Admin Well-being When running a forum becomes too stressful

[Shawn Gossman]

Has your forum ever stressed you out to the point where you wanted to quit it all or you gained some sort of increased anxiety?

Tell us about it. We're here for you on this community and we're supposed to help each other.

Is the stress still a problem or have you overcome it? If you have overcome it, how did you go about doing it?

 

[Ravenfreak]

Back when I owned Mighty No. 9 Universe, I did get somewhat overwhelmed because the forum grew quite fast in a short time. This was back when the game had been announced and the Kickstarter was brand new. Mighty No. 9 was supposed to be a spiritual successor to Mega Man, which at the time was a dormant franchise. Since the forum grew fast, I got cold feet and stayed offline for a bit until my co admin messaged me on Skype which is how we communicated at the time. I logged back into my account and tried my hardest not to ghost the community.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Back when I owned Mighty No. 9 Universe, I did get somewhat overwhelmed because the forum grew quite fast in a short time. This was back when the game had been announced and the Kickstarter was brand new. Mighty No. 9 was supposed to be a spiritual successor to Mega Man, which at the time was a dormant franchise. Since the forum grew fast, I got cold feet and stayed offline for a bit until my co admin messaged me on Skype which is how we communicated at the time. I logged back into my account and tried my hardest not to ghost the community.

I could see that being stressful.

You never really got to experience steady growth. I'm sure you missed out on stuff because it grew that fast.

I have a Facebook group with nearly 50,000 members. It's really overwhelming to keep up with it versus back when it was new with like 100 people posting on it.

I still remain active and cope with it but it's a chore by all means.

 

[joelr]

I'm definitely curious to hear

Back when I owned Mighty No. 9 Universe, I did get somewhat overwhelmed because the forum grew quite fast in a short time. This was back when the game had been announced and the Kickstarter was brand new. Mighty No. 9 was supposed to be a spiritual successor to Mega Man, which at the time was a dormant franchise. Since the forum grew fast, I got cold feet and stayed offline for a bit until my co admin messaged me on Skype which is how we communicated at the time. I logged back into my account and tried my hardest not to ghost the community.

What were the specific issues that came from growing fast? Was it more moderation, was it more member behavior problems, was it more spam?

 

[Nomad]

I was once running three forums, but sadly my forums were not growing and making me really frustrated, I also did not have a lot of time to manage these forums because they were not making me money and I had to focus on my blogs that were making me money. Therefore, when I received a good offer for a domain that I was using for my forum, I decided to sell my domain and shut down the forum. Interestingly, I sold database of one of the forums I was running and decided to use the domain for the forum I shut down earlier.

 

[Shortie]

I remember once running a forum many years ago when I first started creating forums. I had built a forum I was proud of, all of my ideas including the name.

Later I found out that someone had changed the name slightly but copied everything to a T in terms of the layout, the forums, the names and such. Of course, I was frustrated but it was when they started accusing me of copying them and it became stressful. Eventually, they gave up but the stress it caused wasn't a fun time.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I'm definitely curious to hear

What were the specific issues that came from growing fast? Was it more moderation, was it more member behavior problems, was it more spam?

Member behavior problems did come up during this growth. Not long after the official forum opened, word got around that a woman named Dina was working with Comcept, the company working on the game and many people didn't like her or how she was a moderator on the official forums. So a bunch of people joined my forum, but that also brought a bunch of people to start trolling my forum. These were the people who liked Dina, that was a nightmare to get under control especially since I forgot to turn on email activation on the forum. Lots of drama went on, but eventually things did die down.

 

[joelr]

One of the best tips that I gave myself was setting realistic expectations of what I was expecting to do that day or week. It did mean it was a grind, it did mean I held myself accountable to a schedule and a work plan for the forum, but it also meant that I gave myself permission to not over-invest my time once I hit those goals.

Part of managing stress in general is setting realistic expectations for yourself. Where I find most hobbyist admins stress themselves is that they over invest in the beginning, burn themselves out, and then get overwhelmed by the unexpected. Run for the marathon, not at a sprint.