I was assigned as an administrator to this site, rather not go into specifics, but I feel like I was doing good as one, until recently that is…
I brought some concern to other staff (like one) about suicide posts… and my brilliant:sparkles: brain decides that we should lock posts (prevent anyone from replying) and send a hotline to them. Reason why was to avoid them being a trending topic, but was highly unreasonable.
And now I feel shit, most of the users don’t like me anymore I’m sure, I really just hurt them, whats worse it was during a time I couldn’t communicate overnight. I feel so ashamed I rather not even show my face. I hurt people, I wanted to help but I caused far too much damage…
When I saw these posts and such I wrote up an apology a few hours later, but I just see people rather not see, which is…fine… one of the mods went into break because of it, as they also followed along, and when they posted about it they got many people telling them to go take a break and when I said it? Not much. And i just have this gut feeling that I’m being hated… I may just be paranoid but I hate being looked and singled out for being a shit person. I don’t want to be the shit person. And I feel ashamed the trust people had in me is gone…
It is not even close to your fault. Me personally, i would do the same thing just like you. People pretty often try to create trends from this mental illnesses. You did the right thing trust me.
Love you,
bianka
Thing is, i meant having it go into trending and be on top, the way the site works is that’s it’s massively public, so any stranger who isn’t in the community can come in and see that sensitive info. While the people who reply to the post aren’t advocating for it thank god but when they reply that bumps the post up to trending because that’s what the site does.
With me locking the post while it did avoid it going into the trending section, however it didn’t help the person get enough support…
You did what seemed to be fair at the moment. I know it can be stressful to hold that kind of responsibility though. IRL, through my last job (social work), I was used to feel very stressed about the responsibilities that go along with knowing that it is about people’s life, and also a hard work of building trust. Sometimes it’s scary to think that one decision could ruin everything. But there is grace to give to yourself in that situation. You observed a situation and used your capacity of discernment. From that issue that you pointed out, lessons could be learned by you and the other admins, in order to make the best changes. You’re not alone there and that is a strength/resource to embrace. You are part of a team, and as a team it’s important to be able to rely on others when we feel overwhelmed by a question. Not everyone handle a situation the same way, everyone process differently, every person’s limits are different, and that’s okay. From that decision that was taken, you’ll also learn to find eventually a different solution. One that would take in account both the need for those topics to be seen, yet maybe not to fall in the trending part of the site. You evolve with people and how they use this website as a resource. From what you observe, you learn too, and that’s part of being a helpful, caring admin there.
brilliant:sparkles: brain decides that we should lock posts (prevent anyone from replying) and send a hotline to them. Reason why was to avoid them being a trending topic, but was highly unreasonable.
