Forum Moderators: rogerd
There is a big event in the UK(I live in the US) coming up that falls into my niche and some of my members are planning to attend and wear a certain symbol so they can find each other. But, I was one of the last people to hear about it. I guess they were privately messaging each other until a thread was finally started to organize the event(what they would wear to identify each other). They all seemed to know about it already.
My mods have totally taken over the board as far as controlling who posts what. For example, I said email addresses were allowed, but my mods decided it wasn't a good idea.
The members used to chat freely with me, but now I'm just the "site admin". I guess it's time to just let them go and let the mods do their jobs, which they are doing well. It all happened so fast, a month ago, I would not have seen it coming.
But at the end of the day it's your site and if there's stuff going on you don't like then put your foot down. That said, it's much better to ask opinions then make a decision rather than just giving orders. :)
In terms of the community - people naturally network on their own and develop their own groups and friends. It's not anything personal - it could just be that everyone assumes that you are "in the know" as you are the owner, so don't bother telling you.
If you decide to withdraw your personal role from the forums, continue to make it work for you as a source of repeated visitors for your site. If you have a lot of members or the right demographic, consider throwing some ads on the forums.
;-) Really, though, they do get to the board through my site and keep up with the site and talk about it... so it's all good. I'll just take my place in the background.
About 200 members and 3000 posts.
P.S. Should have mentioned, it's a new site, tomorrow will be it's 6 month anniversary and... their challenges are almost always more interesting than mine, but the newcomers enjoy the ones on my site.
That your forum is running smoothly without your intervention is a good thing - you can focus on being involved in the discussion, starting interesting topics, etc.
One of the problems with being a forum admin is that you can end up spending most of your time dealing with problems instead of participating - sounds like you have that issue well in hand. (I'm envious... :))
If someone has a problem with it being called a Christmas swap(rather then holiday swap) they can arrange their own swaps if they want, just leave me out of it!
K, I'm done venting.
You should enjoy it instead of feeling bad about it. Since your mods have everything in control... you should feel free to integrate yourself back into your own community as a regular user...Especially if it is a topic and subject that you have a real interest in.
Just start acting like a regular user and enjoy what you have built. You still have bottom line authority.
If you want people to treat you differently, you have to act a bit differently. If you just start changing stuff so you feel more comfortable you are liable to topple the whole applecart and really do serious harm to your community.
So again, enjoy it and use it.. You built it, and should consider yourself lucky.
I think the feeling left out is normal. Just don't dwell on it. :-)
JK
or occupy yourself expanding the site, implementing new features, attracting advertisers, getting more backlinks, etc... an admin's work is never done ;)
Your story makes me remember the first time i realised people could get connected together without me in my forum.
They could talk together, chat together, become friends, meet together IRL.
I was pretty happy. Because that is part of why i have made a community.
reading your story i think this is a moment every successfull forum admin is facing.
A moment that also has to be overcome.
Because any forum needs an old oak here from day zero, that is still here to bring the joint nobody see, gives the trick, makes the connection.
As a forum admin, i ve never seen nobody from my forum have such emotion and determination that i have, nobody that think so hard when it is time to, nobody so much devoted to it, and i feel that is where my place is. Don't you?
