How To Deal With Community Drama

It's human nature, sometimes people like to stir the pot between each other or other communities. You probably dealt with drama before in your every day life, whether it's at the office or even in school when you were a child. How should admins and moderators deal with drama that may occur in their community?

If you own a forum or even a Discord server, chances are you've dealt with drama within your community. It could have been brought up by staff or just members of your community, and it may have even started on another community and made it's way to your own. Dealing with drama in real life differs than dealing with it on a community, how can admins and moderators handle drama when it is brought up in a online community?


Start off by seeing why the drama is being brought up in the first place. See who's causing the drama, and instead of enabling the drama you should eliminate it. Stirring the pot will continue to allow this sort of behavior to continue. Learn to look for a solution to the conflict at hand. Some cases of drama may be out of your own hands and you may not be able to directly resolve the issues at hand. What should you do if this arises? A simple reminder of your forum rules could help. You may need to also suspend your members causing these issues to help solve conflict.


When it comes to drama between staff members this can get tricky. Look for ways to solve the problem you may be having with other staff, and address any concerns your staff team brings up. Try and see things from their perspective, and hopefully they can learn to see it from yours as well. At the end of the day, if the drama continues between staff members, you may need to demote your staff member causing the problem after discussing with them either in a thread or private message.


Now drama coming from a different community or group can be extremely difficult to resolve. If you have a forum, the best thing to do is to keep track of your new members. If you get a influx of registrations, chances are these could be members from another community who's joining your community to start drama and cause issues for you, your staff, and your members. It's best to set your approval for registrations to admin approval for a while until the drama cools off.

Comments 1

  • Drama can be inevitable. Things can get heated. It’s up to the Admin & Staff to nip it in the bud before it escalates. I believe letting people vent but they have to honor the Respect rule. They may need to get their frustrations out which is better than holding it in & them exploding later on & saying more they would regret & burning bridges.

    If there’s a situation, I like to take it privately. No need to air dirty laundry in the forum. Sometimes we may have a bad day & go overboard & we shouldn’t be judged by a bad decision.