Lmao let's be real: people will complain about literally anything and there's a decent subset of people who are used to bullying to get their way because most people in RP sites are self-conscious enough to want to avoid being jerks and thus won't defend themselves no matter what. They realized at some point that bulldozing and being super aggressive gets them the results that they want and take that attitude everywhere.
Over the years I've had basically every level of flame at me from people sending me death threats to writing long hate-fueled rants about how they hope I or my family have horrible things happen or whatever because they can't believe that this behavior would ever get them called out or kicked from a site. All the while they will spin the discussion as something that you must apologize to them for, like it's your fault they're the way that they are. It's not your job as a staff to fix people, it's your job as staff to create an environment where people can have fun in a hobby they collectively enjoy.
Staff burnout leads to dead sites. Toxic people driving off core members leads to dead sites. Keeping toxic people on because you feel the need to not be mean kills sites and is honestly probably the biggest cause of staff burnout in my experience. People just eventually get tired of being walked on.
Note that constructive criticism or communication is not flaming and staff can have that victim mentality of anyone who questions them is bullying them or whatever too. On one site I left in the past year there was a rule that basically enforced a word max that I regularly exceeded for certain types of threads, and I honestly felt like the rule was instituted because I tended to post in that type of thread a lot. That's a red line for me, because I legitimately hate word limits both ceiling wise and minimums. I verified with staff that this was the new policy, and informed them that I was leaving and that was the reason.
I didn't kick up a stink, and frankly the site was big enough to where me leaving doesn't matter. Whether it was intended to get me to leave or not is irrelevant -- I really think it was just that staff didn't want to read longer posts in threads they had to read. That's fair, but that also means I'm going to leave because I'm not chopping off words from my posts to satisfy that urge. Me telling staff I'm leaving due to that rule isn't bullying or toxicity, it's me actually deciding I'm not going to ghost because I liked the community and basically leaving the door open to coming back later if it ended up being changed down the line -- like if more vocal people who cared more decided to try and get it changed. Whether it was targeted or not, frankly, didn't matter to me because I don't really care who staffs a site or if they dislike me or not as long as my experience isn't effected by that. Soft push outs are fine in that respect IMO and I prefer that over long hate rants -- so if it was targeted at me they did a good job in making something that would only effect a few people and only cause one person to care enough to drop over it lol. I didn't do this in public, which would have made it spiteful and nasty. I did it in DMs individually with the admins and confirmed that this what what they were going for and basically said that was a deal breaker for me and left at that point.
There was no disrespect or anything, but that's just how it was. When people quit my site for reasons other than time constraints or losing interest, I like to know why because sometimes I legitimately fuck up and cause someone to not have a fun experience like in an event or something because I think something would be cool or assuming PCs would find their way out of something and they just 110% mega fail and the player OOC feels cheated. I also personally like victory lap scenarios where a bunch of weaker mooks come at the end for PCs to basically write their characters being awesome -- but received very negative feedback on it because many felt it was a waste of time and effort that could be spent on other things so I left out the victory laps in future events.
Not everything someone quits a site over is something you need or even should change. If someone is upset they can't play a 3000 year old undead lich on your New York City 2020 Slice of Life site or their cool totally original OC Tiamat the Five Headed Dragon Deity in your Pokemon setting that's their problem for not reading your site. It's also their bad if they decide to come into your light hearted town setting with a concept they decided would turn into the Joker and are amazed that people who are focused on the Tri-State Area Cooking Competition event don't really care or engage with their serial killer and feel left out and overshadowed by cooking. That's their fault because they didn't bother to make a character that fit with the setting or have a concept that meshed with what others wanted to accomplish. But you also get a lot of valid complaints, even if sometimes they're mixed in with salt.
Someone deciding to jump into the lava instead of going around it might be very upset that the lava burned them so heavily they couldn't function or continue adventuring afterwards. Maybe you didn't make the path around the lava obvious enough so the player panicked and assumed the DM would save them if they tried to suicide -- which is a wrong assumption in my case but something that people do when they perceive it to be video game like where consequences don't matter. Then on my end I can make things more obvious and have better prep so people know what to expect from scenarios down the line so it doesn't happen again -- I lost lava jump man as a player, but while I don't feel I did anything wrong I also can make changes that don't change what I'm doing too much and help other players from getting to that level of frustration in the future. This improves my site, and allows people to have fun more... which I consider to be the point of a play by post site.
If you as a staff member are not having fun, especially if you are the admin, that is an existential threat to your site. I, personally, don't like people sending me death threats in chat and will ban anyone who does it first offense. I don't feel as though that's something I need to contest or justify, and have only needed to do it once. The person obviously felt that they were justified and the hero of the situation and raged really hard at everyone who listened, but I'm not putting up with that level of hate towards me or any of my players. If something goes wrong for you IC or OOC there's a right way to complain and there's a wrong way to complain, and if people go well beyond that line I don't see an issue with giving a no warning ban to people so they don't poison your site for a minute longer than necessary. Obviously it's not usually so cut and dry, but frankly some people are just unreasonable and can never be reasoned with or catered to in a way that would make them happy because there is some fundamental disconnect between you and them that is unsolvable and will always be an issue. Every toxic person believes they are the hero of their own story, fighting against corruption and injustice from an autocratic and evil system known as 'Play-By-Post Roleplaying Site Staffers'. That's fine, you can't change that and if someone believes you to be an evil to the level of Darth Vader feel honored that to some people you really are that important, but you also don't need to accommodate that. There are some things you just shouldn't accommodate and your site will suffer for it if you try.
For example, I wholeheartedly believe that National Ice Cream Day is a sacred holiday that nobody should violate by engaging in villainous or otherwise amoral behavior in. If you believe the opposite, we are fundamentally incompatible and I hope you get nothing but vanilla as your options for the rest of your life along with the blandest, flavorless snow cones and complete lack of sprinkles. There are some lines that just aren't meant to be crossed, and that's one of them. If you disagree, you're not only wrong but a category even below that called super wrong.
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