Admin Well-being What aspect of running a forum burns you out quickly?

[Ja sa bong]

Forum management can be very easy and it can also be very difficult. It's easy when everything is going according to plan. There traffic, Increased activities, money earned from monetization and etc. The difficult part might when the forum is battling DDoS attack, members conflict, decrease in traffic and lack of forum activities.

Which aspect in the management of a forum have you burnt out faster?

 

[Arantor]

People.

 

[Cedric]

Drama. People can get so worked up about the smallest things. I’ve had it happen before a few times on AJ, where I’d receive a PM by someone stating they’re leaving AJ because of something a specific member has said or done. Often a case of miscommunication or misinterpretation. It’s not always under my control what has been said or done that may offend someone else. Yet I’m the one they PM and state they’re leaving the forum.

If you own a reasonably sized community, it’s inevitable this will happen to you.

 

[Empire]

I would say PEOPLE - GOD DAMN PEOPLE - SCREAM

 

[MrDawn]

People.

Same. Not getting members is a major let down. You end up wondering where you went wrong when you put up a good layout, set up the forum categories, and believed you picked a good domain name. It's extremely discouraging. It's also why I won't ever start another forum again after pouring my heart into the last one I had 10 years ago.

 

[AjayJunkies]

Yeah, when hosting a community I needed to learn to filter things people say because people will say some really silly things that sound offensive but it's important to just filter and move on and filter.

 

[Arantor]

Same. Not getting members is a major let down. You end up wondering where you went wrong when you put up a good layout, set up the forum categories, and believed you picked a good domain name. It's extremely discouraging. It's also why I won't ever start another forum again after pouring my heart into the last one I had 10 years ago.

Not even that.

I’m tired of entitlement, that people think they have the right to tell me how I should spend my free time, couched in “I’m just giving feedback” when it’s really not that.

I’m tired of people being vile to each other (e.g. watching the collapse of 2 forums and related Discord servers, all in the same niche, over the weekend because humans are vile)

I’m tired of the constant prayers to the money god and the constant sneering from those who insist it has to be paid for and that people doing things because they believe in it isn’t good enough, that doing things by community for community isn’t enough to be bothered with.

I’m tired, most of all, of the belief that any of it was worth it. It’d be so much easier to just accept and move on if it felt like it didn’t matter, but the price for that is too high,

 

[Reverie]

I get burnt out by all the events I used to host and also being relied on to create new content on top of my life things going on. Top that off with also getting harassed online, drama getting stirred around, and it’s just not as enjoyable.

I caused myself some of the burn out but man some of my frustration truly came from other people.

 

[kolakube]

Started for the people, left because of the people.

Sounds historically accurate too.

 

[Cedric]

It's a passion we have and proceed with even though it gives us a headache sometimes. Makes me wonder if we'd ever be able to say "it's been enough".

One thing I quickly discovered months ago: Having a service like our free forum hosting in the past, the XenForo licenses, or hosting, we'd offer someone to get started, wasn't a great success. People take it but give nothing in return. The one thing I ever asked in return was some kind of stable activity on AJ. Not one has done that, and most even just abandoned their own community. It's sad. They were given an excellent head start and they didn't care. So, that's one of the main reasons why I discontinued the free forum hosting service here on AJ.

 

[AjayJunkies]

So, that's one of the main reasons why I discontinued the free forum hosting service here on AJ.

Could you have added a footer link to AJ?

 

[Ravenfreak]

Having a service like our free forum hosting in the past, the XenForo licenses, or hosting, we'd offer someone to get started, wasn't a great success. People take it but give nothing in return. The one thing I ever asked in return was some kind of stable activity on AJ. Not one has done that, and most even just abandoned their own community. It's sad. They were given an excellent head start and they didn't care. So, that's one of the main reasons why I discontinued the free forum hosting service here on AJ.

It's unfortunate these people were offered an amazing deal for free and couldn't keep their end of the bargain. I understand that life gets in the way, but it's not too difficult to log into AJ and post at least once a day.