Building an Online Community: Part Four - Take a Stand

Just about the only time that I see my co-admin is when we’re out exploring, and even then it’s pretty rare thesedays. But usually when we’re out, we’ll have a conversation to the side and I’ll ask him his opinion on various things going on with the site. Generally there’s some form of drama going on, and I’ll seek his sage advice on it. Invariably, he’ll give his opinion and say:

“But it’s your site, you should run it the way you like.”

It’s taken me a long time to really “get” that simple message. You see, one of my biggest faults is getting upset, or caring too much, about whether or not people are upset with me. So running a forum is like walking a razor thin line - do I enforce a rule and risk annoying someone? Do I ban someone who is constantly annoying other users, or posting useless nonsense? What sort of fallout am I going to have to endure if I do ban them?

I recently banned a user who had about a two year posting history. He came on the forums and posted some interesting threads on the Long Island Pine Barrens. Hey, it’s pretty cool to learn about new places, but after a while, it was just non-stop LI talk from this one user. He was uploading copious amounts of pictures onto the server, and every time someone visited the front page of the site where a random image from my image gallery displays on each page load, there was a risk that a user would see a Long Island picture. It bothered me, but I let it slide because I didn’t want to offend anybody. Eventually I made a subforum just for Long Island posts, solely for the idea that if they were all concentrated in one spot, I could ignore them easier.

This went on for a while, but then the threads began to get worse. There was the one thread asking about why he gets sores in his crotch when he hikes in the heat. There was a thread where he posted pictures that he took of a girl without her knowing it. There were threads - always around Valentines - bemoaning his inability to find a girlfriend. There was the thread where he posted this link that went to a scat porn star’s website for some reason or another. Still, people generally tolerated him, despite the fact that many people thought he was strange and creepy.

Then there were the “illegals.” This user has a real agenda against illegal immigration, and if you didn’t take the same racist stance as him you were part of the problem instead of the solution. He has quite a few videos on YouTube where he wanders through Long Island, pointing out anybody of Hispanic descent, and calling them illegals. He frequently calls them “fuckers” and other derogatory terms. Now, I don’t really care what this guys political views are, but every now and then he would want to bring them up on the site. Now, I tolerate a good amount of off-topic discussion, but hotbutton issues like these just divide users and destroy any sense of community. They pit member against member, and result in long threads which just go back and forth with the same nauseating argument all the time. It’s not just illegal aliens, we’ve seen it with issues like ORV use in the Pine Barrens. It’s not that I really care to censor what gets discussed, but I do want to keep the site a good resource for people who are doing research on the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Having political threads up just increase the signal to noise ratio and foster bad feelings amongst all of the users. So, I asked this user to not post any more threads dealing with illegal aliens. To his credit, he complied with this, although you could just tell he was bursting at the seams to bring it up.

Finally, he posted a thread wondering why he couldn’t lose any weight. It turned out that he was eating at Wendys quite often, and he seemed surprised that this might have anything to do with it. This thread was the straw that broke the camels back, and many people who just had enough with the guy turned out and mocked him. One of the users made an off-hand remark about his rants on YouTube and the user went ballistic, thinking that there was some double standard with what he could post and what other people could. This could not be further from the truth. Coming from someone who posted incessantly about the Long Island Pine Barrens, it’s doubly ironic. He’s the only person in the history of the site who was ever given their own subforum.

I ended up finally banning this user. It was like a wave of fresh air had blown through the forums. The user, on the other hand, decided to go to “war” with me, and a YouTube video ranting about me. When he found out that everybody — including my co-workers who saw the video — were laughing at it, he made a second video.

There’s several morals to this story:

First, People run websites for one of two reasons. Either to make money, or for fun. NJPineBarrens.com falls into the “fun” category. I don’t make any money from the site. People really don’t know how close they were to having me close up the forums a few months ago. I was incredibly burned out, and even took a week off from the site to clear my head. If you’re not making money with your site, or if you’re not having fun with it, you should close it. Ultimately it’s the admins happiness and attitude that reflects the most on the site.

Second, you can’t run a website — even a community site — like a democracy. Like a politician, every one of the administrators decisions will be subject to both praise and criticism from the user base. The larger your community grows, the harder it will be to make everyone happy. So stop. Run the site like you want it to be run. Stop worrying about hits, traffic, or who you’re going to offend, because invariably you will offend someone.

Sometimes great ideas come from disaster. One of the things I noticed while watching the thread where this user went insane is that people really seemed to want to have a place where they could unwind without having to worry about being topical or even sensical. Out of this came the “NJPB Hangout Thread” where people can post whatever they want - from serious posts to LOLcat macros - and not have to worry about anything.

Lastly, if you have someone on your site that you don’t like, or is causing problems, it’s usually better to deal with the issue quickly rather than ignore it in the hopes that it will go away. Had I discouraged this user from posting about the Long Island Pine Barrens, he probably would not have stuck around so long and the mess that happened would probably have not happened.

In the end, my userbase is happier that this poster is gone. My co-workers now make fun of me by mispronouncing my last name. And I’m amused to death that my humble website could have incensed someone so bad that they felt compelled to make two completely off-the-wall insane rants about me.