Arantor
Community Explorer
Let me tell you a story.
Imagine a forum. A decently sized forum, mostly ticking along reasonably happily. There's a few malcontents but nothing too serious. They also have a healthy collection of active participants who will be fairly shouty against the malcontents for daring not to be faithful. In other words, a typical fairly large forum.
Now imagine that you have a member that is mostly dormant, but occasionally pokes their head over the parapet, throws out the odd observation. They don't say much but what they do say is generally positively received.
Now imagine that person is having a bad day or two. They end up making a series of posts that are increasingly negative in tone, and that tone becomes more negative precisely because of the reaction they're getting to the earlier posts - specifically from the management, rather than the regulars. Comments about poor choices of communication, comments about not doing obvious things for the good of the forum. You've seen these a million times before, no doubt.
And you delete some of the posts. You might even bother to tell the person that you've deleted posts as off-topic.
The first question: do you issue that person a warning? Do you reach out to them and go 'are you OK' because clearly they're not. Now, you know as well as I do that you as staff on a forum aren't someone's therapist, and they're acting out and giving you work to do.
The second question: if you do decide to issue a warning, do you actually tell them you've issued them a warning?
The third question: if the person is upset, and clearly part of their problem is the lack of communication from staff, do you think it's appropriate to double down on that?
(Obvious disclaimer is obvious: this is a true story and I will fully accept that I as the truculent forumite am at least partially to blame for letting my temper get the better of me. But I'd like to understand if my reaction to this is normal. Names have been otherwise censored to protect the possibly-innocent.)
Imagine a forum. A decently sized forum, mostly ticking along reasonably happily. There's a few malcontents but nothing too serious. They also have a healthy collection of active participants who will be fairly shouty against the malcontents for daring not to be faithful. In other words, a typical fairly large forum.
Now imagine that you have a member that is mostly dormant, but occasionally pokes their head over the parapet, throws out the odd observation. They don't say much but what they do say is generally positively received.
Now imagine that person is having a bad day or two. They end up making a series of posts that are increasingly negative in tone, and that tone becomes more negative precisely because of the reaction they're getting to the earlier posts - specifically from the management, rather than the regulars. Comments about poor choices of communication, comments about not doing obvious things for the good of the forum. You've seen these a million times before, no doubt.
And you delete some of the posts. You might even bother to tell the person that you've deleted posts as off-topic.
The first question: do you issue that person a warning? Do you reach out to them and go 'are you OK' because clearly they're not. Now, you know as well as I do that you as staff on a forum aren't someone's therapist, and they're acting out and giving you work to do.
The second question: if you do decide to issue a warning, do you actually tell them you've issued them a warning?
The third question: if the person is upset, and clearly part of their problem is the lack of communication from staff, do you think it's appropriate to double down on that?
(Obvious disclaimer is obvious: this is a true story and I will fully accept that I as the truculent forumite am at least partially to blame for letting my temper get the better of me. But I'd like to understand if my reaction to this is normal. Names have been otherwise censored to protect the possibly-innocent.)