premature reflections on sudden responsibility

context

about four days ago, my website spring — a self-hosted instance of the Q&A social network retrospring, suddenly experienced a massive influx in users. the users, primarily teenage, were flocking to my site after it was discovered by them from another instance of retrospring, which saw massive conflicts between users that the admins and moderators were unable to mitigate. my site was discovered, somehow, and a link was shared, and i went from 15 users — and a site that used to be for me and my friends to have fun — to around 40 in under an hour.

that number ballooned to 60 after a few minutes. by then, i had started to panic, and closed sign-ups as fast as possible.

when this initially started, i was filled in on the context of the other instance these users were coming from — the persistent conflict on the site, overwhelmed administration, all of it. in the period that my site's registration was closed, i had the new users asking me many questions about how i would be governing the site, while at once reassuring me that they would behave as i publicly panicked about the influx.

for a brief period, the site went quiet again, as many of these new users returned to their original instance, seemingly scared off by my panic and put off by closed registration.

unfortunately for me, that original instance would announce its shutdown, effective monday march 31st, and the deluge of emails sent to my inbox began.

i have forgotten some details in the haze of Everything, so forgive me for that. but i think users and non-users alike had discovered my email via the link to my website embedded on spring, as my email is on that website for contact purposes, and people began to ask me when registration would reopen, or ask to join.

so, to recap: a site i had hosted for me and a small group of friends ballooned into an unwanted community in a matter of days. the catch, though, is that i suddenly felt a crushing sense of responsibility.

The Crushing Sense of Responsibility

against not only my better judgement, but the advice of my family and literally all of my friends, i came to a conclusion. my thought process went something like this:

• the site has been discovered by a large community
• this large community has no other place to go
• they will likely continue to ask me about the site no matter what i do
• most importantly, the site will not go back to how it used to be

the last point is critical. i figured that, not only with the preceding factors in mind, but with the knowledge that there is no way that the site could return to being only me and my friends having fun... i gave in.

i kept registration closed, but set up some ground rules on the about page: new users must be 16+ (evaluated on a trust basis; if users under 16 are discovered, they are banned; additionally, users that arrived when registration was open and are between 13 and 16 years old are grandfathered in, as i believed it would be unfair to ban them), i will manually make accounts for new users, and prospective new users must contact me confirming that they are 16+ and providing me a desired username and account email.

i promised strict moderation — no bullshit, because i deal with enough bullshit in my life, online and offline. fun fact: i had just handled a stalker for hopefully the last time (for a while, at least) on the same day that the initial user influx occurred. my life is a comedy.

but i believe in no-nonsense moderation because i think moderation is best when you nip problems in the bud. when i see a potential issue, i will cut it at the root before it worsens. if i see a user being harassed by another, i will ban the aggressor. if an anonymous non-user is harassing a user via the anonymous ask system, i will ban their IP address at the web server level so they can no longer access the website. things like that.

after several days of operating on this mindset — accepting new users entirely manually, focusing all of my energy on monitoring the site for potential conflict or aggression — i went to therapy today.

The Consequences

i'm not going to get into the details. today's session was rough. this blog post was going to be written whether or not i had gone to therapy today, but today's session deeply shifted my perspective on spring and most importantly my approach to it.

i re-evaluated a lot of things regarding spring with the help and guidance of my therapist, and i realized... this is not a responsibility i should have burdened myself with.

i have many current obligations and long-term goals — for the former, all of my self-hosted communities, and for the latter, goals that go towards my future (such as taking exams to receive certifications in IT fields). in a matter of days, i had, as my therapist put it, the ultimate ADHD side-quest in spring: something that does not go towards any of my goals or responsibilities, and only serves to occupy me 24/7; a self-imposed full time job.

but the problem lies in another realization i had come to immediately at the time of the initial influx: it would emotionally devastate me to ban all of these new users and shut the site down.

there's a component to the way i think that shapes the way i approach everything in my life, and it's projection. what i saw in these kids, the community they originated from and the way they migrated en masse to my website, the way they spoke to each other and fought over petty things on their former website... i saw myself. i saw how i wasn't given a safe community when i was a teenager on the internet, how i sought identity and belonging in any space i could find, and wound up hurt. and as soon as the first wave of users came, i began to project onto them, despite not knowing them at all.

as my therapist put it: it's like when a cat comes to your door and meows for food, and you feel for it, and want to protect them. except i don't think there's a way i could project onto a cat, but that's the one metaphor of his from today that really stuck with me.

i have ~100 cats in my house meowing at me and each other for attention and there is only so much of myself that i can give before i burn out. and as i said, i prefer to nip things in the bud before they worsen.

going forward

i realize much of this post reads like an abrupt shut-down notice, so i want to preface this by saying: i am not shutting down spring. if i haven't made it clear enough, i feel immense responsibility for the newcomers on my site, and it would emotionally gut me to shut the site down in the name of protecting myself, as much as that is objectively the best thing to do for myself.

instead, i'm going to work towards mitigating things so that i do not burn out or further overwhelm myself; if i don't want to shut down the site — if i can't, then i have to do the next best thing, and take steps towards reducing the harm to myself, while at once maintaining the community i've inadvertently (and reluctantly) welcomed onto my site.

i am seeking at least 2 (ideally 3) moderators for the site. crucially, this will not be from the pool of new users, because, as kind and cooperative as they have been so far, the truth of the matter is that not only are most of them teenagers, but i do not know most of them well enough to trust them with this position. i will do an open call among the people i trust to see if anyone is willing to help moderate, and go from there.

additionally, i'm going to try to step back a bit; while i plan to remain active on the site, my activity cannot remain as extensive and deep as it has been since this began — as i've illustrated, it has been so emotionally involved and taxing for me that i had to speak to my therapist about it. if i continue at this rate, i will wind up burning out and breaking down and regressing in the progress i've made mentally. and i'm frankly not looking to lose any of the piecemeal progress i've made in these recent months, when my personal life has been a whirlwind of loss and strife.

i will continue to observe the site, to use it myself as well as respond to user concerns and take steps towards working with and through users and their conflicts. i promise i will continue to prevent and cut harassment at the root. but as my therapist emphasized, as i realized from the beginning... as i've known for a long time about myself: i cannot do everything myself.

reflections

this is not something i really wanted to happen at all, but, i've long since realized that negative experiences like this can be learning experiences. i think through all of this, i've painfully learned that i can no longer be the sole moderator of my sites. i can no longer spend so much of my life online at the cost of my real life responsibilities and goals. i can't continue to sacrifice myself to accommodate others.

for these reasons, i'm grateful, in a way, that spring turned from a personal fun site to a community, even if i partially resent that this happened at all. i think both of those things can coexist.

finally, at the risk of bragging or sounding full of myself, i think it takes a certain amount of maturity to come to a realization like this and do something about it. and, when put next to the personal progress i've made with my mental health in recent years, i am quite proud of that.