Jun 232011
 

I’ve been a member of the online car site M3Forum for many years. It’s a very active community of enthusiasts, and great place to get and share information about my car (a 1999 M3) with others who own the same model. Forums like this were my introduction to online communities. Well before the rise of social media, online forums were an  indication of the power of individuals gathering online around a shared affinity or interest.

Recently there has been a rift in the E36 M3Forum community, and it reminded me how delicate the balancing act of moderation can be online. You want to encourage participation and discourse, while at the same time reining in things like personal attacks and off topic comments. After years of publishing and almost 36,000 distinct discussion threads, something broke on this forum.

I didn’t realize it until after the fact. I’ve been busy and haven’t hit the board as much as I used to, but recently noticed some useful FAQ and DIY posts were gone. Then, I noticed that sometime longtime members hadn’t made any recent posts, and there were angry threads about members deleting their threads and leaving the community.

So I reached out to two online members I trust — one a moderator, the other a long time poster and respected provider of good information — and asked “what the heck happened?”

Here’s what I got from the long time poster, and as it turned out, one of the main defectors:

XXX made a silly comment in a thread a while back. The thread was started by that guy XXX or whatever his name was. He had said something about his wife and daughters enjoying the car and Jon posted, “post pics of daughters”. He replied saying his daughters were 4 and 6 years old…and XXX replies, “post pics of daughters”.

It was obviously just a joke. But XXX reported the posts and XXX got a 3 day ban for it from moderator “XXX”. Some PM’s were exchanged between XXX and XXX that included XXX spouting off XXX being a bit unprofessional as a mod. XXX quoted the PM’s and forwarded them to the other mods. And sent XXX a reply that said, “get bent”. XXX then banned him permanantly from the forum, citing the reason as “being a douche”.

When people found out about this, there was an uproar over how a moderator could permanently ban someone for something so small…and how a moderator is allowed to instigate conflict and call people names, with no action taken.

So a mass of members basically up and left. The mods were banning people left and right for silly reasons (which basically amount to not letting the issue drop without any action being taken against XXX). The forum is truly corrupt, and baised, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets deleted before you even read it. At any rate, we’re all over at DTM power (www.dtmpower.net).

Here’s what one of the moderators told me – and I know this is a good guy. I’m the one way back in 2004 who first told him about the forum:

Long story short, me and the mods have grown tired of some of the attitudes some of the OG’s have developed over the years. Some of them seem to think they can operate the E36 section under their own set of rules and each time we come in and enforce our rules, they whine, complain, and start removing info from threads. They essentially throw a coup every time we try to moderate the section; especially if they think a member of their clique gets in trouble with us. They feel they need to bury their nose into any moderation decision me make.

This has been going on for years now and the game has grown old. This time I held firm about a member being banned and a bunch left. They need to realize they have to play by our rules, not theirs. It’s unfortunate we lost some knowledgeable members. However, I won’t miss some of their attitudes. From my point of view, they way they acted whenever we moderated that section was damaging to the board more so than us banning a member; whether it be a temp or perm ban.

Those sure are two very different positions. Both of these guys are passionate enthusiasts, and both clearly think they are in the right. Who is? In cases like this the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But maybe that’s not even the right question. Maybe a better one would have been, what can we do to avoid a split?

Maybe the answer is, nothing could be done. The E36 section will certainly go on, and maybe the new community will be successful as well. But it seems a shame to me that the forum lost many long time, knowledgeable members.

Unfortunately I don’t have a formula to share on how to balance the moderation of social communities. The right kind of moderation will be different based on the topic area, nature of the community and many other factors. But the M3Forum.net community split is a cautionary tale of what can happen when the balance is lost.

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