Having read through this on my mobile, remembering important aspects for now (I am on my computer and not phone), I will respond without quoting whoever said what.
Has the site changed?
The site constantly changes. It evolves with both technology and society.
Are members suddenly rude or such?
Nothing has changed, to be honest. Members have already said it, the community ebbs and flows. Those with mental health go through stages. Honestly, even without mental health, people go through attitudinal stages. New members become future established members, established members leave and may return at times.
We actually notice a change in posting here when a full moon is present. I certainly don't believe in any of that stuff, but let me tell you, it repeats nearly every full moon cycle, so it must have some substance.
Has the admin change affected things?
There is a transitional period occurring with
@joeylittle taking the admin reigns. She is learning to fit the reality of what happens here with her own attitude and beliefs, and that takes time. It will take her 6 to 12 months to truly find it.
Whilst some members may believe boundaries are being tested, in essence nothing new is really happening here. The difference is that
@joeylittle is finding her style. There is a reason for the change, I'm worn out from all the nonsense which does not equate well for the community if I keep myself in charge -- she is fresh and has the right skills and attitude to meet the current societal and future needs of the community.
If you think my eyes aren't focused on what happens here, you would be wrong. So you have to add me to the list if you think anything is being ignored here.
When I say a transitional change is occurring, it simply means that
@joeylittle has to experience things, experience the repercussions of allowing certain things to take their course, and gaining experience for herself so she knows when to act swiftly versus let something take its course and see what pops out. I could sit there and tell her from the start, but that is not experience, that is me telling her my view and based on my experience, what is about to occur.
Yes, I shut things down quickly, but I didn't come that way when I started this community. That took years of experience to notice changes in people and when to shut them down swiftly or discuss something out. There are times when discussion is not an option, and other times it is.
You have to understand that even established members become disgruntled, it isn't exclusive to new members who come here with a belief that they have rights to whatever they believe. Plenty of older members have had bad times, then decided to get paranoid, abusive, all sorts of things, out of the blue. I have explained the facts of things to members, even showed some at times for specific issues they had... and even evidenced they still left in a paranoid state. Nothing I or another can do about someone suffering paranoia.
@Ed Norton is a recent example I will use. Sorry Ed... not personal. I'm actually surprised nobody asked this already in the help desk as Ed is a popular member. He is temp banned. Why? Because staff have noticed a progressive degradation in his attitude here. He has known psychosis times where he goes off the rails. His posts were becoming erratic, nonsensical and gibberish. We, as staff, cannot talk someone through that with discussion or debate, the only avenue is to remove them from the community, hope they get well, and limit the overall damage to the community at large.
There are members here with personality and dissociative disorders, many of which are popular, regular members. When they spiral and staff take action, at times we then deal with friends of these members believing staff are at fault. Well... yes, and no. We own banning people for the reasons we do, however, we are not responsible for any members mental status or behaviour. Staff do not control any members life. We only control how much good or bad a person is allowed to do in this community.
To be perfectly honest... members shouldn't even worry about being banned, because it is so rare in the scheme of things.
Posting responses!
As members have already eluded, also a cyclic aspect of any online community. Responses can go from pushing people towards the truth, pushing to help them help themselves, to sympathetic and just fairly useless style responses that even sustain people within their illness. Again... neither right nor wrong, because when someone doesn't know what to say, but they want to say something, then they may sympathise. Everyone is allowed their opinion, providing it does not breach policy. Pretty simple stuff.
There was a question about posting numbers, whether it has decreased. The answer is no, it tends to remain the same or slightly increase when viewed across months. It is subtle, but an increasing subtle. Been that way for a long time.
Challenging members
Communities need diversity in attitudes. When you create a community of sympathisers, guess what you will get as a response? If you have a community of challengers, same problem. The community needs variation in member response styles. Without it... none of us would heal because we wouldn't be getting the diversity of responses we need to help us. Diversity is the spice of life... something this community has always shown.
Members should be honest with other members, good or bad, just do it without crossing the lines of community policies. Nobody gets banned for challenging other members... they get banned when they start stalking a member because they're being ignored by them, harassing them across the community to be heard or such. The same as members don't get banned here for only posting sympathetic responses. If that is who they are, so be it.
Banning, reporting being mentioned
This was raised in above comment as notable -- members are taking issues onto the community, complaining about another member or such, yet they don't report the specifics to staff. Members make such a complaint on a thread, and staff don't see it / miss it. Why? Because a thread is not a report mechanism, it is a discussion system. People want staff attention for something, but go about it the wrong way. So the admin then has to remind, remind, remind.
Report is a staff system that only staff see and allows them to quickly identify the issue, as it is linked to the problem being reported. Its private, confidential, and has the quickest result. People say they don't use it because they don't understand it, so it gets explained. Explaining it causes people to then use that as though staff are shoving it down members throats. This is some of the problem... some people just don't know what they want. Not right nor wrong... this is a mental health community and you should accept that any member can be in this mood at a given time.
Pretty sure
@joeylittle covered this in an announcement recently, but being banned is often not a permanent thing here. We aren't here to punish anyone, it is used as an overall community protective action from anyone that we have evidenced is violating policy here.
Lets be honest... restrictions have been lifted here over the last few years as the member base has changed due to society and its use of the internet. We haven't introduced anything new, only removed rules. We changed rules to a community constitution to thwart an increase in complaints we began to experience with strictness, removing problematic areas and such for overall community fairness.
Again though... it is rare we ban an actual member of this community. The majority of the time a process entails, warnings, temp bans, increased ban periods, eventually permanent. Even permanent is reviewed annually and often lifted. It is only extreme offenders we leave on the permanent ban list. Put it this way, I just did a search of banned members with 10 posts or more, the return is 56 members. 56 in 10+ years on the permanent ban list having 10 or more posts, being they weren't a brand new member who got banned for trolling or spam or such.
Like I said... rare and not something any member should even worry about here.
Not sure if I covered all the issues I read in this thread... but that is certainly a history lesson.
What happens going forward
@joeylittle will decide, and is gaining her own experience already of what works, what doesn't, when to act swiftly and when to discuss the problem with the member. Please remember that that learning takes time, and she is learning from the admin view. It can only be learnt with experience, there is no other way to perform the admin role. Please do not dismay, I have zero doubt that she is the right person for the job. I've been looking for my replacement for years now... so due diligence was done I believe. IMHO, the future for MyPTSD is looking fairly bright and prosperous.
