What will you do in a situation where a forum member acts like they own your forum?
For instance, maybe the person starts all these new threads with suggestions on how they think you should be running the forum or tries to rally support for specific ideas?
Is this a bad thing or just someone who is demonstrating potential for being good staff member?
That's a good thing if a member follows how you lead the community, and yes I think that is someone who is demonstrating potential for being a good staff member.
That's a good thing if a member follows how you lead the community, and yes I think that is someone who is demonstrating potential for being a good staff member.
I beg to differ here. There's a huge difference between asking suggestions and practically telling people what to do. Just last year I had this member who was just downright controlling: "You should be doing this, you should be doing that, why are you doing this, that's not how it's supposed to be done!" In the end this member just could not get it in his head that we all have different ways of running our forums, we all have methods that we're comfortable with, that we're used to doing and that our members are used to us doing, he just couldn't get it in his head for anything, so in the end I had no choice but to perma-ban him. He was just getting way out of control and I couldn't handle it. After a bit, he was very close to a ban on our host's support forum for being the same way with the staff there. There's a difference between giving ideas, and practically telling people what to do.
Yeah, but the host we're with is not on free hosting, and he was still telling them what to do as well. As far as I know, he is pretty much on the skids if he hasn't been banned already, and just so you know, people can be demanding/mean both on free and paid hosting. I've had it happen to me on paid hosting as well. I'd say the demands are even worse if you're on a host where you can add your own mods/themes. Members can suddenly think, "Oh, this guy is on a paid/advanced hosting, so he can install whatever he likes! I'll pester him to add such and such features!" I've had people get that way with me, and I've been that greedy myself, which is why I'm back on free hosting. People just do not know how to be grateful for what they have and can't realize that we aren't diamond gem and don't have loads of money to throw around however we'd like.
