(Long post)Karmic Retribution: A year of drama 17 year old admin vs 30 year old

About me:
I am 17 years old....i pay for my hosting, my software and all that stuff out of my own pocket....i don't ask my mom and dad to help me...they don't even know i have my own site lol.

My staff isn't exactly the best or most reliable but they are excellent posters...but when things go wrong, i am the one who has to figure something out....

The Story/Drama:

at the end of 2011, i had created my first forum, on forumotion platform...free hosting and free software....i didn't take it serious at first. The whole point of the site was to simply create a site where i was in control because i had joined this site who is the "official" Fan forum for this book series i am a HUGE Fan of but they were very...stuck-up. It wasn't the best place for newbies.

So my site initially was sort of a me too site....and a site i didn't take seriously...Until I started seeing members join my site because they liked my relaxed nature and attitude and the fact that i consider everyone equal to everyone....new members are equal to members who had been around since the inception.

So I started being serious and actually enjoying what i was doing....well the site i had originally joined(and later banned me) notice our site was picking up a lot of traction..we got 1000 members in our first 3 months which a good portion were from their site.

So they started some smear campaign against my site...they stated my site was a spam site that if you visited my site you'd get a virus(not true), they said that the site was full of pornographic stuff(not true) and we were involved in illegal stuff such as warez(not true).

It was a site for 14-17 year olds(Not 14-25 year olds) to basically talk about books, movies, tv, teen and young adult stuff, gaming etc etc.

Which of course cast a bad light on our site...but thankfully people still joined, albeit slowly....It was drama galore between our site and their site and eventually their admin posted a thread on the site asking his members to report our site to Forumotion to get it shut down and they told forumotion all those lies and our site was deleted....

Luckily, i had sort of a heads up and before they deleted our site, i managed to create my OWN site using mybb at the time...Sadly we had to start over but at least i was able to connect and tell my members about the possibility of our site's deletion and about the new site.

Over the course of 2012, we had our own share of site drama but my site is still standing...and as much as it frustrates me sometime my site is a big part of my life and something i'd never give up on.

I am there everyday...i know all my member's names, where they come from and i have friendships with all of them and i hope that should my site hit the 1000s, i can still build friendships with them all.

However my competitor(the one who pushed to get my site deleted) leaves his site in the hands of kids my age...Which is fine....I love the fact kids and young adults my age and younger are able to be leaders and not out smoking and drinking and doing stupid stuff. We are being leaders...We are being teachers....We are being role models....

But for the past week and a half, their site has disappeared. They have no idea how to get in touch with him....He has simply disappeared and the forum has been down and they have no idea how to contact the host. They've been having issues where there site would go down for hours and hours at a time every few days...It's been 9 days since their site has been down.

Members of their site who are members of my site have asked me do i know anything about what is going on...and i don't.

I find it Karmic retribution that a man who is in his late 20s and early 30s spent a better part of a year fighting me a 17 year old and tearing my site down and spreading rumors and lies about my site...his memberbase ridiculing my memberbase and saying how much better their site is than mine...and my site's still around. I Am still around...I am a daily figure on my site.

He has simply abandoned those kids(he posts on twitter still) and i think it is pretty sad because i know that these forums are the only way some of these kids can talk to their friends,...they don't have facebook and they may live in other countries so they can't text.

Their site has been abandoned quite a few times and they have spammed, trolled and did things to my site and yet...I'm still standing.

I had to just share the Karmic Retribution and the fact that his follies are educating me on how to be better for my own site.


My question to you is
1.Would you ever just abandon your site and leave your members aimlessly wondering what is going on?

 

Hell no. I have a lot of good friends I would refer my membership to if I ever had to quit.
This site is one of them.

 

I would never abandon a site I owned and leave members wandering aimlessly. If I got tired of a site, I'd either redirect it to a new site I owned, sell it to someone I trusted, give it away to someone I thought was capable of keeping it going or do something else of the sort.

 

I would never leave my site. If I had to for medical reasons, I have a staff team that'll be there working as if I was still there. I would never ever, leave my community members in the dust. That's just wrong on so many grounds. Poor kids, maybe you should try to get them involved within your community?

 

I do this often, and they are confident that I'll be back to take care of garbage bull$#!^ I have to deal with. 50% of the time, they either PM me, report it, or make a suggestion. The rest cheer me on for my actions when I do make them.

If you're confident that your site is able to run without you being there... then your site will be so. If you give off the impression that you do not have your ban hammer onhand and ready to strike when necessary, then they're confident with your site.

It's like this, if people come over to attack your site, and they see it first, and you find out later... You come out stronger than the person who's doing the attacking. Meaning, even though your members or visitors see them, they can choose to ignore them. That's what my members do.

Other than that, I've battled with an administrator that tried to tear down my site or company with their words. That person abandoned his site and with this, I've effectively destroyed their site from top to bottom. You just have to look smarter, sound smarter, and more intelligent than them if they do stupid shit.

Best part is? The guy's around 20, I'm 30.

If you make a like-minded site similar to the site that teared you down. Likely, the moderators, or staff members who thought your posts were good, and smart... Are more likely to come over to your site and not the jerk that tried to tell you this and that as the owner of the previous site.

 

Depending on the community base dictates my level of interest and care level.
I have bought and now sold many sites now and the 1 thing I can tell you is that after a while it gets really easy not giving 1 sh*t about some of the people.... flip side is I have had other sites where the people are amazing and I would never just close a site....

Generally I migrate a site into another site if its possible. Save content, images etc. Who cares about the members. If I am migrating a semi active community its because I already dislike them.

I have closed down bigger sites because I just had no interest..... mostly fan sites. If I cant find a buyer then its game over. lol

Over the years I have maybe closed 30-50k worth of sites I invested in. And truth be told, a weight was lifted off my shoulders in some cases and it felt good to give the core group of a**holes a big FU.

I just recently closed a big site, some of the members remained, some migrated to another site. Who cares, that's what i said to myself

In your case, welcome all the members. Give them a bit of freedom and let them get settled. You win