Tracking down a ghost

[Arantor]

So here's another thing I saw recently.

I think we talked before about a person leaving and not saying a word, especially if there was no preceding event (e.g. an argument), and I think the conclusion was that we'd try and reach out with a friendly 'hi'.

How far would you go in trying to track down a person who ghosted your forum? Is there a point which is... unreasonable or even unhealthy?

 

[joelr]

Hi

 

[André]

Hi

Hey joelr, how's it going?

 

[dahLabdo]

I think if you're actively tracking down people who have left your forum, you need to give your head a wobble haha. They have ghosted your forum for a reason - it's not for them and that's OK.

The most I would do is probably have a plugin or something that reaches out to users whom have not logged in for x amount of weeks to let them know we have changed so much. Just to see if this entices them back. Other than that, there's not much you can do. Not everyone will love your forum and want to be a part of it - it's the beauty of being human.

 

[André]

So here's another thing I saw recently.

I think we talked before about a person leaving and not saying a word, especially if there was no preceding event (e.g. an argument), and I think the conclusion was that we'd try and reach out with a friendly 'hi'.

How far would you go in trying to track down a person who ghosted your forum? Is there a point which is... unreasonable or even unhealthy?

😄You must see a lot aye, and i like how you're apparently unquestionably "right" about everything,...which is an impressive feat considering we all make mistakes—but not the all knowing infallible Arantor.

So anyways, how'd this "we" settle on a "conclusion" to "reach out"—"with a"–"friendly"—"hi"?

Who is this "we"?

What was the intention motivating such a "conclusion"?

Was the intent to seek resolution?—or perhaps something not so selfless,...?

Because the natural—although maladaptive limbic system hijacking reactivity to 'Ghosting" is typically a wide range of variable irrationality—and which is generally an intented purpose of 'Ghosting'.

Yet how would one reading your OP be able to know whether your interpretation of supposed "Ghosting" is accurate or otherwise?

How far would you go in trying to track down a person who ghosted your forum?

(A) as far as i could throw a mountain.

Is there a point which is... unreasonable or even unhealthy?

(A) yes, that point would be the point of initiation.

 

[Tracy]

How far would you go in trying to track down a person who ghosted your forum? Is there a point which is... unreasonable or even unhealthy?

Personally... I wouldn't go to any additional work. Odds are if they ghosted, they had a reason... if they had wanted you to know the reason, most likely they would have commented on it either via a PM/Conversation or post in the site.

 

[Arantor]

Who is this "we"?

I was fairly sure it was a topic of conversation on this site, therefore 'several of the peoplpe who are here'.

As for 'ghosting', the accepted meaning is pretty consistent - the ghost disappears, radio silent. No content, no dramatic leaving message, just gone.

I had avoided wanting to get into specifics to discuss the general situation of 'how far is too far' but well, I guess we're going there.

Situation:
* A site with a pretty new male forum admin
* Regular contributor, gender wasn't disclosed in the forum, but person is female
* Argument rears up around misogyny, female takes cue to leave

Admin not only reached out via PM, but reached out on 2 or 3 (I think 2 in the final tally) other sites where they'd found her including social media, was watching her presence on those sites to see if she'd read their conversations, multiple times accused the lady of lying about what she'd read and when. And I don't mean small things, I mean walls of text I'd be embarrassed to send.

I mean, that's pretty stalkerish (I ultimately advised to file for a restraining order), and I think goes well beyond what would be reasonable, so I wanted to get a generic ballpark for what was 'normal'.

I've certainly ghosted forums over time. If nothing else to take a mental health break because... people are awful and this is why we can't have nice things.

 

[dahLabdo]

I was fairly sure it was a topic of conversation on this site, therefore 'several of the peoplpe who are here'.

As for 'ghosting', the accepted meaning is pretty consistent - the ghost disappears, radio silent. No content, no dramatic leaving message, just gone.

I had avoided wanting to get into specifics to discuss the general situation of 'how far is too far' but well, I guess we're going there.

Situation:
* A site with a pretty new male forum admin
* Regular contributor, gender wasn't disclosed in the forum, but person is female
* Argument rears up around misogyny, female takes cue to leave

Admin not only reached out via PM, but reached out on 2 or 3 (I think 2 in the final tally) other sites where they'd found her including social media, was watching her presence on those sites to see if she'd read their conversations, multiple times accused the lady of lying about what she'd read and when. And I don't mean small things, I mean walls of text I'd be embarrassed to send.

I mean, that's pretty stalkerish (I ultimately advised to file for a restraining order), and I think goes well beyond what would be reasonable, so I wanted to get a generic ballpark for what was 'normal'.

I've certainly ghosted forums over time. If nothing else to take a mental health break because... people are awful and this is why we can't have nice things.

This is completely different to what I first thought.

This is simple harassment which is a criminal offence and needs reporting.

I appreciate that there is a duty of care, just to make sure that everything is alright especially since they're your member of staff and even then, they would have been a friend before being a member of staff and that's just the decent thing to do. In reference to several communications, one message to a platform you know that she uses is enough. Your effort has been made there to contact and make things right.

I think whatever is going on here is something that is more about the person off screen's behaviour than it is losing a member.

 

[Arantor]

The lady involved was not a member of staff as far as I know, I think they were just a regular member that had decided enough was enough, in which case the duty of care still exists.

 

[dahLabdo]

The lady involved was not a member of staff as far as I know, I think they were just a regular member that had decided enough was enough, in which case the duty of care still exists.

Agreed. A duty of care does exist especially if you have built a bond with this person. There is a limit to how far you go though, in my personal opinion several messages and extensively monitoring for replies is a bit too much.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I was fairly sure it was a topic of conversation on this site, therefore 'several of the peoplpe who are here'.

As for 'ghosting', the accepted meaning is pretty consistent - the ghost disappears, radio silent. No content, no dramatic leaving message, just gone.

I had avoided wanting to get into specifics to discuss the general situation of 'how far is too far' but well, I guess we're going there.

Situation:
* A site with a pretty new male forum admin
* Regular contributor, gender wasn't disclosed in the forum, but person is female
* Argument rears up around misogyny, female takes cue to leave

Admin not only reached out via PM, but reached out on 2 or 3 (I think 2 in the final tally) other sites where they'd found her including social media, was watching her presence on those sites to see if she'd read their conversations, multiple times accused the lady of lying about what she'd read and when. And I don't mean small things, I mean walls of text I'd be embarrassed to send.

I mean, that's pretty stalkerish (I ultimately advised to file for a restraining order), and I think goes well beyond what would be reasonable, so I wanted to get a generic ballpark for what was 'normal'.

I've certainly ghosted forums over time. If nothing else to take a mental health break because... people are awful and this is why we can't have nice things.

That's quite the situation and it's quite creepy at that. If someone leaves a community, it's for one reason or another. Life gets in the way sometimes, people might not like how a community is ran, etc. It's one thing to send out a mass email to everyone, it's another thing to send private messages to said member on other forums and stalk them.

 

[Reverie]

If a user randomly disappears - likely due to life and etc back in the day I likely had them on an instant messenger and I would reach out there. I have on occasion used their email they signed up with to check in as well.

If someone left because they were upset - I haven’t reached out to them because they likely need the space. Unless we were friends before they were upset I of course would ask them how they are doing because I would have likely had them on an instant messenger.

I have searched for people on social media for friends I knew a long time ago but disappeared off of forums - but those were in attempts to reach out to old friends and nothing more.

 

[Arantor]

This is the sort of thing I hoped to hear, that there would be some reaching out - but with nuance and decorum, and that I wasn't going mad in my trying to explain this to the person concerned. She thought it was nuts, I thought it was nuts, but I wanted to get some other opinions.

 

[Shortie]

From past experience and knowing that most times that people leave a forum and do not come back for a while is usually due to life getting busy, I would never chase a member to try and find out why they were no longer coming to my forum.

It seems very odd that some people would do that especially out of the blue. Some admins do get a little paranoid when it comes to things like this and often believe that it was the forum or them that was the reason they didn't come back and they do not think about real life and that things can happen.

If I left a forum due to being busy away from the internet and the owner of a site tried to track me down, I would be a little worried.