The Worst Time to Be An Admin [08/08/2012]

Ok, so I am an admin on a very successful role-play forum. The book series is incredibly popular, and one of my favorites. But, because I was told by a friend to not invoke anyone to join in on the out of character fights/battles, I won't be telling you, otherwise it would be quite easy.

So basically, these two veteran members, one who was once a well known admin, well known enough to become a legend, (A legend is a person who has left the site, and they become legends. Sort of like a hall of fame.) comes back to the site. He requests a talk with the admins, whose names I will not give out. Let's just say there's Carly, Miranda, Eeyore, Cassie, and me. (They are all females.) We go to another site, to use the chatbox to discuss things. We'll call them Roger and Nemo. Nemo will be the previous admin, Roger his friend.

Nemo produces the idea of an advisor of sorts for the admin team. The admin team consists of two 18 year olds, two 15 year olds, and one 12 year old. Nemo is 17, and Roger is 16. Carly, Eeyore, Cassie, and myself are present for the meeting. Miranda is not, as she is on vacation. Anyway, at the time, Carly and Cassie agree to the idea. The advisor would simply give us a good kick in the butt to get out events for the members. Us admins had a lot of events planned, and more updates, and lots of things. I was really excited to release the stuff, along with the other admins.

However, they bring up that nothing was being done. In July, we had it as a planning month. We could of put up an update that we were planning stuff, but we did inform people something big was coming. They said ok. But Roger and Nemo say we need a little push.

Carly resigned from admin, and posted a topic and poll with everyone's opinions on it. Roger and Nemo take to the topic, and go on their own websites to tell everyone to vote for their option, which is yes to having an advisor. The reason Carly resigned and posted the topic was because we all hadn't agreed on the advisor, and she was the only admin who wanted one. So she resigned.

Carly told us that Roger and Nemo were going to post their own topic, and it would probably biased. Roger and Nemo are intimidating, very specific people. They can pick the slightest flaw from you and use it to their advantage.

So basically, Roger and Nemo's sites are being used to bash all of the admins.

They are complaining that we don't have events, when in fact, we had a lot.

This war has pushed two admins to resign, including Eeyore and Carly. Carly left the site completely about 30 minutes ago. We added a new member to the admin team, Turtle, and she is doing a fairly good job of handling the situation. She is 15. Cassie is grounded for two weeks, and will probably resign as well. Miranda has college and she's going to have to quit too, and myself, well, I just moved so I'll have to deal with that too. I'm probably going to leave, though, because I can't handle it.

I've been a member of that place for a year and a month or two. It's been my home, I've dealt with so much, and worked my way up to being an admin. It's not a happy place to be anymore.

I've been tempted to do the same thing, ask for votes, but my friend has advised me not to. This is incredibly horrible for everyone right now.

Well, I guess he really wants his idea to be put through.
Didn't you tell him that you already had big events planned out?
Continue on with those events in the meanwhile.

Also, explain that to the public and give your own opinion - why you don't want it done.

That must be pretty harsh on you.

It is incredibly harsh. Except, the members are pushing for it, insulting us, and they won't get it through their minds that we are indeed working for them. Maybe not as quickly as in the past, but we are working. This has been going on for a few days, but so much has been said, and feelings were hurt. It's awful. ._.

Haven't you tried explaining it to them? (If you haven't, do it in a formal matter.) Don't they know you from years past?

You can talk to me about it in pm's, if you want, since nobody else is commenting.

We've told them, but they don't seem to trust us. We said we had something BIG in the making, and we weren't lying, it was just taking forever to get the mods and admins to get together and work all of the kinks out. We are all in different timezones and stuff, so typically we wait for the rest of the staff to post in our hidden forums. It takes time to plan stuff and get it ready to be shipped out.

I've only been on the site since June of last year, and that's pretty long for me. Just in June I got promoted to admin from mod, and as it seems to happen after every promotion, people get upset. I was promoted to mod in around October, and I was still relatively new. That time was the first time I was put down for being on the staff.

The site is huge, with about 3,000 members. It's hard to please everyone and get them to get along. It's a headache. ._.

Ho.
3,000. What kind of forum is it?

Honestly, you can't really ignore them, but you can't deal with them like this, either, so to calm them down, maybe you could drop a little bit of info about the big thing?

We have already. Cassie posted a topic telling them what we were planning, spilling all of the secrets. That helped nothing. We're fighting a losing battle.

I've got one question... Is there like "one superior boss", or is it just a bunch of admins and staff?

I'm going to feel really stupid if this question has already been answered. Eh, It's late

ALL of them?
Oh boy..that ruins the surprise.

What they want is supposedly this new "advisor" thing, right?
What good would it do? I know it's apparently supposed to "advise", but the admins technically already advise by themselves together, unless they mean this new "advisor" is not a admin, mod, or one of those special people but somebody from the general that can be elected or something like that. I mean, that's still a bit pointless to me, but really, if you let them, that's fine, too, because it's only "advising". Unless of course, this new "advisor" is actually a new position. Then that's just like adding a new admin, what's the point?

No matter how I think about it, it's not really anything new. Unless you can explain to me what this new "advisor" does. What it means, and all that.

I'm guessing they're unsatisfied with you guys's current work, but I haven't a clue why. Imo, you are doing fine as an admin, and apparently they can't tell that they're stressing you out. They do have a right to voice their opinions and vote, but rather than thinking on biased terms they should be thinking about both sides, and weighing the good and bad. This person you speak of (I forgot his name), why does he want his idea enforced so badly?

(Sorry if that's asking for too much info, I know you're trying to keep it as base as possible. xD)