If the majority of your community turns against you...

[Shawn Gossman]

Let's create a scenario here.

Let's say some sort of incident happens where a majority of your community turns against you.

Do you...

(a) Shut your community down

And if you do shut it down, do you restart it or do you give up at that point?

Or...

(b) ban everything turning on you and focus on those who are not?

These options of course are when all else fails to try to reason with the majority who are against you.

I'm interested in what everyone would do in this scenario? Or even if something like this has already happened to you as a forum owner?

 

[Elseb]

Wow that's a tough one.

It all depends on why they were turning on me, I'd imagine If they disliked me enough, they'd end up leaving and starting a new forum. I genuinely don't know what I would do. Certainly couldn't see myself closing it though.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Wow that's a tough one.

It all depends on why they were turning on me, I'd imagine If they disliked me enough, they'd end up leaving and starting a new forum. I genuinely don't know what I would do. Certainly couldn't see myself closing it though.

I agree.

I'd probably start kicking people in small groups, focusing on the really toxic ones to see if that calm the majority down.

But if we couldn't reason anymore, it's best to kill out toxic groups and ban them, then focus on the ones who are for the community.

It just might mean you have to build the forum up again.

 

[PGen98]

Yeah, it's situational thing, IMO. If they're turning on you because you did something, I'd try to sell the community and leave so the community at least can continue; however, if they're turning just because of their own actions or because of toxicity within the member base, then I would work to remove the toxic substances and try to patch things back together with the rest of the community.