The Downfall of Each Online Community
I know I've been talking a lot about old web vs new web on my site/blog so far, but one thing is for certain: Online communities are doomed to fail unless someone/some people are a-okay with laboring tirelessly (and probably for free) to moderate said community.
I have been looking for forums, new and old, niche little groups, large server, humongous communities ranging from boards to forums to micro social media to this and that. And there is such a consistent timeline that I see. There is no particular time range, mind you.
- A community is started based around some ideas or interests.
- The community gains members and the general culture is established, rules are laid out.
- Some issues arise. Moderators either nip this in the bud or allow it to fester. If fester, skip to step 7.
- Things calm down, more members join. Moderators become overloaded with the amount of work.
- Issues arise and moderators are even more overloaded.
- Longtime, quality members express how they want change and for things to be better. A million ideas are suggested, nothing is actually implemented.
- Longtime, quality members start to slowly leave. People that ignored rules and trolled start outnumbering everyone. Eventually they get board and the community is now dead.
It seems like the only solution to this is for there to be a neverending installation of moderators that are willing to put in a ton of work to keep the community on track with the original ideals it had in the first place.
I speak from experience as a community leader, as a member in multiple communities and as someone that has been in online communities ranging all over for... 25 years? Something like that.
I truly wonder what the solution is, because it would be nice to see certain communities last forever, but is that even possible? Is it possible for there to be moderators that stick around for years? Is it possible that new moderators can continue the community in the same way? Or are all online communities destined to have an expiration date as soon as it's created?
I continue my search in the sea of "This forum will now be in permanent read-only" and "Uh...I think that discord server got deleted or something, idk what happened to it, I'd better go read a 12 page story about it on Reddit followed by a youtube video titled 'What Happened to the Teletubbies Micro Discord Server: The DRAMA' ".
Disheartened, but hopeful I'll find the eventual answers to my questions