Negative sideeffects of being a webmaster
 

Do you have any experience relating people stalking you because you're administrating a forum?

Or any other side effects of being a forum administrator.

What do I have to calculate before being big board administrator.
Do I have to organize some things to better solve those problems or not to get them?

Thanks!

Go out there, be brave and live life! :up:
[no case reported of a murdered Administrator yet, everything is just 'wishful thinking']

What about stalkers, phones all day and night?

if you have stalkers from your board, you give too much information about yourself... pffft

No, just whois.
But that seems to be enough.

I've seen "ID Protect" from enom.com and ask myself, if I should use that.
But I'm not sure if this also changes the situation for legal cases.

Do you also have problems like that ... or other problems?

Then live in the 'offensive' and those worries will go away...
There are some hacks that help you gather some kind of information on your users, secondly: phone calls? don't you live in an industrial country? all can be traced, and finally if someone is stalking at you, you will learn some tricks on your own ;)

So, don't ask how is out there, be out there ;)

So far:

* Late working hours.
* People always complain.
* Idiots that think they're entitled to everything because they have a subscription.
* You can never make everyone happy

:D

Are you vB.org Moderator? [:D]

depending on the forum's general topic, if it's a site where unhealthy people go to network with other unhealthy people, you can easily wind up being an outsourced babysitter!

my references for that statement is a board i wrote a few mods for. it's a post-psychiatric care forum. needless to say, they were all mods dealing with behavior.

I've never had a problem with stalkers, although it might be different if I were a hot-looking chick rather than an average, middle-aged dude.

The biggest "side effect" is the risk of the job consuming your life, 24/7. I've learned to set boundaries so that it doesn't, but there is that risk.

On the internet people can be whatever they want to be. ;)

hilarious.. i was thinking the same..

Can't you just get a mailbox at either the post office or one of these Mail Boxes etc. style places and place your whois listing under that address?

Then they can just stalk the business if they really want you that bad.

if you added idprotect on now, it wouldn't do any good, because dnsstuff.com and other sites record whois changes.

Cool! The internet has a brain.
So I can get enom.com or a mailbox and i'm still listed ...

"Great Minds Think Alike"

So much worries, worries me :D did u do something to someone?

No, absolutely not.
But I really got the forum for the unhealthy.
And so there is at least one person stalking me (now).

He just need attention... :rolleyes:

It's a SHE ;)
And the more attention she gets the more she wants

I get emails from time to time from the IMDb groupies. they're usually the law & order junkies and they usually ask a random question like: "what's vBulletin" (because somehow IMDb found out that i do this on the side) just to see if i'll respond. if i do, then they'll start in on me with the hard questions: what's Ice-T like? is he a pimp? etc.

So, to compensate for this, i answer any emails originating from IMDb in the third person. I've ran across a few big-board-big-wigs who all seem to share a common practice: leave the PR to the low-end moderators, because you're right.. the more attention they get, the more they want.

Aren't you a vB.org Moderator? :confused:

Fortunately, I am not! :D I do have a forum that's about 7 years old, so I've dealt with a lot of these issues (on a smaller scale since I have a small forum).

No, I haven't had people stalking me. :eek:

A negative, though, is sometimes staying up till 3:00 AM working on the site. And dealing with the odd server problems that come up every so often.

yes i do in own a forum
torrent invitation site

Hmm... yeah, what?

I think that's a positive, as weird as that sounds. I like troubleshooting, it helps me learn.

I'd say a downside is getting too involved (I think this was mentioned earlier) and letting your forum take over your life for a few weeks. I've been known to do that while developing new features / styles. I've got friends and family who need me though, which is where the downside comes in.

That's ODD! :rolleyes: actually a 'WOMAN' chasing a guy who spends half of his life in front of the computer... is she really crazy? :erm:

Whenever you're in a position of authority—even a relatively meaningless one such as heading up an online community—you will have people that envy your position, and will try and make life hell for you. That's the way of the world and humankind, unfortunately.

What can I expect?

Side effects I've had - lack of time to do everything, stress, and expense. I've yet to attract a stalker. It's generally manageable, though.

Rapscallion

If you have privacy and/or security concerns:

- Get privacy enabled on the domain name
- Use a new screen name or simply "admin" on the site
- Don't post any personal information about your site
- Don't use the same IP as any of your other sites. ;)

-Raymond

Thanks!

Yes, my site is like a second job. A second job that doesn't pay very well

Yep

Yep

I have a usergroup on my site that contains members that are not allowed to subscribe. Yes I loose some cash, but I save the hassle of the "I pay for this and you have moderate my 'quality contributions'" private messages.

Yep

When I started my forum I had some extremely naive ideas about keeping all the people happy all the time. After a few months I realised that I could only maintain the site if I placed the sites, and the community as a whole, interests first.

I run my forum as a business which means that I do have to expose some personal information, i.e. my name and address. However I paid for a PO Box number (not sure what the equivalent is in the US) so my domain name whois info is:

Company Name
PO BOX 12345
City

This prevents anybody who has nothing better to do from knocking on my door.

^ Who would stalk this face. :D

I post where I live and phone numbers online. There is no need to stalk.
If you come over bring a beer or a gun.

Fear is the mind killer.

- No one pays you. (Except advertisers, but even then it sucks)
- People who think you can do anything and everything.
- Stuck Up Snobs ruin my day easily
- Stupid People
- Stalkers (I've never had one, but have seen cases)
- People who intentionally destroy your boards with stupid posts and slander (Goes alongside Stupid People, but these people are in a class of their own, I've had three already on my 33 member board)
- People who ignore the do noty PM/IM/Email me note in my signature!!! I have a feeling the guys here at the .org can feel me on this one. ;)

With the last one, this seriously happened, one guy IMed me for help with another BBS I was a support tech for (some time ago) and I kid you not this happened:

Me - "Did you read my note in my signature?"
Idiot - "Yes I did, will you help me now?"

Thank god for the Block button. :D

Yea its funny. I use to get messages all day asking for moderator.

You read my mind! But Since there's nothing more to add with my forum, I don't spend much time on it as I used to.

ads suck. they pay cheaply.
Don't let them ruin your day. Retaliate. :D

One of my fellow admins was careless and a keylogger got his password. The hackers succeeded 2 times in deleting everything(Attack #1 => Restored with Backup => Attack #2 =>Another Restore[Paranoid this time, I even lost my cPanel login LOL])

Ohbtw, thanks to Paul for the backup hack! it's a real life saver :D

After, this weekend, adding a paid subscription to my site to do nothing other than cover the hosting costs, I have another negative side effect to add to this thread:

Most will accept and understand the reasons for subscription.....

....however no matter how honest and open you are about the fact that subscriptions are absolutely voluntary and only exist to support and go towards the high costs of running a site, there will always be a small group of extremely vocal people who turn your honesty against you and openly accuse you of lieing, empire building and using the goodwill of the community to fund your next holiday.

I put them all into a "I don't want your support" user group that does not have access to the subscriptions.

I would like to be more explicit in my description of these people, but I don't want the vb.org mods banning me. So all I will say is:

:erm:*(&(*& &"?))" **:mad:** "&"^?*** **:rolleyes:**

...and breath

-ve Effectsss...hmmm let's see.

1. Lack Of Sleep
2. Lost Study Hours
3. Getting Mad when spammers attack
4. Reaching to classes late

This sounds like an NBC exclusive or something.

Negative Side Effects...hmm.

* Exhaustion

* Realizing that you simply cannot do everything on your own

* Realizing that if you don't do Coding all the time it's hard to communicate what you want with people who do

* Having to run 4 or more systems on top of just a forum

* Having to make sure all assignments are being completed by your Team or Staff

* F R U S T R A T I O N

* Trying to do something, getting 90% into it and then getting stuck again!!!

* For every good idea someone has, they have at least 3 that are completely ridiculous

* Everyone else can have a bad day, but if you do, your not forgiven since your the owner and the expectation is to be perfect at all times

* Errors

* Problems

* Questions about things that were fully explained in announcements

* Maintaining Motivation when you don't want to

* Making time for every single staff member, even when they just want to chat, nothing actually business related of course

* Wanting to retire when the whole website isn't even done yet...lolz j/k

I'm done

ok one more

* Redoing an image 17 times because you are having trouble getting it to look right

For me, there are the usual negatives of running a website. And for forums, that is usually:

1. As said, errors and things going wrong, which DOES and WILL go wrong at the most annoying time possible. This then leads to less members and posts that day, various forum members complaining the site's down/broken and untold agravation for just one line of code happening to be totally broken, or a database error.

2. The side effects of those negative side effects, like the constant emails when said errors occur. And to add to that, members then emailing you individually to complain the site/forum is down.

3. Trolls/idiots/troublemakers, especially persistent ones that won't... get lose and then constantly try and destroy the site/forum and its community. On the flip side, it must be worse for those running an actually large forum, since I've heard of all kinds of notorious trolls and even hackers trying to attack said forums.

4. Spambots. Annoying, but some good account verification will get rid of them for pretty much ever.

5. The problems and side effects of drama. Leaving topics, unban me topics, ban this user topics, site is going downhill topics... The first often end up causing stress to you and members, and end up spiralling out of control with about three more members ending up to leave with the leaving member. The second type ends up usually with a good reminder WHY the user was banned, the third just looks bad and the fourth... well it seems every large forum has had this at least once or twice, and seems to be thrown about an awful lot at support forums for companies... *looks at vBulletin official support forum*.

6. And finally, demands for changes and anger that things have changed, i.e the most annoying thing ever when managing a community or making a product which has been around a few months. The former seems extremely common at support forums (also vBulletin.com) and the latter... seems common at any forum over a year old when a major change is suggested. The second one is even worse when the forum in question is an extremely basic looking one with basic functionality that hasn't been changed a few years. And also sometimes happens when really badly taken April Fools Day jokes are implemented.

Probable effects of this... stress, anger at various members and sometimes feeling in a really bad mood because some minor thing caused a key member to leave or the forum to explode.