Comment by Modified3019
15 hours ago
Yeah what you’ve described a basically how I saw many forums collapse over the years as well. While they all have the basic problems of bringing in and retaining users, many stacked on top of those issues an unremovable set of hostile admins/mods driving away people from the kingdom they usurped.
The people who have the most time and energy to give for moderation, are the same ones most in love with the control for it’s own sake.
It's a pattern I see in a lot of communities now. Some of the open source projects I follow have had their communities collapse the same way: Some group comes in with all smiles and energy to help out, then they brings their friends into the upper ranks because they say they need more help, then they start pushing agendas and adding rules to give themselves more power, then finally they just exhaust everyone else who isn't interested in fighting the battles every time they log on to do something.
The few remaining forums I frequent have survived because they have no tolerance for admins who push their own agendas. They've all erred on the side of minimal rules and bans only in extreme cases. Every forum I've been on that went all-in on rules and heavy moderation has collapsed, or at least driven away the core users and left roaming packs of ingroup people who care more about picking apart everyone else than being part of the community. It's weird how many different places I've watched this happen online.