When members have a sense of 'entitlement'
 

Have you ever run a site where the long-time members start to feel a sense of entitlement in decisions on how you run your site? You know the types, been around a while and gotten to know the others; but never paid a dime towards hosting or spent a minute actually doing any work on the site like Moderating or Admining, quick to complain, impatient when it comes to updates or new features (one I installed an Arcade hack and was hammered for more games within hours of posting it.). Yeah, those guys (and gals).

It's seems enivitible that at some point someone (or a small group) will start demanding changes - or use the 'my way or I'm outta here' approach to address issues. As an admin of several boards I've encountered this problem many times; some of the most vocal of my members seem to get on a rage where the scorched earth approach is their solution - trash the owners, trash the moderators and, finally, trash other members. Make so much noise and then proclaim their exit in a thread titled, "I'm outta here" proclaiming their hatred for how the site is run.

I usually deal with these trouble makers with simple and polite notes which say something to the effect of, "Thank you for your time on our site, it's been a pleasure having you here, but it would seem you have outgrown our little community. I wish you the best as you persue your interests elsewhere." and wait for them to either change their tune or leave on their own before taking the step of banning them.

I'm curious how others handle people like this on their site - it has to be the least enjoyable aspect of running a forum - dealing with unappreciative members; so when you are confronted with members who feel entitled to a say in how you run your site, how do you respond?

Since my site is so new and I have not had that problem so far, I'm thinking of using your little message line there as a stop-all to such actions before they get out of hand. I concur fully with your assessment. Thank you, sir. ;)

I've found that over the years my tastes and interests have changed; sometimes I am very active in my communities, others times I am not. I've run community sites for a long time and what keeps me interested is nudging the direction of the site so that it matches my interests - as you can imagine some people are very uncomfortable with changes of any kind. They want it their way, the way they expect it to be or no way; I've found this to be particularily true on sites with a diverse range of ages - teens into adulthood.

I've seen alot of people come and go, I gave up trying to please everyone a long time ago. After all, I'm the guy paying the bills, so it seems reasonable to me that I should determine the direction of the site. I try to be receptive to ideas and suggestions, but nothing gets under my skin more than members who have a sense that they are the ones who should be determining how you run your site or spend your time.

But no matter how level-headed you play it, you can expect alot of pushback from even a few members whenever you do even the smallest of things. How we handle those people and how we keep our interest in the site strong is an important issue that faces everyone who runs their own community.

I found out from running my old coding site that is you state from the beginning of the very first uprising what will be tolerated and what won't be, and STICK to that philosophy, then they subsequent uprisings seem to happen few and far between. It's when you allow them to go on voicing their objections, that the trouble starts.

Which is fine, but its this sense of entitlement that I'm referring to which causes members to 'forget' what the rules are and suddenly start trying to force change or demand respect.

An iron fist can work, but for the long term being able to navigate these troubled waters often requires more diplomacy than ultimatiums. But as to the reason for this thread - I'm interested in hearing how others handle the rollercoaster called Administration so that they don't reach 'burn out' too soon.

ban 'em all and let God sort 'em out! :p

It's "Ban 'em all and let God sort [high]it[/high] out", I believe.

What if you don't believe in a god? :p

Still put it on his shoulders to be carried out. That way, you are clear of any aftermath of it.

Mine is a play on "kill them all and let God sort them out" A popular saying in the military ;)

Well, in the special forces we used "sort IT out". I mean... I HEARD that's how we... they... said it. :)

oooorraaahhh!!! ....wait....thats the Marines :p your way is good too as long as they're all banned lol!

Actually, the very original phrase was a little different:
Arnaud-Armaury, the Abbot of Citeaux, and "spiritual advisor" (i.e. ideologist-in-charge) to the Albigensian Crusade was the person who came up with it. When the crusader army was beseiging Beziers in France in 1209, and the "heretics" numbered only a small proportion of the beseiged town's population, someone asked Arnaud-Armaury how then they should sort out the townfolk, to which he replied,
"Kill them all. God will know his own."
(which they did, slaughtering almost everyone in town, over 20,000; the number of actual heretics was only round 200 or less, which meant 19, 800 were Officially Innocent, which didn't help them much).
_______________

So I would say you are completely free to say "sort 'em out" or "sort it out", whichever you prefer.

You know? I wish I had had that explanation given to me when I was waist-dep in mud in the tenches and trying to figure out what was the right way to say it. Thank you for that. :cross-eyed:

I've always wanted to know what WW1 was like...share your experiences with us :p

You REALLY like it in that state hospital don't you? Why, I oughta...

:banana:

Actually, I just got turned loose from the State Hospital, ummmhuuh...like me some of them bisquits and mustard, ummmhuuuh

You're a very sick individual, do you know that?

/me adds smacklan to the top of the Christmas Card list and thinks he is his type of friend!

MPDev, i totally get what you are saying in this thread. I have in the past experienced those types of members. Members who are in alot of cases more active than Mods and Admins as far as posting goes. I usually tolerate them to a certain degree, but when it come to them over stepping their bounds, i quickly/nicely tell them that this is the way we do things here. If they want to leave, and/or make the comment, 'Remove Me from your site!', i happily oblige and then sometimes watch them rejoin using a different name. lol

I have also on the flip, had similar situations with staff peeps. Such as Admins who thought they didnt have to participate as Admin, just show up from time to time and read up on topics, never become involved in site decisions, but complain if the decision made didnt suit them, never reply to members questions or concerns, but yet would invite every friend they have to the site that THEY run lol

I had to clean house one day, all Admin/Owners voted on what to do about 2 Admin we had that virtually hadnt been on the site in months, and when they had, hadnt contributed one thing to the welfare of the site. We unanimously voted these two guys down to Member Status. Sure didnt take long for them to figure it out and come onto the site demanding to know why they had been demoted.

One of them understood, the other went into fits, i swear if i had been in front of him i probably would have seen a 5 year old throwing a tantrum. None the less, i explained to him why, that he wasnt the only one, that it wasnt personal, and that it was a unanimous vote because it wasnt fair for 5 others to do all the work and 2 just grace the site with their presence every few months.

I thought it was worked out and that he understood, but then he sends a site feedback stating how his spirit has been broken, and he feels like a reject, and he was leaving and never coming back and wanted to be removed from the site. I granted his wish, i banned him and believe it or not, he even whined about being banned.

Some peeps amaze me when it comes to those situations. So, usually after i have tried everything else, in a nice way to make the person understand that they are not Admin/Owners and that they cannot demand and expect to get results, (You know, those who never say 'Remove me from your site!' but never take the hint that they cant tell you how to run your site..) I finally reply with, 'Ok, here is my PayPal email addy, please send $250.00 for half of our server cost' that usually shuts them down after all else fails. I am starting a new site now, with no other Admins except for myself and one other, 'dont have to worry bout him complaining, he has to live with me' ;)

Anyway, i could write a book on how many times i encountered these types of problems, but i will close for now...Thanks for giving us topic to kinda, well, to kinda rant lol...Take care -

Lady Divus

I had a problem with another Admin a few years ago, he fell out with the site owner created his own forum and poached our members whilst at the same time starting a flame war, we lost half our members to his site and the other admins and mods had a hard time keeping up with their flames, had to ban this guy about 8 times i think before he gave up, couldnt ban his IP because another admin and several members were on the same IP Proxy as him, best part was his site died within a year but it is taking a long time to get our site back to normal.

We have a Wormhole for rants and I am considering reintroducing a private adult forum again.

My board is about a year old and has not yet had any major problems, either, so I may just do the same as you.

There has been the potential for a few major uprisings on my site, and it could have been a mess if I'd let it get to that. But I'm very quick to nip it in the bud.
Only twice has someone said, "if you ___________. I'm leaving". Or "if you don't __________, I'm leaving".
My answer is..............

"Don't let the doorknob hit ya where the good Lord split ya".
I don't react well to blackmail

AMEN Peggy

I think the problem becomes even worse when these 'entitled' members think they deserve to be staff and start getting an attitude because they are not.

Some people just don't get the concept that not everybody is cut out to be a moderator. And, it becomes difficult to say, 'look, you are not staff because: ' I mean, it's not easy to tell a long-term member that they are untrustworthy, impolite, mercenary or whatever flaw it is that you don't want on your team.

Conversations like, 'D, you'd make a lousy staff member because you tell every confidetial thing you know to everybody and you can't get along with anyone either.' or 'P, you're not mature enough or polite enough to be on staff and we just don't trust your motivations' have a tendency to go poorly. Especially when the 'entitled' members have a following.

You can't give in to demands, but you also can't ignore them - They may just be some individual dislikes to the way things are ran by you, or they could be a wider-spread dislike by the community and they are the only ones gutsy enough to say so...

Constructive criticism works well and I encourage it; Destructive or otherwise rarely gets tolerated by me and if they cause more than their fair share of problems, they are kindly reminded that they have the option of behaving, leaving of their own accord or being assisted ;)

Chris

Gosh, I couldn't have written this any better. I am having this exact problem right now.
The member in question is posting to every single thread, within minutes of its posting (she has a lot of time on her hands, obviously). The mods are getting upset because they feel like they can't do their jobs by helping people out.... and *I* can't even post to a lot of the threads without being repetitive... she tends to throw everything but the kitchen sink in the posts. Since we're a health related non-profit, there is no way a member is going to know everything about the subject; yet she certainly tries. A lot of the time it's better to say "I am not sure but someone will be around shortly to help you out!" or whatever... instead, she gives horrible advice that I sometimes have to delete (like in response to a medication question.. "Take 1/2 a tablet 3 times a day and see how you tolerate that." Since when did we become doctors?!).

The worst part is that she a) wants to be a moderator (and thinks this is the way to become one) and b) has contributed a fair amount of money to the organization.

I have no idea how to tell her to back off and that she'll never get the moderator job... whenever I tell her something, she tends to tell EVERYONE. We had to take our shoutbox down because she published exactly where I was having medical treatment/surgery and every single detail of my pre-op appointment day.

In any case, I didn't mean to get on such a long rant, but I'm so frustrated. She's being passive aggressive now, and knows that I'm upset with her.. but instead of returning my call, she's doing little things that are manipulative and childish to let me know that she knows I'm pissed... like taking down her blog that I worked hours on to get running, or getting really depressed and sad so that I feel that I can't bring something up because it's really not the time.

Ugh!
Any ideas?
stacy

it wont help in your case but to help forestall these problems for new sites having a policy like I used to have on IRC would be good. "Dont ask to be staff we will contact you"

Although it might cause problems later on, you could always try the "we dont have the requirement for new staff just yet, we will put you forward for concideration when the need arises" might be a way to calm her down.

I hooked up with a girl from my site a few months ago and during our relationship and now since she finished it she was asking for special concideration, not in a nasty or disruptive way, thankfully, but i always said no chance whenever she asked. My site has 2 groups that i want to get going in competitions etc and I did announce that members of my specific group could request a custom user title mine was Deamon of Darkness and she wanted Deamoness of Darkness, when she finished it she went ranking on telling me to take the title away but when i did she went into one on msn about me abusing my admin position etc, i told her straight with no pulling of punches that it was at her request that i removed it and it was in no way an abuse of power. She has now calmed down and comtinues to post so at least i have not lost a member (i have few active members at the mo so every post helps :) )

I just put em into miserable users usergroup and when they tell me they're having a problem with the site i just say "huh? everything's working fine from here, don't understand what you're talking about, it's gotta be your ISP or computer's gotta be infected with somethign nasty!"

:banana:

@ MPDev

Right on man ..... I hear ya. I love when they try :
Answer:



@ goodwillstacy

I had a dozen users that would make it their personal quest in life to out post each other on everything. They talked and argued on every subject like it was IRC or IM with simple sentences putting their 2 cents worth in to up the post counts.

They were removed and all their content erased.

A year latter they came back and were normal people again. They learned to stay on subject and are not half bad to talk and debate with.

Now I have a problem.
I wanted to change my forums completely. New theme, new rules new everything.
Since this would be such a big overhaul, I started asking my long term members what they would think about it. Everyone is positive about the change, giving me some suggestions that I totally agree on. Now the problem comes from the unsuspected. Two of my moderation team are strictly against a change, and I dont see a reason why they would be. I note that I have 7 Moderators, 5 of which are positive about the change. 2 negative.
I pay everything out of my pocket, they are just moderators. I would now say that 80 to 90 % of my members are up for the change, except for those 2. Makes me feel really bad as I already was about to get going on working those new stuff out.
They also criticise me for not asking them before asking the long term members.

I have the same thing happen on my site - no matter how much warning or input I ask for, there will always be a couple who say I didn't 'talk' to them enough. You cannot win, so I do what I want to do when I want to do it and let everyone know they are along for the ride; their input is important to me, but not at the expense of my enjoyment for the site.

I find that it's the 'vocal minority' who can make running a site the most stressful and unpleasent.

YES! I run a local car forum, that I've been running for the past 5 years. Most of the people are friends, which makes it 5 times more annoying and frustrating.

Recently I had a fall out with 2 of our orginal founding members for the reasons above.

I've invested over $2,000 dollars in hosting expenses, vbulletin and the sorts over the past 5 years running this site. No one ever contributed a dime, and I have done all the work on it.

Every now and then when something didn't work they would demand it be fixed, and give me a hard time, saying I don't care about the group becuase I haven't fixed it yet, like a broken photo gallery, or a broken link.

Just recently I made some changes in the staff and they felt offended enough that they had to end their friendships and leave.

I was fine, becuase my site has actually grown a significant percentage since they left.

But becuase they had been around for so long, they felt they some how had a say in things. Like it was a democrary. They forgot that the site is and always will be MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!

I have this on my forum now:

Normally I ignore it, but it does get frustrating. A few months ago I moved to a new server, one that I setup on my own and I manage. And to be honest, I'm WINGING IT and GUESSING 90% of the time. And the site has crashed a few times and I've got a few making stupid comments that really tick me off. Telling me about how LS1Tech and other sites dont' crash.

I work hard to make my site different from all the other lame boring DEFAULT VB color scheme car sites that are out there.

I posted this last time someone said something "It's my money and my server, and until otherwise, I'll crash it as much as I'd like"

Whats really annoying is one of the old members who left, he went out and got all these business cards made for the group, which I said I didn't want, I didn't like etc, anyhow he was made when I denied him being an ADMIN and felt that becuase he had bought the cards he had some how contributed and was owed......

I'm sorry I don't sell stock in my website.

Luickly most of you don't have to listen to your users whine and complain to you on the weekend at your usual hang out spots or what not.

I can relate to this one too. I made some changes recently that again, upset several people.

But I want the changes, becuase they reflect back on me. See I'm a christian, and have been struggling with this for awhile, but I had to even dump two forums I had come up with just becuase the concept did not align itself with my moral belief structure.

I recently set some standards to make my site family safe and clean up the act.

I used to allow people to post freely with no censorship, but now I am censoring things.

Just trying to steer the group out of the filth and into a better enviroment.

I was tired of every post being garabge. I just didnt' want to be assoicated with that.

Cool thing is when there is a STANDARD that people can clearly see, they will either be attracted to it, or repealed by it.

Most people have accepted it and are fine with the changes.

Perfect examples, Michael. On a related note, I used to have a pretty relaxed standard for posting on one of my sites; still do in fact, but only now the ground rules include "respect". I've decided that there is enough trash/smack talking out there that anyone can go to any number of sites and find it - so on my site we don't allow it. You either communicate respectfully or you are told you are not welcome on our site.

You might think this would hurt membership, but it hasn't. We have hundreds of users online at any given time (down from the thousands when we allowed nude photos) and a stronger sense of community by the contributing members. Many people on our site say they stay for the friendships they have made and thats just the way I want it.

I can get trash talk anywhere. Kicking back and enjoying some good talk with people who aren't morons is alot more fun than the alternatives, IMO.

I'm in the midst of one of our periodic debates over what goes and what doesn't in our politics and religion forums. At any given time, we'll have 20 to 45 members and a couple of hundred guests on the board. We have 13,000 members and close to 400,000 posts. The board's approaching its fifth anniversary.

A couple of years ago I simply deleted the politics forum, and lost my best members to another board they created. It since has imploded under the weight of the same members who caused me to delete the first politics forum.

After that board imploded, I brought back the politics forum and added a religion forum.

Everybody understood the rules against flaming, pornography, foul language. The old timers who flounced a couple of years ago insist on being able to say whatever they please, but they usually conform to my rules on my board.

A couple of old timers are big on gay marriage, and post a lot about that and sexual issues important to women, who make up 99% of the board.

This upset the anti-gay marriage and pro religious crowd. An old timer who's created his own "Christian" version of our board came over and posted a poll asking if the posts on sex and gay marriage drove away members and kept new ones from joining. After a week of this, I suggested that "flooding" the board with sex and gay marriage threads was a bit over the top. The ladies "flounced" and took some active posters with them to their "home" board, which has a lot of our former members.

My approach has been to discuss the issues, explain why I have to keep the board tone civil and acceptable to all and at the same time encourage debate and interesting discussions. They don't buy it, accusing me of "censorship" and of driving a particularly controversial and active poster away, which isn't what I did.

So now I've lost my active posters in the politics and religion forums, a few of whom actively posted in other forums as well. My general philosophy is that this will all blow over. I'll lose some, win some. The new members are more important to my business than the old timers, most of whom leave after a couple of years anyway due to the nature of our board and their lives.

The purpose of the politics and religion sites is the same as the money and investing, movie, weight loss, books and other off topic forums. That is, I am trying to provide a place where friends made in our on topic forums can discuss whatever interests them. The politics and religion forums get relatively little participation, but the people who post in them do so frequently and have a lot of fun debating, when they're not fighting, flaming , etc. And I like to talk politics.

Since I own and moderate the board by myself, I make the decisions after listening to suggestions and complaints. And I often engage in online debates about policy, etc. Sometimes these debates become our most active threads for awhile. It may be a mistake, because some people get upset and leave.

What I say is that if you are going to post about sex three or four times in one afternoon, you're hurting the board, and this may not be the best place for you. And if all you're going to do is advocate for gay marriage and nothing else, this may not be the place for you. Of course, if you leave, you lose a great platform for discussing issues important to you, but that's your decision.

The old timers know I can zap and will if I need too. They also know I zap trolls in a flash, and they know that I don't want to zap any threads nor ban them. So we have this little dance going on. I don't think they're looking too good, and some of the members are telling them to get cool or get lost.

We'll see.

These problems are pretty common once your board grows. We have about 2500 active members, and I have seen it all happen, just like in the real world.

Religious Differences
Lifestyle Differences
Political Differences

Those three cause the most issues. We insist on tolerance, respect, and a sense of humor on our site, and it seems if you have those three, the community develops quite well. That being said, you'll always have issues, it helps to be firm and consistent in how you deal with them.

All I can say is I feel your pain ..

what i do is given them responsabilities... for example make them mod or VIP...
we organize events... they are vips in those events... free shirts... things like that....

but if they wanna leave i let them go... nobody gonna tell me what to do...

anyways we are like 7100s already i try to keep all of them happy ofcourse i got a execellent staff helping me out... yep check it out is a spanish forum...
www.ociosos.cl

i hope it work for you...

free mercandaise 4 the most active members.. thats the key

I ban people who do that.

Oh, that brings up some nice memorries :D

BAck then when I was a nice girl and a beginner in forum administration I had some problems with some members. I tried to keep them happy, but failed since they had diferent opinions. I feared I'd lose them. Well, lost them anyway and one started a vendetta on my forums in other projects. He callled my site many "nice" names and tried to give me a bad reputation. Well, needless to say that he also started a competing forum only to fail after 1 year. My forums are still on and going strong.

CONCLUSION: no one is irreplaceable. As an admin I need to keep my members happy and try to provide them with what they need. That doesn't mean I owe them something at all. it just means I run a nice community and I want them to feel good. If they're not feeling nice they can always go and leave me alone.

i have some long time members that have been together with me from where we were on a free hosted subdomain till we got to our own VB license. They've stood by me through all the hard times (host changes, domain move, new scripts installing and so on), always ready to point out an error, congratulate me for my work and updates, give ideas to grow more. As you can imagine I am greateful to them for all this support. Still, this means we're friends as long as they abide by the rules. As soon as I feel like one member is detrimental to my community, I wil inactivate the account.

There are members who think they can have more than anyone else because of their tenure. It's in the end a matter of diplomacy to keep the pleased and also keep them on their feet. I have managed this by getting them involved in the site and making them realise they are important and that we also need those "forum newbs" to keep the community growing. They criticism is always met with attention from my part, but i never promised acting on this. I fo take the ideas and CHOSE myself if they're viable or not. They feel important because they know I do listen to them, but they also know that I have the final decision.