Many community owners can seem trustworthy but in reality, we never know how much they are capable of behind the scenes when it comes to reliability. We know that many webmasters have been known to pay for writing work to help with content within their communities but when it comes to being reliable and sending payment on time, that can sometimes be a problem and in some cases may never be received despite making contact to gain an update.
What are your thoughts on a community owner being unreliable, would it depend on what they did to be unreliable?
Those types of people are the slum lords of the forum world 🙁 What adds to it is their devoted members who believe the owner can do no wrong! They don't really want to know what an unethical person they are dealing with. But I think that there are many who DO want to know because they don't want to get scammed either. Public humiliation isn't always a route I'm comfortable with, but there gets to a point where it becomes necessary to protect those who simply don't know it can happen to them...by people they trust.
Whoever goes through this will feel disappointed, frustrated, and let down, for sure. Trust and reliability are crucial in building a strong community (of which staff is also a part), and if the owner fails to uphold those values, it undermines the entire foundation of the community and can create a negative atmosphere for not only its members but staff too.
It's definitely incredibly frustrating. The last forum I ran, the owner was there to pay all the hosting bills, but when there were issues with the site itself, it was like pulling teeth to get things fixed. It was one of the things that ended up contributing to me wanting to step back from running the forum itself.
Sucks, but it happens. I've sat and watched so many forums bite the dust and disappear because it ends up being a phase for a lot of those types of people.
I know of a popular forum owner that would post paid tasks for a YouTube channel on many forums. People would do the tasks but sending payments is always war for him. I have stopped doing his tasks.
If the forum owner isn’t reliable/honest then in my opinion it’s likely that community will fail. A lot of communities are built on trust and co-operation with one another but if I found out the site owner was unreliable or not trustworthy then it’s likely I’d walk away from them, how can I spend my time being part of a community that isn’t honest/reliable from the top down and why should that person then benefit from my efforts on their site?
