrimpzilla 3]

On 6/19/2019 at 5:17 PM, Morrigan said:

For me, its been not trusting my instincts about people. I've messed up something fierce by allowing the wrong people to join and make my sites unenjoyable.

THIS 100%

Always being like "Am I just being weird?" when the other person/a few people are just legit ruining the vibe is always a mistake. 

[Zina 7]

Opening discussions for members while my staff members are not able to keep up with moderating it. My community's really good about maintaining respect, but when opinions are being wielded and people aren't used to opinionated chatter, things can dip pretty quickly into misreading of tone and hurt feelings, or just plain not listening to multiple perspectives.

 

I'm still trying to figure out how to have these discussions in a way that's constructive and doesn't make people feel like they're being shut out if they have a different opinion. It's not easy in text, I think.

[Narrator 7]

For an old forum, not my current one: too many staff members.

There is something to be said for a smaller, tight knit moderating team vs. a massive staff roster full of clashing egos and competing agendas. I try to cap staff rosters at 4 people max now.

 

Also found that with larger mod teams, it's harder as the main admin to keep the game itself balanced as occasionally some let staff roles go to their heads (e.g. forcing their preferred narratives on others, not letting other characters "breathe" in-game).

 

Have enough staff to keep things democratic, but also know when to rein the mod-promotions in.

 

I've also learned that inviting your community into decision-making processes helps to alleviate some of the workload staff has to deal with, in general. Don't be afraid to create voting polls or interest checks with your entire player roster, great ideas can come from anywhere.

[Lost Boy 18]

I'm the type of guy that likes to give everyone a second chance. At least, if its about stuff I haven't witnessed myself and someone just said 'I heard..... blah blah about them'. I've been the victim of a smear campaign in the past just because I made someone with one of those "I'm always right, you agree or I'll make you regret living" type personalities mad at me. So I like to think that's probably the deal with others.

I made the mistake of giving someone a SECOND, second chance. This person who I knew was deathly toxic to anyone that crossed them was one I let back on a past forum. Didn't know they'd hold a decade long vendetta against me for confronting them with the complaints of their toxicity from before and banning them from that group. Secretly stealing codes, content, members, and even character bios from my then site to recreate somewhere else with just enough changes that others saw it as 'inspired' by my site. Only to learn this person actually remade an older site of their own just updated it then claimed I was the one that stole as their place was 'older' and they just restarted it. Good thing I had the DMs from members that showed that person telling them they were going to open their own better site soon as people started to actually believe the toxic person simply for having the 'older' site and they kept telling more and more elaborate stories.

[Myarelli 8]

My current site is the first that I've ever been the primary (and only, we're small) admin on, but I have been a co-admin before and here were some of my mistakes:

1.) Burning myself out. The admin I worked with was very particular and liked things orderly and I rushed to sort claims, and apps, and we were constantly plotting/revising lore and site events. It was exhausting and I essentially took all of the weight off their shoulders and put it onto mine. 

2.) Being too strict! We had a very specific set of rules/lore and I had to crack down on every little discrepancy. It was exhausting just to go through apps because any little misstep in the lore of their history could send them into pending. And it was hard on the members to constantly see pending on their apps.

3.) Not having better staff communication. I was brought on as the 5th admin and only after the primary admin complained to me numerous times about the slack he felt in his co-admins at the time. By the time I joined the staff I already assumed they were "lazy" as the admin had put it and expected nothing out of them, worse off I expected less of them. I think if we would have had stronger communication and delegation from the primary admin things would have gone smoother for everyone. Instead, one of us was in good communication with the primary at a time and we'd end up stepping all over each others toes. In the end we all saw the lack of communication as a downfall and most of the staff "walked out".  

4.) Calling out toxicity the moment it start. As you can tell from the above the place I co-admined was pretty toxic. Once we all banned together we realized who was causing the environment and, since it was the primary admin, we bounced. We were all complicit in letting it fester and I learned that if you see toxicity, say something. Chances are other people are seeing it too and not saying anything. Better to get rid of it from the start than let it fester into a full blown site death.

[multiplicity! 11]

Letting someone I knew was toxic and a bad person on my game. I had history with them, from years and years ago, and hadn't seen them in damn near 10 years (since about 2009). Man, do I regret letting them in. My fellow staff and friends told me that everyone deserves a second chance, but I was right about this person in the end. I'm glad they're gone, and I don't interact with past members of my board once they leave, so at least I know I don't have to stress or worry about the anxiety they gave/give me.

[Lady Hyde 21]

On 8/19/2022 at 4:09 PM, multiplicity! said:

Letting someone I knew was toxic and a bad person on my game. I had history with them, from years and years ago, and hadn't seen them in damn near 10 years (since about 2009). Man, do I regret letting them in. My fellow staff and friends told me that everyone deserves a second chance, but I was right about this person in the end. I'm glad they're gone, and I don't interact with past members of my board once they leave, so at least I know I don't have to stress or worry about the anxiety they gave/give me.

Oh my god, this. 

 

I let someone onto my board despite the drama she left where ever she went because, at the time, we were friends. Good friends. And I thought, "Won't happen to me, right? She wouldn't do that to me." The funniest part about it is that I've always been the one that deals with confrontation (although exceedingly rare), and I have a pretty clear 'don't fuck with me or mine' vibe because... we've been around for a decade and it's my safe haven, and my members' safe haven and... so I felt like a right damn fool.

 

It was great for a time. Lots of plotting. New characters. New ideas. Great. 

 

Until it wasn't so great. 

 

Little things started happening at first. Founding members went quiet. Plots and people were becoming exclusive. Passive aggression. A few bursts from her that had me stepping in but nothing ban worthy. I never knew the severity of it until she left (kind of of her own accord that wasn't to do with the site) and I took the opportunity to ban her immediately (but I replied to her speel with a polite 'sorry we're not for you, I hope you find what makes you happy' farewell). 

 

As soon as she was gone, it came out that she was cornering members into plots, demanding they write only with her. One member spoke to me, then another, and another, and eventually I got the full story and was thoroughly traumatised and horrifically upset that I had missed it. I felt like I'd completely failed them. They hadn't brought any of what was going on to us because she was my friend offline and they're all soft beans that thought they were looking out for me by not saying anything. 

 

There is far more to this story, but essentially I ended up with the psycho doxxing me on Facebook with a 13 Reasons Why styled video (that facebook wouldn't take down), and I hope she rots in a shallow, unmarked grave. 

 

I've since learnt my lesson, we all had a good heart to heart, and I will never ever be hesitant in future when it comes to removing people. 

 

Always. Listen. To. Your. Gut. 

[Lost Boy 18]

I gave someone I knew was a narcissistic, toxic, 'always the victim' person the benefit of the doubt. I had a near five year experience of this person stealing my content, codes, plots, lore, members, and even attempting to groom me and display pedophilic behaviors when I constantly refused to smut with them during that time (in which I was 13 turning 14 until I was 18). I assumed that as long as we remained on our own sites even if they are in the same genre that we could just pretend the other didn't exist but was wrong. I've been getting word from people that freshly joined the RP have been getting messages either from that person or one of their friends that basically flips our history with each other. This came after months of this person harassing me and doing everything they could to take things from my site and keep me from advertising in various locations with what I call 'reverse theft' claims that took some time to clear as I didn't think I needed to keep a log of everything I add/change. While I won't be a pitiful excuse of a human like this person and wage a war against someone for existing. I do now keep a database of everything and have gotten testimony that while my experience with them was extreme, it was not entirely unique.

[AETU 0]

On 8/18/2022 at 11:09 PM, multiplicity! said:

Letting someone I knew was toxic and a bad person on my game. I had history with them, from years and years ago, and hadn't seen them in damn near 10 years (since about 2009). Man, do I regret letting them in. My fellow staff and friends told me that everyone deserves a second chance, but I was right about this person in the end. I'm glad they're gone, and I don't interact with past members of my board once they leave, so at least I know I don't have to stress or worry about the anxiety they gave/give me.

I did this on a board years ago. I had roleplayed with them before and didn't know how to tell them no. It was a mess.

[Menalippe 3]

Having revived my beloved site in my 30s, after starting the thing in my early 20s, it's slowly becoming a list:

1. Activity checks.  Why? Why did I care so much about activity checks?  I hated conducting em, players hate replying to them, and if my recruiting attempts have taught me anything, it's a great way to deter new members from joining.
2. Application and post lengths.  Again, I have no idea why I was so anal about these things when all it did was turn staffing into a chore for me, and writing into a chore for my players (or potential ones).
3. Templates.  Holy crap did I cause myself so much needless stress by trying to get people to use my templates; for applications, for posting their advertisements, etc.  So much unnecessary work!
4. Having a needlessly segregated advertisement system.  Like many sites I had separate boards for people who were advertising on my site for the first time, and another board for link-backs, and there was another template (see #3) that I was forever furious people weren't using (or were using it wrong).  I've replaced it now with just 'advertisements' and 'accepted advertisements'.  If I post on someone else's forum more than once, fine by me, they can post on mine again too.

I know there are more, but rn I have serious dirt brain after doing a bunch of HTML and will prob post again as I remember.

[nemesis 2]

Expecting too much out of my co-admins. Or maybe more like, bringing on casual RP friends as co-admins and expecting them to take things as seriously as I did. I can have kind of a Type A personality about things sometimes… not a good combo when my friends are more laid back. That’s not a dig at them, rather, it was a lesson I needed to learn about myself.

 

My friends offered to take up some of the moderation burden when they saw I was running things all by myself, which was sweet of them, but what I really should have done was looked for someone with modding experience and a similar philosophy rather than expecting my friends to be all shipshape and on top of everything when it was really just volunteer work.

 

In the future, I’m definitely going to be more choosy about who I bring on as co-admins/mods, but not in a bad way; more like a “I want to make sure myself and the people I’m working with have a compatible level of energy and dedication”.

[JuliLouWho 1]

When my board was still open I was way too nice. I never wanted to ban people even when in the back of my mind I knew I should. 

[Finn 3]

Lordy. I've made many. I've been an admin on/off for over ten years. My biggest mistake as a baby admin was mainly being overly strict and obsessed about my vision. Today, I'm so much better at appreciating all manner of different ways of writing things out. 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Finn