Strategy This ain't an airport, no need to announce your departure

[Cedric]

Excuse the cringey title but we've all seen it before. Someone drops a dramatic PM or makes a public post saying, "I'm leaving this community" or "I'm done here, goodbye." for whatever their reasoning may be. How do you handle it when it happens in your community?

Do you:

• Ignore it?
• Respond with a polite "Wish you well"?
• Ask them why they’re leaving to see if you can fix something?
• Secretly celebrate if they were kind of a pain anyway?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but it can be tricky to balance keeping your community healthy while not letting things turn into a drama fest.

So what’s your go-to approach when someone makes one of these “farewell” announcements?

 

[Hulk]

People do this in Facebook groups and I just say cya usually

 

[Ravenfreak]

I don't really see this often on forums anymore, but I would just tell them that I wish them the best of luck and move on. I remember joining forums in the past and they had a rule that stated not to make these types of threads. People still made them at times lol.

 

[Cory]

I'll probably trash the topic if they start flaming the forum or the users. But if it's just a general goodbye, I'll probably wish them well.

 

[Num7]

It happens. Some people leave and want to say goodbye. That's fine. Some others are hoping to cause a bit of a stir when they leave.

I usually reply with something short and honest like "Sorry to see you go, take care" and keep it simple. It's their choice, after all. As Cory said, if it turns into flaming, the topic will be either locked or removed.

 

[CTS]

It depends on the person/situation, but I won't let it hang out like dirty laundry.

 

[fdk]

I used to get this on my football forum quite regularly actually. Usually, it would involve a member being trolled by some others because their team had lost, so getting upset they decide the forum is terrible and they're leaving. The vast majority of time, they'd post a thread, "leave", come back a couple days later, and then get further trolled in their "I'm quitting!" thread for coming back... they still didn't seem to learn.

We had a pretty popular off-topic section of the forum at this time, so I was pretty fine with letting people post these threads there... they'd be either requesting mods to delete them pretty quick, or they'd fall off the first page within a day or two at the most after their "exit".

For smaller forums, it's probably important to not let these kinds of threads air out as "dirty laundry", as CTS said above. It probably looks quite unappealing to potential new members to see people leaving and doing it "publicly" going out dropping a bomb.

 

[Arantor]

On the other hand, you can get into a weird situation where such a member doesn’t announce their departure, they just go, and then you get posts of the form “whatever happened to…?” Which can be almost as bad.

 

[fdk]

On the other hand, you can get into a weird situation where such a member doesn’t announce their departure, they just go, and then you get posts of the form “whatever happened to…?” Which can be almost as bad.

That's a very good point, but also, at least in my own experience, I generally find that the type/kind of member that'll post a "departure thread" is probably the kind of member you'd "know" just had enough of the forum and decided to quit, if you were curious... if that kind of makes sense. (it does in my head!)

Of course, there are exceptions - some people might want to announce they're leaving due to a personal situation or crisis in their personal life, and they may just genuinely want the friends/acquaintances they made on that forum to know that they're well but need time away... these kinds of cases seem to be a lot less common than the "I'm not happy with something that happened here, so I'm leaving" kind of threads, though.

 

[Arantor]

That's a very good point, but also, at least in my own experience, I generally find that the type/kind of member that'll post a "departure thread" is probably the kind of member you'd "know" just had enough of the forum and decided to quit, if you were curious... if that kind of makes sense. (it does in my head!)

Of course, there are exceptions - some people might want to announce they're leaving due to a personal situation or crisis in their personal life, and they may just genuinely want the friends/acquaintances they made on that forum to know that they're well but need time away... these kinds of cases seem to be a lot less common than the "I'm not happy with something that happened here, so I'm leaving" kind of threads, though.

Yup, the “I’m sorry I need to leave because things have happened” is fairly rare, my experience is that these people either PM folks, or disappear and then announce the return.

The flouncing kind, though, that’s sadly common.