Incidents that have turned toxic

[Shawn Gossman]

What sort of incidents have you witnessed on your forum that have turned toxic?

By toxic, I mean the forum environment turned so badly that it was either hard or impossible to recover from. In most cases, when a forum turns toxic, it kills the forum, or you have to go on a banning spree just to get it back to normal.

If you have experienced this sort of thing, tell us your stories here!

 

[Katrina]

There was an incident on a huge forum where I was admin where the top leaders threw a moderator under the bus. I stuck up for him and told them they should have handled it privately instead of humiliating him in front of his peers, and they fired me. From there, people began leaving the site since they saw that the leaders were unfit to lead. The site recovered of course and is still thriving, but it hurt so many people who refuse to ever return. What could have been something unavoidable turned into a bad incident.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

There was an incident on a huge forum where I was admin where the top leaders threw a moderator under the bus. I stuck up for him and told them they should have handled it privately instead of humiliating him in front of his peers, and they fired me. From there, people began leaving the site since they saw that the leaders were unfit to lead. The site recovered of course and is still thriving, but it hurt so many people who refuse to ever return. What could have been something unavoidable turned into a bad incident.

That's a text-book example of a forum turning toxic.

Anytime you do disciplinary actions in the public, it's going to embarrass those you do it against. Retaliation is likely and the followers of that person is going to help them.

That's definitely a forum killer. I'm surprised they recovered. I wonder how much of an activity hit they took from it.

 

[Katrina]

That's a text-book example of a forum turning toxic.

Anytime you do disciplinary actions in the public, it's going to embarrass those you do it against. Retaliation is likely and the followers of that person is going to help them.

That's definitely a forum killer. I'm surprised they recovered. I wonder how much of an activity hit they took from it.

It's hard to say. They have hundreds of thousands of members and constant activity. We had about 15 pages of Reports to go through daily. Insane. I'm glad I don't go there anymore.