What if your partner or co-owner vanishes?

If the co-owner of your very successful forum just disappeared (without any obvious reason -- you are getting along, there are no disputes, the community is flourishing, etc.) for months and you couldn't get in contact with him/her.

After a while, what would you do? Would you remove their administrative status? Would you leave things alone until they return? How would you handle the situation?

 

Obviously you can't demote them since they're the co-owner/partner...it'd be the same if you vanished; they would be furious, and you would be furious. I would just try to manage the forum, and try to get in contact with them in other ways (IE. Calling, IMing, etc.)

 

I Did That Once, Then He Came Back On And, Things Didnt Go Right.
He Became Inactive Again, And Moved To Another Site. Which Put
Me Down. Then For Some Reason He Just Deleted His Account.

 

Even if the "demotion" is temporary, does that change your thoughts?

And I meant to imply in my post that you were 100% unable to contact this person by any way whatsoever.

 

Ah, thanks for clearing it up. Yes, a temporary demotion would be fine, I was assuming you could get in touch with them by non-forum means :o

 

I would think that if this is a reasonable person, you could send them a series of emails.
- are you okay?
- haven't heard from you ... what's up?
- as a precaution, will be removing admin status, but we really hope you'll be back soon
- admin status removed, but I really would like you to come back soon and help admin

 

Occasionally things will come up that prevent people from logging on for long periods of time (car accidents, sudden illness, foul play), but I think they would understand if you made a good faith effort to reach them before demoting them or taking steps to make radical changes to the site without them.

 

I would remove there status after awhile. Then when they get back, if they did. I would add the status back.

 

If they are inactive and I can not find, contact them in anyway I will de-admin them for "account security" until they get back and contact me then I will put admin privs back.

I mean if you don't do anything what is his/her account gets hacked and they have access to all of the admin side of things.

 

depends a co-owner/partner should be helping pay for cost
if they arent
bye bye