What is the most stressful thing about running a community forum?

For me its users who bring their issue to your site even though it is nothing to do with you, or if running a promotion/admin type site, users who forget they are not admins and think rules are above them.

 

Oh yes, that is very annoying and frustrating. I cant tolerate members with attitudes like that, and specially when they backseat moderate.

 

that's why I have tried to keep away from them, especially the bigger ones, as you get too many conflicting people and causes a rift between the community & staff, etc.

 

Problem is it comes hand in hand with running this type of forum and is one reason why I sold phpBBC

 

Yes I know exactly what you are talking about, I had a problem like this recently, and others in the past.

 

Yea, I have the same feeling when it comes to that subject. It just seems like some people dont understand the concept "work your way up" and would rather bug the hell out of you hoping for you to just give them what they want. I usually just ignore those kind of requests.

 

Same here, I had this happen to me few months back. It was funny because this guy joined up and expected me to make him moderator on the spot.

 

I've never really been stressed out from forums or anything else for that matter; hence my nickname being Panik. But I believe that the most annoying thing would be the users who attempt to request admin or mod as soon as they join a forum. This is possibly the worst for me.

 

Ya, that's something I hate as well - and is very stressful.... Because in my eyes, a moderator proves him/herself to be a mod - like being active, and helpful around the boards. "Work your way up" is the only thing people can do, really.

 

I have had that happen at least 10 times, its very annoying.

 

Another one is when people join up to your site, PM other members asking them to join their rival forum and you end up losing members as a result :/

 

Dealing with competitors is always a hard thing, but you do what you gotta do

 

Ya, this is pretty hard because some content pisses members off, and make them leave - where other content makes them continue to come back. Some times you have to watch what you say and that sucks.

 

I've always tried not to let any website stress me out but I'd say in the past it's always been pointless member drama that the staff shouldn't have to deal with but does anyways.

 

You shouldn't lose members if your content is better than there's. I've had this happen to me a few times, I got mad, and then I noticed how my users stayed loyal to us and disregarded that other community.

 

I wonder how many forum owners find it stressful sometimes to come out with fresh threads ideas.

 

I used to get really stressed out when I couldn't code something even after a gazillion attempts. I was too stubborn and eager to get something done that I didn't ask for help, and so I had to deal with coding I didn't really know.

But the thing that definitely stressed me the most was my forum's ups and downs. One day we could get up to 200 posts, and then, for the next few days, just 50, if lucky. It took me a while to figure out that's just how most forums work!

 

For me the most stressful thing is being patient, because I like to promote heavilly, but there is only so much promoting you can do each day for your forum, and they take awhile to take off.

 

This, I've had a few trolls in the past that kept making accounts because we were competing against one of their favorite forums. After a few months, they eventually went away because that site was failing to compete against us. No surprise there because they were opened while we down for the count.