I just had a mass revolt at one of my sites. Seems a trusted admin/mod decided to start his own site and took a few top posters with him. I been banning all day. Luckily my phpbb is modded where I can see all PMs, registration IPs, and ban very quickly too. I am sure this will all die down in a couple days. It's kinda funny in a way. Basically 2 guys didn't like the way I ran the site and made their move. One had named himself GOD on this forums...haha. Totally narcissistic. Has anyone else experienced this?
It's happened a few different times at SEO Chat. I wouldn't worry about it though... not everyone is going to agree with how you run a forum.
Oh I ain't worried really. I just think it's funny (not funny haha) and they revolted mostly because I think they wanted their own site. Like I said..one of them named himself GOD on his forums..no joke. I also reset my sites points systems because it came out some users were cheating to inflate their virtual points. How silly. At my site though the points system has become a beast and people actually do contests for real items as well as buy the points from each other. So I wanted to even out the points some and implement a few new things. I think they would have left eventually anyways since they started their own site a few weeks ago but were telling me it was just a small side project for invited members only. Yeah..like I believed that. In the end it amounts to people wanting control where at my site I would never give them that control.
Well I am not a pro at this but the first thing I would say is when you are running a "community forum" you shouldn't ever call it "your site". Sure you might own everything and pay the bill but a webmaster alone can't be a community. I had something much like this happen to me once. I had moved and everything with me personally was unstable so I was off line for about 5 months. I expected to be away for a period of time so I had left the "staff" in charge as a whole team. I would check in via phone and as far as I knew everything was fine. Well needless to say when I got back it was anything but fine, they had lost the server twice member count went from 1300 when I had left to about 60 when I came back. In the meantime the "staff" had went and brought in some more members that I did not even know as moderators, they started their own type of click and new members coming in wasn't very welcomed. As soon as I seen a full year of time invested flushed away I went right into "Lets get this place in order" mod. Well that didn't settle well with them so the SOBs banned me, I swear to it thats what they did. It didn't take a lot of effort to get all my access back as I was the owner but it was a headache. That was more then a year ago and that same group is still together, their community hasn't broke 40 members yet (yes I have peaked). So all in all you should count your blessing you didn't have to take the trash out, it just walked out for you. With the way they are running things now you can bet your bottom buck that they will not get far. I have seen many of forums split up, its sad because there is members who are caught in the middle. Sorry if I am rambling or not making any sense I am suffering from severe sleep deprivation.
Funny your first sentence tells me not to call it "your site" meanwhile you go on to tell a story about your site was hijacked. Maybe if you were more clear that it was your site and you wouldn't put up with crap that it would not have happened. I make it clear my site is a community and that the members are important to me. I sort of describe it as a hotel. I only rent out the rooms but you have to hire the hookers. I hope that made sense. The problem is not me calling it "my site" the problem is admins or moderators calling it "their site". When they get this idea into their head it's a serious problem. Imagine I started to think that DP was my site...and that without me it would be crap. What if I thought Shawn should give me free reign becuase I am so full of self-importance? I hope you get what I am saying. The trick is to be fair and open with the members. Listen to their input and ask them their opinion. However their may always be someone thinking they can do it better. My rebellion is pretty much over. I lost about 20-25 members out of 8000. Their site will never go anywhere. I did lose a few good posters but there is always others willing to take their place.
Had that a couple of years ago. They didn't like it that there were more links to video's that didn't have anything to do with cars posted then links to car vids. Most of my members said "if you want more links to car vids, go and post them". They didn't come on the site for a few days and then they posted that they started their own car site and would compete with us. Some checked their site but came back and said they wouldn't stand a chance. Took only a month before they gave up. Never heard of them since. Some members also did something similar, starting their own site and club but their site is pretty much dead now. If you have nice members who like your site, they'll stick around. They often say it's my site but i reply that it's our site and we manage it all together, kinda makes them feel important too. I also listen to them if they have suggestions.
I've been involved in a forum staff revolt before, hell I helped instigate it. It was an anime forum from yonks back, and it was run by someone who had serious power-control issues and didn't know how to run a forum. It'd take far too long to explain the problems in detail but did involve him censoring/banning anyone who didn't agree with him, and making up lies about shows he didn't like and then going off about ppl who enjoyed the show (for example, calling everyone who liked a show he didn't like pedophiles) so a lot of the forum members left, the only ones left were either the die-hards or those that agreed with everything he said (ie, the suckups or those new to anime who thought he was some sort of oracle or something). So, several of the mods and I decided we had had enough, as we felt that the community members remianing would ahve a better experience elsewhere, where the site owner was more sane. So we basically screwed the site up big time in an effort to get everyone else to leave, which actually worked. Eventually we were all kicked off as mods (he did a massive Stalinesque purging as he didn't know what was going on, he kept on claiming it was hackers or something ) and several innocent ppl were banned at random, and we all left, and he restarted the forums from scratch (it still hasn't gotten anywhere. ppl join up then invariably leave because of his insanity) Speaking from experience, I think that in a way a lot of mods/admins do come to feel that the forum is "theirs" as they often spend a lot of time working on it. It sort of becomes their "baby", esp if they feel that the owner is neglecting the forum (or them) or is acting in a damaging way. If a site owner spends a lot of time communicating with his mods, things tend to go better for the forum on a whole.
Thats the best advice. Dont even bother banning. Blow it off publically, just go about your business like it didnt happen. Make it a non issue and your members will follow suit.
It's tough not to ban people who are respected and telling everyone to leave and go to their new site. After about 3-4 days of banning it pretty much was over. Many of them came back and their site has only about 50 members now...they are basically a mute site to me. I don't allow any competiting site links on my site...the rules are the rules. They were in place before the revolt. My site now is less active as those that left accounted for a large percentage of posts...but guess what...my income is the exact same. They were practically spammers with their constant posting anyways. Many were not nice to new members which I hate. The current staff and crew is cool.
My best advice is to simply take the high road. Dont appear to be bitter or adversarial. Look at it this way. The post whores are gone. Time for you to focus heavily on building your other members' loyalty and interest. Now is the time to step up and really focus on adding value to your site and demonstrating why your forum is the best one for people to remain at.