Staffing When should offline drama influence your admin decisions?

[Sadrienne 242]

The golden rule of drama and running a roleplay has always been to never let OOC drama impact the running of the board.

 

Normally that refers to a person creating OOC drama among the community, where the solution is simple: they either pull their head in, or get kicked from the community for being negative and disruptive. 

 

But what about when the OOC drama only affects one person? And what about when that OOC drama is entirely offline, thus: not disrupting the community? That one person needs to just suck it up and deal with their real life crap outside of the board, right? 

 

But what about this: what if that person is you: the administrator? And the person causing you this offline drama  is a member of the board?

 

I had this dilemma in 2010, and it still puzzles me as to what was the right thing to do. The situation was beyond complicated: my best friend and housemate (and also a member of Tally) screwed me royally, kicking me out of our house, lied to me about why it happened, told our mutual friends it was because of things I'd never done (that she was actually responsible for), took money from me for rent but never actually paid the rent---and basically our friendship of nine years imploded in the most horrible of ways. I've never been more heartbroken in my life than I was after that.

 

Once I'd found somewhere to live, I realised that she was still on Tally. She had connections there, friends that she RP'd with, and all that had really changed was that she went silent any time it was clear I was on the board. 

 

Meanwhile, I felt sick just looking at her usernames in the thread lists. Every time I saw them it was a reminder of how badly I'd been burned by someone I really cared for. 

 

Is that a good enough reason to remove someone from your community? At the time, I didn't feel it would be fair. I felt that our OOC problems were exactly that: and I did nothing about my severe discomfort in having her around. We didn't have a group chat outside of the CBox at that time. The people she RP'd with most stopped threading with me, and those closest to me stopped threading with her. No one ever discussed it, it just... happened.

 

She finally left when she found it too uncomfortable to stay. 

 

What would you do in that situation? Wait it out? Or would you reclaim your space?

[Elena 546]

I think if a conflict happened offscreen, it should remain offscreen. People on a site are simply writers, and writing shouldn't be affected by what happened in an environment not related to writing. 

 

My opinion would have been different only if the OOC conflict would have been related to writing (plagiarizing, etc.)

[Sadrienne 242]

3 minutes ago, SithLordOfSnark said:

I'm mostly with @Elenahere, unless the site is my own and it's becoming extremely uncomfortable for me to even look at the site, then you better believe I'm removing that person from MY house.

 

 

 

Which was exactly the case. She kicked me out of our house, I should have kicked her off my board? Haha.

[Shades 676]

3 minutes ago, Mousie said:

 

Which was exactly the case. She kicked me out of our house, I should have kicked her off my board? Haha.

Not as 'payback', necessarily. But if I'm an admin and a member is making me uncomfortable on my site, for whatever reason,  to the point where I don't wanna be on  my own site? Yup, I'm kicking them out, you can be sure.

 

The needs of one (this member) don't outweigh the needs of many (your entire member base), who need a present admin.

 

But I'm a very no-BS person, so don't take much of what I say 100% to  heart.

[CovertSphinx 710]

As long as the fallout of the drama isn't affecting how my board is running and I can RP in my own place, I'd let my wrongdoer stay for as long as they please. If I was so sick to my stomach with this person that I didn't even want to go on my site for fear of seeing them then it'd be a different story and probably ask them to "take a very long break." 

 

Your mention that she would clam up and disappear every time you were on makes me theorize that your ex-roomie was just as uncomfortable as you but didn't want to lose out on her other friendships - the same as you were uncomfortable looking at her but didn't want to drag the rest of the member base into a "Pick a Side and stay/leave" war by auto-banning her and chose to keep the peace sotospeak. 

[Rune 1,099]

I would have made a point to be around as much as humanly possible so her time was limited. Flaunt that you made it and maybe dangle it in front if her now and then by talking about how you were screwed over by a former housemate. 

 

But I'm also a whole bag of dicks and the second someone comes into my home and pisses in my oatmeal they're out.

 

Pretty ballsy of her to remain on site honestly.

[Zahhy 130]

This has happened to me and I'm not sure if I've dealt with it well, but I'll tell you how I do deal. In the past, I've shut down my sites.  Now though I just sort of stick it out. Yeah - sure - I don't get as much enjoyment out of my game as I did because I get a rigid gut feeling every time I see their name online, afraid that they'll hurt me again, or that whatever is going on behind the scenes might creep IC but unless they've broken some serious In-game Rules, or any Common Sense Codes of Conduct for the community (And even then I'm usually really, really lenient when it comes to myself), I can't justify banning them.

 

Honestly, that person probably knows something is up and some sort of coexistence can be maintained. They won't play with you, and you won't play with them, but you should just keep being yourself and hope that whatever is going on with them stays ooc and doesn't start directly affecting your players.

 

Forum writing should be a game. As an admin, I believe it is my responsibility to keep the game going, no matter what personal issue others might have with me (or I with them). It hurts, not playing as much as I once would have liked, and not playing the specific characters I want in a certain way because it's ruffled feathers or are somehow associated with the other player, but hey - as long as the game is going there will be more characters, and more stories and my feelings might someday change - or that person will fade away.

 

I can't tell you not to feel hurt and anxious or even upset about the way this person has treated you. It isn't right, and gosh it's not at all even remotely humane if you ask me, but unless it actually affects the game itself and not just your emotional constitution for it, then I'm not sure I can say with any form of conscience to ban anyone that hasn't publicly or privately broken any rules that you can prove. You don't want to lose players, friends or your reputation on a "they said, we said" sort of game. Keep your chin up, walk the high road, and keep on playing, that's what I try to do anyway!

 

Edited April 9, 2018 by Zahhy

[Uaithne 543]

Geeze, this is why I keep IRL and RP completely separate.

 

But I think that you behaved appropriately for the situation, @Mousie.  The challenge is that she was so ingrained in the board that it wasn't as simple as saying, "Hey, we're in a bad spot, so please pack up your characters and plots and leave."  Doing anything would have opened up a "he said, she said" situation that would likely have resulted in a tarnished reputation for you and a damaged, divided community.  It's fortunate that she decided to leave on her own so that you didn't have to go that route.

 

Every now and again, a topic comes up in which people are curious if they should do anything about improper behavior over Skype or Discord that involves two or more members of a board but isn't directly on the site or the site's Discord server.  I am of the belief that the community extends outside of the narrow confines of the forum and into other places as well, but it's a dangerous and tricky territory to navigate.  After all, I don't want to be policing people's private conversations and personal squabbles.  But if someone is talking about how they're going to cheat in the next IC competition, then that's something that directly affects the forum and the community, for example.

 

That's kind of how I see your situation.  I believe you would be perfectly within your rights to remove someone from the community for behaving drastically inappropriately towards you OoC.  I do not think you need to just suck it up and power through the discomfort and insecurity it causes you.  We're not talking about somebody who called you a bad name IRL, or even someone who asked you to no longer be roommates.  (Awkward certainly, but maybe not inappropriate.)  This is a serious situation in which someone betrayed your trust and committed a crime against you.  For comparison, if I was chatting on Skype with an RP buddy and that buddy decided to show me an unsolicited picture of his/her own genitalia, I'd ban that person because I wouldn't be comfortable being around him/her on the RP site due to wildly inappropriate behavior.  That's what comes to mind when I think about the shit you had to go through with your roommate - she crossed a line and you're within your rights to draw boundaries for how you proceed in interacting with her.

 

But, again, the idea of preserving your reputation and keeping your overall community safe and happy comes into play as well.  Clearly your roommate was someone who was perfectly fine manipulating and lying; that sort of behavior could easily have been used to take down Tally from the ground up if you had lifted a finger against her.  There was no proof that she did the things you said she did, and oftentimes the person accusing another person without proof falls into the spotlight of shame and hatred.

[Sage 289]

I agree that it was incredibly adult of you to stick it out and wait for them to leave. I don't think I could've been able to do that. If I'd been burned that badly, I would need to cut all ties to that person. I'd totally ban them. I'd probably send them a note that said something to the effect of "I'm sorry, but after everything that happened, I don't feel comfortable having you on my forum. Please let me know if you'd like your characters and posts and I'd be happy to send them to you, but you are no longer welcome in this community." And that would be it. I wouldn't open it to discussion any further. At the end of the day, it's my board, and a community that I lead. 

 

If this were an issue between two of my members, it would be a different story. I'd give the advice given above that IRL and RP are separate and if you two can't play nice then you're both out sorry not sorry. But it's a different issue when it involves a staff member. I'm not condoning exclusionary behavior, but if it impedes your ability to lead the community and manage the forum, then you gotta do something.