It's funny what can lead to a total breakdown of a community, to see the whys and hows. There are countless historical rebellions and riots, including the London riots earlier this year. In a smaller and more personal collapse, yesterday, The Nest admins made the announcement that Facebook no longer was going to support forums on apps and was closing down - Friday morning. But you could go to their host forums on the main website.
I've never been to the main forum. Most of us never have, for one simple reason: TN on FB is a bunch of women with decent moderation and rules. The actual TN? They don't have the regulations we dealt with, and as a result, they are said to be unbearably unkind to the point of cruelty. If you're not a bully, you won't last there. So to tell several hundred women that our only option is to migrate to the place we want least to go and they have two days to pack it up and go...
Oh, did I mention they didn't tell the mods they were out of a job? Protip: If you run a forum with mods, do not neglect them. Do not keep them out of the loop. And if you do and you decide to shut down, do not let them know the situation ahead of time. Because the mods will say "screw it", quit, unblock every cuss word, unban every banned user, and tell the users "Until this place closes for good, there are no more rules. Have fun."
What ensued can only be defined as anarchy. Held tongues finally said what was in their mind, questions were asked and answered, people were called out, it was chaos, at least compared to what it had been. And it was fun. In the midst of it, a Moses among us came out and said "follow me to the promised land", metaphorically speaking. It was more of a "Go to the home forums? F- that, let's make our own forum." And she did. She made a group for us to wait at, to vote on names, rules, mods. Within a few minutes, there were a hundred of us as friends invited friends and the people who all knew each other on the forum pulled the others unaware of the drama off the sinking ship. There are over 275 of us in that group now and growing as stragglers come in before they're left 'homeless'. I was surprised when I took a half-hour break and came back to find myself nominated and in the voting to be a moderator. 1 of 4 people in the running out of 200. I knew I was a regular, but I didn't know I had made that kind of impression on people :) I didn't win the vote, but it was still nice to see people supported the idea of me as a mod.
The thing I've found most interesting is how of-one-mind everyone is on this new project. People who didn't get along, who always fought in every thread, apologized, made up, promised to watch their words, to try to offend less at our new home. In the midst of the chaos, there's a kind of peace, and I find it fascinating. I'm sad to be seeing the end of an era, but I'm also there for the beginning of a new one. One with different rules, a little less moderation, and a little more respect for the users. Will it be as ideal as we're hoping? Probably not, we'll have our share of kinks to work out. But I'm proud to be there at the beginning, no matter where it goes.
edit: I woke up this morning to find out a few mods had to be promoted to admins to get things smoothed out on the new forum and I was asked to be a mod. We'll see how this goes. :)
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