Zippy Promotion Forums Webmaster Chat The General Webmaster Zone Dealing With Community Drama

There may come a time where drama makes its way into your community. After all, we're only human and drama can sometimes appear in communities. Have you ever had to deal with community drama? If so, how did you handle it? I've dealt with drama in one of my communities in the past. It was a nightmare to deal with and I got overwhelmed which is not a good thing to do. You need to be able to deal with drama in a level headed manner. Lashing out will only make things worse for you and your community.

XF has some good tools to deal with trolls. Use them, and make posting hard until they cool down.

Trolls are basically attention seekers. If you deny them that, things can be a lot better.

I don't think I've ever dealt with drama on my current board of 5+ years. The main forum I've ever dealt with drama was a long time ago at InvisionFree Skin Zone, that forum was full of drama.

If people are trolling or trying to start wars with other members, I will probably step in and try and do something about it.

The biggest drama I've ever had to deal with on a forum I've owned was when I had someone repeatedly pestered me to be a staff member on my forum while he actively spammed my forum. That person was also rude to the other people that worked on my forum. (This was on my first forum and this was years ago.)

I try to deal with drama as soon as possible, otherwise it can turn toxic and ruin the entire community.

If you can deal with it in DM, then try to deal with it there.

If you're forced to deal with it in public, then you can take the opportunity to set an example of how not to act on the forum.

Just make sure you deal with it and don't let people walk on you because everyone else is watching.

I've dealt with my share of drama!! I've learned that you just need to get up and go out for a walk/hike and burn off any negative feelings before going back to the forum. Otherwise, things could be said that will be regretted later on.

I have been involved with forum dramas not just in the communities where I am a staff or a normal user but even in my own communities. Some forum dramas were nightmarish. For instance, people started calling me a scammer for something I didn't do and it was basically doing of my forum partner. I was initially involved with the row but when I stopped responding, everything died off. I think the best way to deal with such drama is never respond.