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Bad Staff Experiences


Morrigan
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Well we have the Good ones so why not the bad as well? Tell us what bad experiences you have had.

 

For me? It's normally staff related. When the staff members have a falling out and someone goes crazy and starts deleting things! That was literally one of the worst experiences I had ever had.

 

Afterward they got passive aggressive and rude to all of the members on the site until I had to ultimately ban them as they were toxic. It was a bad day for me because they were a good friend up until then.

 

 

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I have a pretty big one--the one that caused my previously long running site to close. It left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I couldn't carry on anymore. The short version is, I had two members of staff. One of them sent a private Skype log to a regular member of the board, in which the other staff member was complaining about the member. (And which turned out to be the wrong member in the end.) But several members left the forum and I deleted the admin spreading private logs (and we are no longer friends). I swore even if it was just me and the other admin, I would keep trying but I couldn't. I was so bitter about everything that I lost my will to RP there anymore. It was pretty disgusting.

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I had a pretty bad experience with a former friend who also happened to be staff. We'd met through another friend [who is still a friend and staff member on my current site] and hit it off pretty good. She was kind of pretentious with some of her beliefs re:roleplay and she had a lot of horror stories about past groups and sites [I should have listened to my gut], but I sympathized because I'd just gotten away from a really toxic friend myself and figured she just needed to vent.

 

ANYWAY, this friend proceeded to pit members against each other and staff against each other and did so in a very subtle manipulative way. It wasn't until well after one major incident that we realized what she'd been doing. She got my current friend [and staffer] kicked off site by manipulating a situation to where it was explosive. We eventually realized and invited our friend back, though we didn't realize the bad friend/staffer had been at the center of it b/c we weren't told at that point. Fast forward a bit and this person starts complaining about everyone - their post rate, their characterization, how their characters hog the spotlight [hint - she wanted the spotlight for her own character every time], etc., etc., etc.. We started to wise up and distance ourselves from her. She eventually decided to take a LOA from the site, while working on her own [which I was co-admin on b/c I'm foolish], and said she'd come back when she had time to 'think'.

 

Christmas rolls around, I see a lot of old members who'd left my site for unexplained reasons, and a few of her friends who were asked to leave b/c they caused trouble and were complained about hanging around my site. I get wary. Around new years I see an ad up for a site that has the exact same description, word for word as the one I've been fixing codes and application forms and everything on. I go over there thinking it's a copycat that I need to alert her to and report to the host. NOPE. It's her, with all these friends, and all the members she herself had run off, posting merrily away, using codes I'd adapted and basically being giant liars and manipulators. I was SO angry.

 

I lost a lot of love for RP in general and my site in particular because after sitting down with the few who remained and my staff, we realized that she'd been slowly sinking the boat from the get go. We don't know if it was because she was mad her own weren't taking off or if she just loved manipulating everyone or whatnot, but it was one of the most messed up situations I have ever been in. In the end the few remaining members and staff agreed to close the site because there were just too many hard feelings and bad memories surrounding it. We'd tried to restart 2x and she'd tried to take over the entire site the first time and had posted in a ton of opens and then taken her LOA after the second. Killed the site. Dead, dead, dead.

 

I have learned a lot since then and I really watch how people interact with each other and how we handle things. I listen to member concerns, but I also research and investigate on my own, and I never let my own feelings for the person cloud my judgment as to whether I think they could [or couldn't] do something. I let the evidence [or lack thereof] do the talking.

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Quite some time ago I used to have a co-admin on another site. Everything started off golden, things got done in time and we were booming. But then, behind the scenes, things started to come apart. They were going through a lot of issues and, truthfully, needed some professional help. Certainly more help than I was ever able to provide across a keyboard. But they simply refused to get help. 

And that became a major problem... They spent weeks complaining about the same issues over and over. Sorry but pull up your big person underwear and get to addressing them. Because, not going to lie, after the 30th time of hearing about <issue> with no changes it very much becomes a nuisance. And it shows me that you're not interested in trying to improve things, you're looking for sympathy. (And I really can't deal with that. I don't have much tolerance for that kind of stuff.)

 

While this was happening their presence on the site nosedived. They would show up in the chatbox for maybe 2-3 minutes, check if I was online then message me on another platform. They very rarely made any posts on site (and they had like 7 characters so this affected quite a few threads). They stopped doing any sort of advertising. Naturally this started to have a pretty big effect on that site... plots stalled. 

 

This also had the side effect of causing me to get burned out by trying to pick up the slack and do more. (While also being staff on more sites than I really should have been... My time was already stretched pretty thin.)

 

Eventually everything came to a head when I asked them to do something simple (like lock 3 topics because they were finished) but after like 2 weeks that still wasn't done. (My thought process was that if they wouldn't do that simple job in 2 weeks, a job that should only take like a minute, they really weren't fit to be staff right then.) So I asked them to step down as staff for a month to get their life in order (and then, when they were ready, to return to being staff) and they agreed. But then when I actually demoted them? They flipped right out. Accused me of stealing their stuff and chasing them off and how I betrayed them. 

 

I probably didn't handle this situation very well, but at the same time I don't think there is much that I could do differently that wouldn't have resulted in the same outcome.

 

After that I lost a lot of interest in running that site. Plus I ended up having to devote more time to another site. And when I returned to that site, I just didn't have the will/interest to keep going. It was nearly dead anyway, most people had left. I tried a few things to help it but I just couldn't. So I closed that site down in the end. (It had a pretty good go, almost 2 years...)

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"There are three sides to every story... Your side, their side, and then somewhere in the middle is the truth."
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Guest Archaic Cyborg

This counts, won't it? One time, I had a new player- a duo, actually, who joined my site. And asked to borrow my written work. I declined. They leave, and some time later (weeks?) one of them comes back to exchange affiliates with their latest game.. And it's got copies of my work.

 

The admin eventually took the stolen content down, and deleted her site months later or thereabouts. She's got a new site based on the same fandom, but all she's done now is copy any major changes that I do on my own game. E.G the changes are too big a copy(ies) to pass off as coincidences, but so long as she doesn't properly steal from me again, she can keep on doing the other crap.

 

I don't have any on-site staff issues, aside from one I suppose, who's guilty of constant broken promises. 

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When I was still learning, a certain member asked to be staff. I allowed them to be, and learned very quickly I shouldn't have.

 

The pros were that he was super interested, constantly online, etc. But that was where it stopped. Everything else was a con. His attitude, his creepiness toward new members, his tactless nature, his elitism when it came to posting, I could go on and on.

 

I was too nice to demote him. The peak of my problems was when he made a mock character app which was so ridiculous it was of course denied. I scrolled up in the cbox to see it was him who made it. Now if it were just a joke, all good. But he actually made this bad character in mockery of another member who wanted to make a similar character. Yes, he was mocking their idea by posting something up to see it get denied, so he could then throw it in their face. Dude, what ever happened to just saying 'no the idea won't work'? Jesus...

 

Anyway, I flew off the handle at him and he honestly thought I was overreacting. I finally removed him from staff but the damage was done by then. It's allowed me to live and learn. I no longer hand out staff positions to random members asking. :P

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I've been fortunately that most of the time, the biggest issue I see is staff who just doesn't do their described job. Whether it be willfully or just legitimately not having enough time to be staff anymore.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have only been staff on two sites - one which I stepped down due to no longer trusting the admin (there were lots of things going on in the background I didn't agree with), and the other where I was a support staff member doing the advertisements.  I received an email while I was asleep (most of the staff lived in the US, I'm in the UK), saying that xyz amount of ads needed to be done.  When I woke up and got this email, I went onto the site only to find that I'd already been demoted.  After trying to resolve the situation with the admins, I left a leaving message (polite, but honest) on the board as I felt that I couldnt be on the board any more - the more I talked to the admins the more pushed out I felt - and the message got deleted almost instantly.  I put it up again (I know, I know, I should have probably left it there), and again it got deleted. 

 

I knew a few of the people on the board by that point and was talking to them on aim quite happily when I started getting rumours about the reasons why I'd left - they were nothing to do with the actual reason!  I was hounded on RPG-D for almost a month by the staff and in the end just shut down nearly all contact with online players.  It was not a nice experience and something I don't ever want to go through again.

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I have had a few bad staff experiences, but the three worst times are etched into my memory. One of them decided he'd 'fallen in love with me', despite not even knowing my face, and this caused a lot of trouble. I ended up rejecting him, I didn't even know him, and he flipped out. Called me all sorts of nasty things, harassed the site. I tried reasoning with him, but he ended up getting banned.

 

Another staff member also had an unhealthy obsession, not in love, but had this controlling need. I had been staffing with him for a year, with no problems, before he retired. I also became head admin of the site. When the staff member who was 'in love with me' told his tale of woe to Horrible no.2, he didn't even ask for my side, and cracked into my account. After an ordeal with proboards support, where I got the account back, he decided to start stalking me. Began looking up my family, called phone numbers of anyone with the same last name as me, found out where my father worked, tried contacting his company, etc. This was in 2012 and I still get the occasional message from him, the 'I'm still here' sort of thing. Tried the police, but since he's in a different country it's hard to handle. It's dialed down a lot, just online messages again, he'll pop into the site because he changed his IP address. Now there are at least six month intervals, leaving me to hope this interval is actually the end of it.

 

A third horrible staffer was back when I was just an admin, and not the head. This guy was my fellow admin. He'd befriended the head. However, whenever the head wasn't around, which was a lot (months would go by, I was unofficially running the site, but getting everything approved by the head), this guy would spread false info. A new prospective member would ask questions, and he'd lie about the answers. This is due to the fact that the Staff plays the 'Gods' of the world, and he wanted more followers. So he'd promise things, if they would follow him. Or, sometimes it was just for the fun of messing with people. I would step in, sort things out, but the new member would often be angry, offended, or just downright confused, as this staffer would throw a fit and cause lots of drama. It took a long time before the head admin banned him, and the only reason he did, was that he eventually logged in as an anonymous guest, and asked questions, to see what Horrible no.3 would do. We lost a lot of members due to him.

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Distension

A fantasy and supernatural RP with multiple worlds, 20+ races, 60+ unique abilities, 150 WC, and a friendly environment!

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I once ran a rather large Naruto Roleplay called "Naruto: Shinobi Legends" or NSL for short. It was originally hosted on IF, but converted to Zetaboards during their initial conversion process. The forum had well over 1k registered members and 20+ staff. One of the staff members had a roommate who owned his own personal server. 

 

I was convinced to get the back-up of the forum Zetaboards and apply it to phpbb3 software on his server, basically self hosted. 

 

This created issues as said staff member and his roommate effectively had power over the board. They started issues host agreements and slowly taking ownership of the forum away from me. This caused a split in the staff (not much of one, only a couple were more inclined to these two individuals). They wanted to reboot the entire roleplay and start from scratch. I was opposed to the idea. 

 

No progress was made. So I turned away from the site due to depression and began to work on another project in secret with a few of the loyal staff members. When the server host found out about it, he shut the site down with only a message, "Get off my lawn" being where the site's usual domain was located. 

 

Thankfully I was friends with most of the people via MSN and managed to get into contact with them all and salvage the member base. Another plus note was the secret project was basically ready fro launch and they had a home to go to. It looks like those who wanted to start over from scratch ended up getting what they wanted in the end. Just not how they wanted. 

 

</lifestory> 

So that's my worst staff member experience. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've never had bad experiences with staff on my own sites, but on sites I became a member of staff on I have had a few. Nothing major, though. Just little personal annoyances. For example, I was upgraded to Moderator on a site I was fairly new on, which was fine by me because I really liked the board and saw potential for it. Buuut, I didn't mix too well with the rest of the staff. They were a bit awkward to speak to in the chatbox, replying to things that were easily replied to with just 'xD' or ':)'. Dude, that kills conversation and does not give the place a very open or welcoming atmosphere. Reply to me with words or don't respond at all. Eventually that atmosphere ruined things there for me, on top of a few other reasons such as a dramatic drop in staff activity.

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Oh lord. I've been running things for over a decade now (almost two) so I could write a book.

 

There was the one that opted to run her own thing as well and proceeded to attempt to lure our members over there/steal our ideas then get angry when members called her out on it in public.

 

There was the No Show. Whom swore up and down they'd be productive staff then posted a chain of absences and didn't do anything with an accompanying sob story every time it was brought up. Then when I finally booted them from being staff they proceeded to "confess" how they were afraid of me, thought I hated them, etc. (They had to have had some mental issues because I'd never been anything but cordial to them and there were a lot of other issues here.) They proceeded to quit the site (after saying they never would because I'd kill their characters, nevermind that it was in the rules that I wouldn't kill PCs without permission... Whatever.) They left and I closed the site because I was tired of the weird circlejerk about this one person that never even participated on the board.

 

Surprise Racist was fun. She spent her time bemoaning the fact that I was threading with other people, tried to use her position as staff to deny the people I was threading with things (for no reason other than "I don't like them.") And had a whole slew of other issues. Then one day she casually exploded into a rant about how rap wasn't music that very quickly turned racist. We banned her, she sobbed and begged and pleaded for months to be allowed back on the board and given her staff spot back. We said no. She proceeded to harass another member of staff for months. (I could share so many more details of her, I've got entire rants typed up for other things.)

 

Ummm... One where I wasn't staff but they had limited things that were allowed (ranks, etc) and yet the staff all magically had them and had several other things that broke their own rules and yet no one had a problem with this. They were generally just jerks to anyone that wasn't a brand new member or one of their cronies. It was weird because they'd suck up to you when you were joining, but once you got accepted it was like you got the cold shoulder until you sucked up to them.

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On 3/17/2016 at 2:17 PM, Rune said:

Ummm... One where I wasn't staff but they had limited things that were allowed (ranks, etc) and yet the staff all magically had them and had several other things that broke their own rules and yet no one had a problem with this. They were generally just jerks to anyone that wasn't a brand new member or one of their cronies. It was weird because they'd suck up to you when you were joining, but once you got accepted it was like you got the cold shoulder until you sucked up to them.

^ This. Right here. Kept me from joining a lot of cool sites over the years that my friends went to.

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You know I have to say that in all my years of RP I have never had a bad staff experience that has made me want to run. Sure there have been a few that have made me scratch my head and go...wtf, but at the end of the day I'm pretty pleased with the way I've been treated.

 

THAT being said, I have zero respect for admins of other sites who come join mine just to plot for a few days, get to know my members, and start dropping links to their board around public places like my cbox and group chat.

 

 

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"Everyone has been doing so much soul searching during all of this,

and I'm just over here drawing pics of my character's dicks."

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/20/2016 at 9:36 AM, CovertSphinx said:

 

On 3/27/2016 at 3:53 PM, Skysails said:

You know I have to say that in all my years of RP I have never had a bad staff experience that has made me want to run. Sure there have been a few that have made me scratch my head and go...wtf, but at the end of the day I'm pretty pleased with the way I've been treated.

 

THAT being said, I have zero respect for admins of other sites who come join mine just to plot for a few days, get to know my members, and start dropping links to their board around public places like my cbox and group chat.

 

 

 

Sorry about the random quote. It wouldn't go away...

 

On top of this, when they join and (usually immediately) start asking for help with their board. Whether it's asking for free graphics or coding or for advice or help or what have you. Most of the time they don't even put up the pretense of joining. 

Edited by Rune
I can't make it go away...
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