So I joined this forum back in November. It's still running (thanks to me and one other admin). It was amazing at first; incredibly active and had a lot going for it. There were four admins, and at the time I was just a member. Things were fine, but then activity started to drop. So the main admin decided a re-vamp was best, new skin, new graphics, etc. This was a month or so after I'd joined. And she'd asked for two members to volunteer to be admins and help run the forum. So I put myself forward, because I really wanted to help, and it's not like I've never been an admin before.

A few weeks later, one of the six of us admins hasn't logged on in a while. We assume it's just school. A little while after, another admin disappears and the other isn't back. Yeah, that's... fine. And then just into the new year, another disappears and the main admin turns out to have some issues that'll last for the next nine months and beyond (you know what I mean <<) so she won't be back anytime soon. That leaves the two of us. Over a hundred members but two admins. We're left to sort out applications, the back-logged sign-ups and activity's started to droop again.

The other three admins haven't been on in a while still, and even though we're basically the newbies, we decide to change the skin and graphics without waiting for permission. And then the numbers rise again; and since February, everything's been great. But the other admins still aren't around - yet they get to keep their admin accounts, even the ones who never did anything for the forum except mess up the face claim by putting the character's name first rather than the celebrity's (because the admins added the face claim automatically after acceptance).

Things started getting too much for us, so we hired two other admins based on their member activity, and the fact that they'd been around as long as we had. We didn't ask the other admins about it because they weren't around. And recently, two of them - who never did anything - have come back. They've made new characters and accepted themselves, even though I wouldn't have done so; they've changed old character play-bys to ones that were already used, yet the character hadn't logged in for a week. It's bugging me. They log in, don't bother with the un-accepted apps or back-logged sign-ups that I still have to get to whilst still having a life at the same time.

It's pretty obvious that two people can't run a forum (we're back to two this week because the other two active admins are on vacation), so why leave us to it? Because you want to look like an authority figure, minus all of the work. But of course, what would I do about it? I just sit here and write about it on RPG-D.

*pats your shoulder sympathetically* I know exactly how you feel. I, with a friend (at the time) opened an X-Men RPG board, and for a while, things were great. We were on another board at the same time, we both had time to post, life was good.

Then, she had finals. Ok. No biggie, I had my final exams too...and she was about to graduate college, so I could see her wanting to study. No big deal.

A month after finals, after IGNORING the board for a few weeks, she up and revamps. I get mad, but suck it up and help her, chucking in an idea or two so that I feel happy with the site. A month goes by...

She is unhappy with the minimal numbers we have as members. Me and the other admin tell her to be patient. She throws a fit, and we end up changing to another board, losing an admin in the process. a month and a half goes by...

And she has brought all of HER friends to this board, most of which I don't know and RP like shite, and I can't stand it. I leave and tell her to keep the board. (Which I have done most of the skinning and coding on.) I promptly delete the links to my graphics and stuff, and she goes off on me and says she feels betrayed.. Keep in mind that she barely did any admin-ly work. [/mini rant]

Sorry....So as I said, I know how you feel. *offers a brownie*

It's not even my forum; so I could just leave it myself if I like. Like I said, I've not been there as long as the other admins, and this is the second version of the forum - there was another URL beforehand, but that forum died and she got a brand new forum with brand new members. So I don't have to keep going, but I don't want to just leave all of the members to try and go by themselves without any new characters being introduced whatsoever.

And I know how you feel about bringing "all of HER friends to this board." That happens to me whenever I try and start a board with this one guy. He's a great roleplayer, but the thing is, when I started making a forum with him a while back, he started telling his friends about it. Now, his friends are the people from the first ever forum we joined; it was the first forum we were both on and it was really quite bad. No skin, no apps, one-liners. -shudders- But the thing is, that was two years ago, and none of them except me and him have moved on. Some of them had this family that never seemed to end. Next week there'd be a new member of it, and then another cousin, and then a great-grandfather. But they don't change their characters. Whereas I have a new character to suit each board I'm on, they haven't changed in two and a bit years - and that's just the time I've known them.

I ended up abandoning making the forum, even though we were pretty far along. I went on vacation too, and I think that he thinks I just ignored him, because since then he hasn't spoken to me, or even tried to. He's been acting like a kid, which was why I decided to move on from that first forum in the first place; there were constant arguments and people making idiotic suggestions about things. Still, I'm glad there was all that to drive me away, otherwise I probably wouldn't be here. XD But I don't want to open a forum I've spent weeks on just to have his friends come along and ruin it all with terrible characters with no soul and one-line posts that wouldn't be all that good if you glued them all together with some melted cheese.

-takes the brownie-

Dang, that's scary -- melted cheese can fix just about anything.

Out of curiosity, where is the board owner in all of this?

I haven't seen her since December; she got pregnant. And although some people could still stay on forums, she was kind of sixteen and having to sort everything out with her parents. >.<

d'oh!