Message board drama

A while back, I was a message board admin. It was one of the most fun things ever, the vast majority of the time. Unfortunately, sometimes admins must deal with trolls or even well-meaning people who are driving everyone crazy, and it takes a monumental effort to make sure you and the other admins are handling it fairly. There's always particular uneasiness in the community about deleting or closing posts, because it would seem that you could just let things run their course and all would be well. Sometimes it's just not the case. While the idea is to keep the group from getting irretrievably mired in a nasty argument of epic proportions, all deletions and editing cause understandable drama.

The country's largest scrapbooking board had another problem this weekend, which we also dealt with back in the day. Their private admin area was breached, and some people saw some venting administrator commentary that was never meant for anyone else to see. All of us have vented about someone in an email or on the phone- even someone we normally like just fine, but who is causing an issue at the moment. Venting on a private board or web page? Don't do it. You never know when a technical glitch will cause a private area to become very public.

This particular board belongs to an online store, which makes it a more serious matter, because it's a huge international business with paying customers involved. Their issues are many, but the most disturbing was an admin (remember, a store representative) who called a customer a "douchebag" and a "b*tch" and said she would "like to take a stick to her head." Yikes!

Now the members are discussing what is the worst part of it all- the technical glitch that resulted in unlocking a private area, the hurt feelings of customers who were called names, the mistrust of the entire community who wonders if their names have been mentioned on the private board, the heavy-handedness with which the admins have deleted negative or questionable posts by members (because the TOU states that people can't post certain things), yet obviously not censoring themselves in the same way... The list goes on.

It makes my head hurt, and I'm only an occasional lurker.