How do you come back?

How do you come back from drama? I would love to get some insight from other administrators. It's been peaceful and nice since everything 'went down' with three members but they went on facebook putting us on full blast to pretty much every other member on the site. We did our job right and yet we were still somehow unfair and in a clique (even though half of our staff doesn't get along outside of when we need to work together for the site)


How do you recover from when members are trying to ruin everything you've worked so hard for?

A little insight on the issue:
We had a member of staff harassing the other members of staff so we gave her warning after warning because we felt bad about the member's situation. We ended up demoting said member because it didn't stop.

It even went as fair as her friends reporting me for harassment because I had repeatedly yelled at her that this drama wasn't going to be put up with too much longer. They even wanted me demoted.

The the member even went as fair as to fake emails that one of our staff members were harassing her. We were able to debunk this not only because we know they wouldn't give her an ip address from the emails (they were temp emails that said really odd things) but also because the screen shots she was sending us from her phone were highly photoshopped.

So all in all we lost 2 staff members and a third member who was a groupie. They posted long messages and claimed we would edit them so they posted them on facebook. We moved them off the boards to keep the drama that was suppose to just stay in the high command forums out of the normal view.

I'm worried about the long term effects that it will have on our site.

 

Thank you so much. It's just been a complete hassle from the time it happened. We were trying to be gentle with her because of her ptsd but at some point it was lose her or the rest of the staff. I'll have to bring up everything you've said to the rest of the administrators on the site so we can keep this from happening again. We've only been launched since October and I don't want this putting us into an early grave when we've tried so hard to get here.

 

It's a hard balance between being compassionate with someone causing a problem (especially if they don't realize and/or accept they're the cause of it) and acting swiftly and efficiently to keep the environment safe and welcoming for everyone. I certainly agree with the advice already given by Iversia, especially having rules clearly spelled out. It's always easier to say "We all agreed to follow these rules, but this is how you're not" than it is to say "Well, we've had a few complaints, and people are uncomfortable, and can you try to fix it?"

There are still going to be times that this won't help, and while it will be difficult, if you try your best to show your community that you're doing the best you can to resolve it, a lot of the time, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

I've been through a similar mess myself. I was XO of a fairly active star trek sim, and a new player came along that went out of his way to get in tight with the command team pretty quickly, seeking ic power for himself. When things started going south, he decided I was the problem and zeroed his ooc attacks on me while continuing to try to push himself into a stronger position ic. The CO of the ship hated confrontation, didn't take action when I asked her to and wouldn't let me act on my own (the one time I did something very minior on my own, she ripped my head off). In the end, he left on his own but sent a long rambling letter to the whole crew on his way out the door leveling a lot of accusations at multiple people in the crew. Honestly, the ship never fully recovered from the blow because no real effort was made to resolve anything.

I've tried to apply the lessons I learned from that disaster to how I've set up the ship I launched after leaving the old. Carefully considered rules came first, people have to view them to get to the join form, and we have clearly laid out promotion policies to avoid people jumping to the top too quick. I try to make sure my xo knows he has the authority to act without having to check in with me on every thing, and I make an effort to include him in major decisions.

 

We need to get a chatbox onto the site. The person used the irc we use to get a hold of my boyfriend's ip and he's the one she tried to frame. Which he is the perfect moderator so everyone knows he wouldn't do such an immature thing. I'm so happy to get this advice. I'm passing it along to my team mates and Revaliir family in the hopes that the next time there is a situation we handle it better.

It also came down to the point where it was easier to attack me and plan me for everything that my fellow Administrators made it so they could only complain to a few of them who would tell it like it was. It's not that I'm a push over but my expertise as an administrator is more so on running events, creating items, and advertising. Dealing with situations that go volatile fast are not my strong suit but I tend to try to see the best in people which is what happened in this case. Which turned into them saying I was harassing them when I was only trying to tell them they were out of line.

 

Once the people causing drama are out of your site, apologize to the members, take the remedial action needed to take out of the story the characters of the disappeared people, launch a new site event and remember the fun for which you created the site.

 

Boy, this could be like a page out of my book. I've run my BTACD site for thirteen and a half years; I've seen my fair share of drama. The most important thing is that once the drama is off your site, ignore it. There will be that little group of haters that will bash you til the end of time, trust me, I have one! xD But when they realize that you really couldn't care less about them, they'll go ahead and leave you alone. They'll probably try to do something, like give your site bad ratings and such, but if you ignore them, they eventually fade away.