What unmotivates you?

Howdy Folks,

I touched on this this topic in the "Moderators slipping away" thread but I figure it deserves it's own topic and perhaps other admins can learn. For this thread lets just keep the scope of you being a moderator on a forum owned by someone else please.

What is the quickest way for a forum owner to deflate your interests in moderating for them?

Bar none the easiest way to annoy me into not visiting the site is the owner setting up forums, assigning mods then leaving the mods to run the forum with no input or help from the admin.. It annoys me even more when they plaster ads all over the place then run off.

Everyone gets busy with real life sometimes and that's understandable but when the owner barely posts/visits week after week, month after month, I seriously consider it as being used. When they plaster ads all over the place then run.. Now I'm working for you to profit.. Ut-oh, no way, no how.

Your thoughts?

Cheers,
Dan

 

Similar to your answer, I get annoyed when I see a freshly created forum plastered not only with ads, but also hundreds of SPAM posts. How does this happen? The "owner" (if you want to call him/her that) creates the forum, doesn't even dable around with the options, and then leaves for an unknown amount of time. It's ridiculous.

 

Yup, on my old forum, the owner hadn't visited the forum in over 2 years, and the superadmins were retards, we'd have to wait months for anything we asked for to come to fruition. The entire staff got pretty annoyed and ended up leaving.

I also get demotivated when activity hits rock bottom, and members just don't feel like responding for the time being.

Also, when the fact that this isn't real life, stop working so hard kicks in, I feel like throwin the keyboard away and walking off.

 

It's sad to see a forum undergo such a process. I have no sympathy for those that fail due to inactive management members, but I do feel for those that hit a rough patch.

 

Definitely when all activity comes to a complete stand still, and no matter what you try (whether it be posting, advertising, exchanges etc) and do it doesn't pick up.

 

Yes, I agree.

While you shouldn't let this make you give up, it is definitely something that will at least lower your enthusiasm about the whole thing. Even if your activity is minor, but consistent, you have something to keep working for and something to look forward to in the end.

 

Something that I've always recommended to the owners of forums experiencing a rough patch of some sort is this: when you feel that your forum is failing, take a step back and look at what you wanted to do from the start - or in other words, your original goal. Upon doing so, brainstorm ways to improve upon the current situation and hope for the best. It almost always works.

 

The only thing that unmotivates me are the teenager users who like to send PM's saying how badly you moderate.

 

You could say that again. What age range do you find does it the most?

 

Luckily for me, it does not happen on my forum (yet) but on a forum I moderate, Normally 100-200 users online. Most 13 - 17 year olds.

I must give out about 30 infractions a day (Just in my assigned forum) and always will get more than 5PM's back saying "You w****r" or something like "How the f**k was that breaking the f**king rules!? learn to do your f**king job"

I'm used to it now I suppose, have to take it with a pinch of salt.

 

Ugh, I hear you - however I've generally received such private messages from members who are between the ages of 11 - 13. They get younger and younger...

 

Occasionally I get the odd PM saying "Sorry"... But that is rare.

 

Or the, "I'm sorry that I yelled at you... can you please reconsider my ban?" e-mails.

 

"I will be a good little user, can you unban me"

I'm like. "No." But not in a mean way

 

And then after refusing to reconsider their ban, they tend to become aggravated again.

 

Hell yeh, but that is the way the world turns.

 

Exactly. Depending on the situation I will reconsider the ban eventually, but it's generally not something that I'll just forgive and forget about.

 

Know it alls.

 

ok so call me a harda** - but that gets an immediate permanent ban from me. I don't take that from anyone.

 

They're annoying - it depends on how they react to specific conversations, as well (i.e. "well I knew that", "you're so dumb, I know the real answer", etc).