shake ups at other forums common?

[doppletwo]

I don't mean to drudge up what happened last year in OT, please do not comment on it in this thread.


Another forum I am part of had this big shake up last year. The guy who started it left and it seemed that some like it was a Coup by his Mods. But I am not sure what happened, since most of it happened behind closed doors.


So since that shake up that board has recreated it self and just barely resembles the original owner's site. During the change over the original post counts were lost and it seems like the events around the shake up have been removed. There was a switch six months before the shake up, and recently I found out that the really old version, which is incompatible with the new version, is still online in a quite crippled state.


Also a few months after the shake up the original owner recreated his site, using an old copy of the site. It had the old posts ( until the shake up happened ) and the all members that registered before he left are registered on his new site. He basically packed up a version of the database for that forum for a few days before the shake up started.


It's weird neither site seems to have any animosity against the other, but the two site also don't really acknowledge each other.



OK.


I explained that shake up. I told a friend about this IRL and he said a similar thing happened with forum he belonged to, but the guy running the site was basically kicked off of it for ethics violations and very few people sided with him.


So, the whole point of this thread is to find out how common these shake ups are.


I just got into forums when I started using Videohelp.com. Back in a 1998 I was part of the chat room that saved logs. It was on WBS.net. Best chat room I have ever been part of. It was called Verbal Rugby (Politics). There was such a good mix of opinions. We had moderates and extremists of all flavors. But then M$ bought WBS.net and Verbal Rugby was the first chat room to get the boot. Eventually the whole site was dismantled. I haven't even checked to see what or if that domain is being used.


Anyways, do these shake ups happen all of the time? Have any of you been involved with them before?


Please don't drudge up any history from this site relating to last year's incident. Start your own thread, if you want to.

[BJ_M]

happens all the time .....

[Cobra]

I'm a member of the Almera Owners Club - that is undergoing a major shake-up just now. Basically, the Administrator is taking £15 membership off people every year, and it didn't seem to be going back into the club. No new members were receiving their membership packs, and this guy wasn't around much at all - ignoring all the questions.

It got really bad, to the point that the other administrators were talking about taking the club by force. However, things seem to be getting sorted out now, but the club is changing.

Sometimes it's members, and sometimes it is burned-out moderators. However, VideoHelp seems to be thriving and always has done - look how well members are doing in the video forums! Although (and I admit this freely) I do not know enough to help many people who come here for help, it is great to see that they do receive it and quickly.

I love VideoHelp.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

this shit happens all the time.
every single forum/board that I have been a member in for any considerable amount of time (at least 3 months I'd say) has had some kind of bullshit drama going on in it.

unfortunately, it's a part of human nature to be combative and jerky.....
some people are really emboldened by the relative anonymity of keyboard & monitor, making them much more aggressive and jerky than they normally would be in person.

[lordsmurf]

I've seen sites where owners let members do whatever they wanted. The place was plagued by scammers, ********, and all sorts of terrible (even criminal) activity because of it.

I've seen a couple boards where the admin decided to rip off a ton of members, steal their money, and then one day the site was suddenly offline and the domain re-directed to google or disney or somewhere.

I've seen a couple more where mods/vets had a coup against the admin. It was always well-deserved in those cases, the admin was a liar, *******, scammer, whatever.

Of course, I've seen all these sorts of things in real life too, in organizations, small businesses, etc.

[ZAPPER]

People are people and money is money, act accordingly.

[mrtristan]

I used to be an administrator of another board, which was really popular back in it's heyday. I had the worst shift in the history of the place and there was a lot of crap that went on. It basically revolved around one member who stirred up enough crap to start everyone's wheels spinning. Although I banned him multiple times, he found ways around ip bans and limited registration to keep coming back.

A lot of it also has to do with people complaining about the judgement of the moderators/admins. People somehow seem to fail to realize that message boards are not a democracy. The owner of the board can ban you if he doesn't like your haircut. Plain and simple. Whining about it really won't do anything to chance his mind.

I resigned as the co-administrator of the other board before my son was born, since my time would be devoted to him. I'm still a participating member and we still have our share of drama. It's actually pretty nice, now that I'm no longer a police officer of the board. It keeps things interesting. I'll say that much.

[shelbyGT]

I've seen it happen a couple times but I wouldn't say it was common, per say. The majority of forums (okay, about 7 our of 9) that I visit haven't had a problem like that since I joined in on them.

[Supreme2k]

I was a mod (and later, co-admin) of a popular gaming site a couple of years back. We constantly had disention among the ranks, primarily because a few mods were flag-waving "freedom of speech" fanatics. Unfortunately, the site owner was rarely around, but really liked the drama and the extra board activity it attracted ("there is no bad publicity").

There were mods pre-banning members they knew or had heard of from other boards; some mods un-banned people, since they didn't break their rules (this was often the case with warez, which was an instantly bannable offense); some mods gave preverential treatment to females, much to their chagrin, since they always turned out to be guys; there was even the dreaded PM hacks that let the mods monitor PMs by certain (or all members); there were even mods who edited certain members' posts so that they would get suspended or banned (which reminds me: suspension was a great feature, back in phpBB v1).

The board eventually suffered a full-fledged meltdown, of which it never recovered.

The funny thing is, if you're around a board long enough, you realize that they're all the same. I can almost swear that many of the people posting on these boards used to post on that defunct gaming board, which shows that stereotypes are heavily (if not entirely) based on facts.

[anitract]

Like everyone else, I agree that a shake-up or other such drama is unavoidable. It's practically a law of nature that anywhere people are, there is conflict.

On a side note, VideoHelp is by far my favorite online community right now. I learn new things here almost every day and I genuinely enjoy most of the people and personalities. Another favorite of mine (from back when I collected Anime) was AnimeOnDVD.

[Cobra]

I'd hate to see anything happen to VideoHelp, and I am going to do everything I can to keep it running smoothly. I don't know what I'd do if this site went down the drain.

[offline]

...some mods gave preverential treatment to females, much to their chagrin, since they always turned out to be guys;

Nooooooooooo

the dreaded PM hacks that let the mods monitor PMs by certain (or all members)

Where can I get these?

there were even mods who edited certain members' posts so that they would get suspended or banned

interesting

a few mods were flag-waving "freedom of speech" fanatics

Don't you just hate them..

Xylob: it's a part of human nature to be combative and jerky.....
some people are really emboldened by the relative anonymity of keyboard & monitor, making them much more aggressive and jerky than they normally would be in person.

Well put.

[Supreme2k]

the dreaded PM hacks that let the mods monitor PMs by certain (or all members)

Where can I get these?

Not the exact one from way back when, but the the admin pm manager here is similar (actually does more)
or here

a few mods were flag-waving "freedom of speech" fanatics

Don't you just hate them..

You're probably joking, but I meant that they acted like it wasn't a private forum, not run by the gub'ment.