whoisgregg - 11:54 pm on May 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

I participate in only a small handful of online communities. This one (the newest but most active for me) and a few software company support forums that I haunt for answers and occasionally have had the answer. Recently, political activism bit me and in about two days I put up a new web site with forums about the issue and landed a newspaper article about the site. The day the article ran I had participants posting topics, and heatedly debating the issue. Participation continued...

I very quickly began to question what I had gotten myself into. My slant is towards letting everyone's words speak for themselves but realized that the content of the forum would also reflect on ME as the "admin" and I had mixed emotions while I watched the whole thing develop.

Here's what started happened to me, how would you have responded?

1. Instant and obvious trolls. I thought they would take time to arrive but the popped up right away. The topic of the site was already charged politically, and these folks were pouring gasoline on the flames hoping for a nuclear explosion, it seemed... Also it was a local matter and the IP's of the trolls were from a thousand miles away.
2. People new to forums didn't understand topic moving/deleting. I had a few different forums setup for different topics and moved topics as seemed appropriate and saw a very strong reaction of the "censorship" flavor.
3. People complaining about the site itself. Not constructive criticism, I would have welcomed that -- mostly personal attacks at me.
4. Language I considered in poor taste. Not actual "swear words" per se, but some language meant to be offensive.

I realize now that I was begging for these situations by posting a political forum linked to a site with a particular angle, but I inferred these also as exaggerated symptoms of what many forums experience. I had what I would call "moderation jitters" and had to consult friends and family for their opinion on whether I should just take the whole thing down. The experience is over now but my first online community "mayorship" definitely got me interested in doing it again. Just NO politics next time! :)