Great board, except staff

It's getting harder and harder to find decent admins around, in my humble opinion. I've seen some awesome staff that then suddenly disappear with no warning, which is the worst, then staff that are around a lot that don't post, and then there's the huge amount of staff out there that start out okay and then ruin things for everyone.

On one recent board I was helping with, the admin allowed one member to get away with bullying another. There was no way I was going to stay on a place like that. Sometimes good first impressions don't last, then the drama llama appears and ruins it for everyone. It's really frustrating, though, because you never know what people are like until you jump into the game, and by that point, you might have spent ages on a good app and the rest of it.

I guess it's the same the world over... learn from experience and just hope you don't have to deal with them again after all the drama ends!

Run away, very far away, and never look back. When there's a person on staff that you don't like, that person is affecting the dealings of the board, gameplay, general feel, everything.

Personally, I can't stand it, and even a single look at the sight sends me into a spiral of hatred, and then self-loathing for even considering the site.

I didn't say that I would or anyone should react to their gut instinct on the basis of a first look at a site. I explained that based on what the OP had said, there's some red flags there in the board, but you can only really tell for sure and make a proper assumption if you had the board in front of you and you spent some time researching. No one should just take one look at a site, and go right, I don't like the look of it, I'm leaving.

As someone that all admins typically hate, I have some experience here.
If I see that the relationship between an admin and myself is going to be a problem, I just have fun with it. It's the only way I can enjoy the experience. Unfortunately it's not as much fun for the admin. I mean this is the internet. It's serious business.
If you don't join, you will never know if you would have a good time. If you take precautions, you might eliminate the fun in the game. If you look for another game, you are abandoning all of those good attributes that you like in the game you found. If you exploit and have fun with the people that hate you, you get banned. Best advice is if you really like a place, play it cool. Don't disagree with the admin, and don't play with them if you don't like how they write (Or if they don't know how to write, which is weirdly common).

Personally, I tend to judge based on how an admin runs the site rather than how they themselves come across. Don't get me wrong, those two factors can often be quite intertwined, because your personality will affect your admining style, but as long as they're being reasonable in running the game, and the game is otherwise great in every other way, I'd give them a chance.

The title of this thread says it all for me. Those who say it isn't a sizeable issue, are either ignorant to the truth, fortunate enough never to have experienced it, or lying.

However, I will say that it works the other way around too. There are awesome staff at some RP's, but the RP itself is not so great.

Food for thought.

I'm always a lurker before I join a board. I trawl the pages and I sit like a creepy person and watch the cbox. I generally am really fussy before joining a board, and I like to sign up once I am sure I have a good handle on what the board is about.

So I generally find because I lurk before registering, I get a pretty good idea about the staff. You see them around, you see their material and decorum. If I don't get a good vibe, particularly the friendly ones, or if I am not seeing them at all then I usually don't sign up. The staff team drives a site, imo.

That being said -- if I see some veteran members around, like on the boards and the cbox, and they appear highly confident, I am liable to downplay how much emphasis I put on staff. A good member base can half-compensate for an average staff group.

I don't join. When it's obvious the staff don't know what they're doing, don't know about the fandom they made the site about, are apathetic towards member needs, etc... what's the point? It'd be like joining a club where the leader isn't liked AT ALL by fellow members.

If I join a site, and later learn the staff aren't exactly my cup of tea, I leave.

Oh, good question!

I might join anyways, my vibes might be wrong! I never know. I would try it out and if it's not the place to be, because the admins' 'badness' is getting in the way then I would leave - no harm done! Sometimes I join a site with seemingly nice admins and members but then it becomes like something out of a horror film, I mean sometimes lurking isn't going to show the innards since there's things you can't see until you're a part of it. If my guts are seriously telling me NO then I won't join at all and continue my search for paradise. There might be a better site out there in the vast sea of sites and if there isn't then I'll give the board with the snarky or whate'er admins a try. But seriously... the friendlier the admin, the better!

Ha, I'm in a situation like that right now - I joined anyway because I felt me and the members hit it off on the cbox. Awesome, awesome members; with a staff I just can't agree with. One seems so focused on making their own character as important as possible they come up with every excuse or even just outright deny suggestions and things that make sense for the site, if it affects that spotlight and fawning - and even when not goes all passive-aggressive about how everyone's being such jerks and the 'WELL WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GO THE STATUS QUO' guy comes out and spams about how insensitive everyone is being.

I'm keeping on the site, mostly because I really like the members and myself and said admin don't ever thread together anyway, and I recently put out a wanted ad for that site that was taken and I don't want to leave them high and dry, hoping it'll improve or I can at least ignore all the OOC garbage. Had I not thrown out the wanted ad and hadn't hit it off with the other members so well - I'd've left a while ago; but I'm careful not to take it too seriously because I realize it could get very badly at the drop of a hat; and that honestly does suck some fun out of the board. So until they force me to RP their little private plotline, I'm still going to enjoy myself despite them.