Abusive and rude people are behind many corners of the internet. You need to be aware and you need to know what to do about them. For example, I heard of a person who likes to accuse bloggers of spamming quite a bit with no grounds. I don’t know if she’s short, tall, young, old, thin as a rail or if she could use but I know her words are quite un-nerving. That’s how it can be arguing with people on the internet. It would be nice if all internet forums and blogs had moderators with teamwork skills but that isn’t the case. This means, many times, we have to find those skills for ourselves. In cyberculture we often need a form of relationship problem advice.
Several months ago I logged on to a blogger community and fell into quick-sand-drama. A person sought to discredit my blogs on that site by posting and belittling my Google PageRank. This is the type of not nice person I am writing about.
Now, I have been on that same service off and on since December of 2006 and never had a problem until a few people joined and started ruining it for me and several others I know of. I’ve had dealings with their admin. I never really had issues with them until recently when this person tried to discredit me and put me down repeatedly in threads there. The admins were kind enough to remove her comments. Since then, however, I have seen others doing the same type of thing to many people. In the future, I would hope that people skilled in business etiquette training would manage forums more closely.
Have you come into contact with “not nice” forumers? If you haven’t, it’s likely you will sooner or later. My hope is this post will help you avoid going through the drama I went through. Forum moderators are often limited in what they can do about these people. Walk away and leave it alone as much as you can. You don’t have many legal options beyond that. In a perfect world they will listen to you and try and grow from what you’ve said. Unfortunately in our world they may not. My hope is more for the online version of business communication skills.
