Trying to make a decision? This is the place to be when you need advice, opinions, direction, or to talk it over.
Not sure I agree with community leader's management style. Is leaving my only option?
I'm a member of a community where talking about issues like depression is totally acceptable and probably encouraged. I'm thinking incidence of depression is pretty high within the membership. I have depression too!
However, the community's leader posts about being very very depressed, while using the Leader tag, and they don't post about anything else with the Leader tag.
So I see the Leader tag, and I'm thinking, "oh something important that pertains directly to the management of the group, I should pay attention to that" and it's a post about how depressed the leader is and it doesn't mention the topic of the group at all.
Last time they did this they were venting some sadness (understandably) about not having a romantic/sexual partner - and using the Leader tag. I posted saying I felt it was a little too off-topic for the use of the tag, and they took the post down. But now they've done it again, so clearly they've not permanently changed their tactics or anything.
I'm not sure what this is. It's part-vent, part-asking-for-advice. I'm obviously in a position of basically no power and I can't tell whether I have a right to take this up more seriously with the leader, or whether I should be talking to Imzy staff (that seems unlikely?), or whether I should use up one of my community tokens to start a "rival" community (that seems kind of petty?), or what. All your thoughts are very welcome. <3
Edit: Changed a letter in the title.




Yeah, I saw the post you were talking about. It bothered me, too.
There's nothing wrong with a leader posting about their problems and seeking support. We're all human, and I really feel for them. But I don't agree with them using a tag for it that should be reserved for announcements and community-wide stuff. It causes confusion.
In any case, I hope everyone involved finds a resolution.
Thank you!
Please don't come here and fight. Have you considered their use of the Leader tag as a possible self-esteem boost? Using it as a status symbol?
I hadn't. But it doesn't feel right for them to do that, to me. I guess it's their right to use it for whatever they want, since I can't really argue, and that would lean in the direction of "if I don't like how they do things I should probably leave"? :/
I agree. The "Leader" tag feels like it should be for official comm business.
Thanks. :) And thank you for offering an alternative perspective, too.
If you've already tried asking them to mod differently and they aren't willing/interested, I'd just go ahead and make another one and run it the way you want. That's how community-based sites work.
I'm not sure I have the spoons, and they're sitting on a very obvious community name! :/ And I have blocked the leader, but the way blocking works is you don't see their posts... unless you're in a community where they're the leader.
That I could see getting in the way. I'm not sure there are many options open to you then. Maybe someone will volunteer to do it? If you recognize anyone else who posts there, maybe you can ask them their thoughts.
Someone has the right to run their community poorly. And the only thing you can really do is Be The Change and all that. Maybe as the site grows someone will naturally make another one you can join?
Yes, I guess that's the other option I hadn't thought of - waiting. :) I did just make a new group on a similar but not as general theme, so I'll see how that turns out. Maybe that will be enough!
So what's the community? No need to leave the name out of this. Imzy is still really new and we don't know yet which communities will be active and popular once the site matures. The ones with poor leadership probably just won't - people will notice and abandon the communities that have incompetent leaders who power trip and don't listen to reason. I don't think it's petty at all to start another community with the same purpose. You'd only be making Imzy a better place for everyone.
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I just thought it could be useful to name the community in order to have more context and to bring it to people's attention if the leadership were a complete disaster. This case however, I personally wouldn't even call OP out on it, I mean it's clearly not the best time for this. Maybe if they continue making leader-tagged posts in the future, try convincing them again that it's not respectful to other members. Also, making an alternative community is still an okay plan.
Well, I did say in the original post that the leader was posting about feeling very depressed and had previously posted about being sad to not have a partner. I didn't want to post there because it'd be really insensitive. I totally respect their right to post about their emotional stuff there, I'd even encourage it! But I don't think it's a good time to do that, directly responding to an emotional expression like that to say "yeah, expressing your emotions is great, but please do it in this slightly different way!" And I didn't know that typing the community name would draw their attention here, having an even worse effect than just privately messaging them about it... :/
I'm not sure why you encouraged them to call out the community given that leaders get notified of mentions...
I'm not sure why that's a bad thing. Can you explain?
Because now they know someone is complaining about them in public. Have you met the Internet? That was an invitation to come here and fight about it.
Or at the very least, feel even worse than they already do...
And even if they don't fight about it, well, the leader is depressed. It's easy for complaints about you to set off a massive self-loathing spiral when you're depressed, which I feel was NOT OP's intention with this post. They want advice, not to make someone who's already depressed feel more bad about themselves.
Yes, exactly! Thank you.
I'm sorry if I contributed to anything negative happening, but so far there's no evidence of that, just our own assumptions. I have faith in open communication. And Imzy is not as bad as the rest of the Internet, yet.
It's true, we have no evidence. But I think it's important to bear in mind that with someone with MH issues we may never see any evidence, and the damage done could be very bad. I guess it's down to me learning as I go along how Imzy works, since I didn't know the group leader would be pinged and if I had known I wouldn't have done that. But still, I feel bad.