Recently on the MudBytes community site an incident took place which has caused great concern among the users, and resulted in the loss of one administrator - myself.

Here's the brief situation - the gory details are not necessarily relevant.

* A problem user began antagonizing the administration, publicly questioning their authority to punish people who get out of line.
* Said user was asked to take his concerns to private messages. He did so.
* The private conversation was very unproductive, but he stopped causing trouble.
* After a couple of weeks went by, a controversial off-topic thread was posted in which the user again began antagonizing the admins. It was put to a stop immediately.
* The user later posted, claiming that I had edited his previous post, removing a URL from it. At this point, because the accusation was false, the user was placed in a "trolls" group that can't use the forum but can use the rest of the site.
* The user then ran off to another rival forum where there is no moderation or rules enforcement of any kind and proceeded to make a federal case of his situation there. We banned him from MudBytes.

This user went so far as to forge screenshots with the supposed edit done. The other admins began to grow suspicious, and the whole situation stunk. I eventually resigned my position. At the time I figured resigning was best for the site and the community in general, but I'm not so sure now.

As details unfolded, it was discovered that this user had been given information from the server logs by one of the other admins for an unrelated edit I was doing in the database. So it appears as though there was an inside job to frame me for making a post edit I never made.

The whole thing is utterly ridiculous. That people would take things like antagonizing forum admins to the point of faking screenshots, to getting other admins to go along with framing another. The other admins were quick to rush me along after resigning, making almost no effort to try and convince me not to.

Ultimately, I don't own the server the account is hosted with. But I do own the domain name.

Has anyone dealt with anything stupid like this before? What did you do about it?

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I've actually been through something similar myself...While admin'ing one of my previous forums, one of the other admins and I could not see eye-to-eye. It wasn't a big issue, but it was one of those nagging things that neither of us could let go, and it was getting in the way of running the forum like we should.

It came to a point where I couldn't stand it anymore, so I told the rest of the staff "It's either me or him". The problem admin said that he was fine staying, and the rest of the staff said that they couldn't kick him out to make me happy, so I stepped down, just like you.

Not sure there's much else you can do in a similar situation - If there is some nagging issue with you and the forums that nobody can get rid of, including yourself, you may just have to step down...There's no sense in going through pain if you don't have to.

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They were so quick to rush you along, yet you own the domain? - i think you should be so quick to change the name servers

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Immortality will come to such as are fit for it

The right thing to do would be step down, transfer the domain and start something new..
Personally I would setup a host, change nameservers and use it as a redirect to my new site..

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My question is, do you have a loyal following within the membership or staff who trust you and would follow you and support you? In that case, and if you legally own the domain, go it alone, use your domain with a new forum and force them onto the defensive. Does the site rank high in terms of PR and other search engines? I am sure you could turn this to your advantage. They forced you out and all is fair in love and war.

Take what is yours and start fresh. You have a lot of people at AF who will advise you on how to make YOUR new forum better than the original.

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Sell them the domain.

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If you've still got admin access, make a database backup, get your own hosting and change the nameservers. Then install the forum software and restore the backup, with the problem members removed along with the problem staff.

You own the domain - there's nothing they can do about it and you're quite within your rights to do this
And we at AF will back you all the way to turn your community into a success!

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Ive run into this before but I didnt own the site, I was co-admin there and in the time I had been I had gotten the site numerous links to other sites with a very good PR. The owner of the site and I didnt see eye to eye so I started my own site that was named after the area that I had on his site, I also took all the links I had to his site with me and all the members that were fans of my area.

We have since reconsiled but he no longer has that site open and my site has done very well. He has come around to help me with a few things like skins for my site.

Its a tough call what you should do with you owning the domain and stepping down due to what the members wanted. The other admin really shouldnt have taken their word over yours since admins should fully trust each other, but it isnt that way for you.

If I were you Id sell them the domain name and just start up a new one to compete with them. Thats basically what I did and in the end I had a very good site and he ended up closing his site.

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