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Admin/Modding thoughts
3 years ago
TLDR: Me rabbling about how adminning/moderating groups is hard and providing zero advice/recommendations on how to do stuff. Sort of self-indulgent prattle.
So due to recent events in the news and personal mental correlations dues coinciding incidents, hearing people talk about and thinking about my personal experience in policing furry spaces.
Up until about a year ago I was an admin/moderator for our local furry facebook and telegram group(s). I left them on my own initiative as I just didn't have it in me to continue. For me the two major factors for this were: 1) when a long time and fairly prominent member of the local furry community (and personal friend) died; I posted the announcement to the telegram group and no one seemed to know who I was talking about; 2) while driving home from the funeral of a family member who had died of Covid and being criticized for my position as an admin by someone who had also criticized my refusal to allow the group to be used to arrange meets due to Covid. I just didn't feel like I was connected to these strangers in the group and I didn't have the patience or thick skin needed to deal with it anymore.
In the many years that I got to moderate the groups, I had to deal with multiple instances of personal drama and had to learn and grow from each instance and the mistakes I and others made. We fell into a lot of the same traps a lot of folks make trying to be fair or impartial. I learned that no matter how tempting, a mod has to make a call on their own and not put it up for a community vote (as then policing the group becomes a popularity contest). Always communicate with other mods and provide chat logs with them so they know what you're doing/have done and why. And sometimes there's just no right answer to a problem - like when folks want you to take action against someone for something they're accused of doing in private, outside of the space you're moderating (they haven't broken the rules of the space and frankly you don't know any of the folks or motives of anyone involved).
Bleh....
But yeah. Thinking about all this since it's in my twitter feed and I just got back from a family wake, so memories just bubbling up.
I left those groups last year. Informed the other mods of the facebook group ahead of time. Tried to rustle up a replacement mod/owner for the telegram group(s) - kinda half gave up on that and just passed one off and deleted the other. And just left.
I don't have the disposition to do it anymore and I don't miss it. I occasionally wonder if it was the right thing to do. For me? Sure. For the community? I don't know - and I gave up my place to question it.
Blah blah blah - additional words.
Thanks for reading my ramblings.
So due to recent events in the news and personal mental correlations dues coinciding incidents, hearing people talk about and thinking about my personal experience in policing furry spaces.
Up until about a year ago I was an admin/moderator for our local furry facebook and telegram group(s). I left them on my own initiative as I just didn't have it in me to continue. For me the two major factors for this were: 1) when a long time and fairly prominent member of the local furry community (and personal friend) died; I posted the announcement to the telegram group and no one seemed to know who I was talking about; 2) while driving home from the funeral of a family member who had died of Covid and being criticized for my position as an admin by someone who had also criticized my refusal to allow the group to be used to arrange meets due to Covid. I just didn't feel like I was connected to these strangers in the group and I didn't have the patience or thick skin needed to deal with it anymore.
In the many years that I got to moderate the groups, I had to deal with multiple instances of personal drama and had to learn and grow from each instance and the mistakes I and others made. We fell into a lot of the same traps a lot of folks make trying to be fair or impartial. I learned that no matter how tempting, a mod has to make a call on their own and not put it up for a community vote (as then policing the group becomes a popularity contest). Always communicate with other mods and provide chat logs with them so they know what you're doing/have done and why. And sometimes there's just no right answer to a problem - like when folks want you to take action against someone for something they're accused of doing in private, outside of the space you're moderating (they haven't broken the rules of the space and frankly you don't know any of the folks or motives of anyone involved).
Bleh....
But yeah. Thinking about all this since it's in my twitter feed and I just got back from a family wake, so memories just bubbling up.
I left those groups last year. Informed the other mods of the facebook group ahead of time. Tried to rustle up a replacement mod/owner for the telegram group(s) - kinda half gave up on that and just passed one off and deleted the other. And just left.
I don't have the disposition to do it anymore and I don't miss it. I occasionally wonder if it was the right thing to do. For me? Sure. For the community? I don't know - and I gave up my place to question it.
Blah blah blah - additional words.
Thanks for reading my ramblings.
I'm still assistant mod on a few places, but I'm at least part of a team and can step away when needed. I definitely needed to not be in charge anymore, though.