Letting personal problems ruin your forum

[Beverly]

Everyone has a bad day/week. But a persistent bad attitude brought on by home life troubles or personal problems can seep into your forum posts and poison the harmonious atmosphere of your forum. Another situation happens when you are going through divorce or relationship problems or job stress that might cause you to pay less attention to your forum. If you stop showing up, forum members will assume the forum is becoming inactive and will stop posting.

How do you keep work/home life stress from affecting your mood so that when you post you are in high spirits and can be positive and happy for your forum members?

 

[coolframe]

I have been on the internet for over 15 years and the first thing I learned is: Leave my life outside the internet. So basically, when I plug in, I am a kinda different person, nothing around should disturb me (life wise I mean).

Otherwise, yes, it does affect your posting attitude as you are, most of time, more agressive

 

[E07.NET]

If your forum is profitable, giving you money then you should consider hiring a moderator, specially when you think that you won't be available for a month or two.

 

[VirusZero]

I've seen this issue up close. (A former co-admin of mine had this very issue where they were pretty much a massive ball of negativity and issues. And it was frustrating to deal with them. There were times where I wasn't sure whether it was actually an issue or if this was attention seeking behaviour or what. Unfortunately, by the time I got so fed up with the situation and started to make changes I was just burned out completely. I ended up just shutting the site down entirely because I didn't want to be a part of that site anymore. I didn't want to put the effort in to revive it. And looking back, I'd been burned out on that site for a while. )

I understand that people have bad days. Even possible that they have a bad month where they just keep getting bombarded with problems. And having a rant now and again is fine. But for anything more than a one off occurrence? keep it off the forum/site. Dragging those persistent issues online brings nothing but pain and misery.

Others on the internet really can't help you. And over time people do get tired of hearing about other's problems (so much so it actually has a name... Compassion Fatigue). So it's not that people are being callous purposefully, they just have no interest in hearing more misery, their empathy well is all tapped out.

So after a while hearing all this misery just causes people to distance themselves (member and staff alike). Like why talk to someone when all you hear is about how bad their life is or how crappy they feel? And it really does start to feel like attention seeking behaviour rather than a legitimate issue (even when they may actually have real issues).

Which, I think that, if someone is having that rough a time then they need to stop complaining on the internet and get professional help. Most admins are not trained psychologists or counsellors (and those that are likely don't want to deal with this in their off-time too). Most can't help deal with this stuff. And trying to help just puts admins in a bad place (no training at all and trying to help makes them responsible for that person in the event anything bad happens).

 

[Beverly]

I've seen this issue up close. (A former co-admin of mine had this very issue where they were pretty much a massive ball of negativity and issues. And it was frustrating to deal with them. There were times where I wasn't sure whether it was actually an issue or if this was attention seeking behaviour or what. Unfortunately, by the time I got so fed up with the situation and started to make changes I was just burned out completely. I ended up just shutting the site down entirely because I didn't want to be a part of that site anymore. I didn't want to put the effort in to revive it. And looking back, I'd been burned out on that site for a while. )

I understand that people have bad days. Even possible that they have a bad month where they just keep getting bombarded with problems. And having a rant now and again is fine. But for anything more than a one off occurrence? keep it off the forum/site. Dragging those persistent issues online brings nothing but pain and misery.

Others on the internet really can't help you. And over time people do get tired of hearing about other's problems (so much so it actually has a name... Compassion Fatigue). So it's not that people are being callous purposefully, they just have no interest in hearing more misery, their empathy well is all tapped out.

So after a while hearing all this misery just causes people to distance themselves (member and staff alike). Like why talk to someone when all you hear is about how bad their life is or how crappy they feel? And it really does start to feel like attention seeking behaviour rather than a legitimate issue (even when they may actually have real issues).

Which, I think that, if someone is having that rough a time then they need to stop complaining on the internet and get professional help. Most admins are not trained psychologists or counsellors (and those that are likely don't want to deal with this in their off-time too). Most can't help deal with this stuff. And trying to help just puts admins in a bad place (no training at all and trying to help makes them responsible for that person in the event anything bad happens).

This concept of compassion fatigue is very interesting. And, you see lots of people on the internet who are either negative or just burned out dealing with others and have turned cynical as a result. Hopefully, people will realize the internet is an open forum for drawing strength, not dumping one's problems. It's much easier to feel better helping others when you have problems than just dumping them out there for others to deal with.

 

[angie828]

Leave all personal thoughts away from the forum. If you want it to succeed, then when you log on, make a mental note to not be in a bad mood, or set a time aside each day when you can sit and stew.

 

[cenydd]

I don't know so much about posting, but doing admin or mod type things I think it's vital to have set and defined procedures and standards to follow, to make sure that you aren't doing things when you are in a a bad (or good) mood which end up being unfair to the members - that's the way to drive people away.

If you're in a bad mood, a forum (in an 'off topic chat' type area) can be a good place to express that and have a bit of a vent anyway, even if you're the admin. Everyone is in a bad mood sometimes, and I think it does no harm at all to remind the members that the admin is actually a human being too!

 

[Pinky]

I think you just have to keep the two separate or your forum will fall apart very quickly. It can be very difficult though.

 

[Kaynil]

Not sure if you mean simply venting online life problems or having a switch of attitude due the overload.

Anyway, I can be in a ranting mood sometimes, thus why I have a ranting area and a personal blog thread (anyone entitled to have their own blog threads in said area, so I make it optional. I usually don't rant often about the same thing unless it is some sort of update.

Still, specially if it means I may be less often or delay of projects, I try to be open and explaining my situation, because I rather be offline than in a bad frame of mind. This however in itself has affected the activity of my forum since only few of us posts constantly.