I was part of this one forum at one point in time. These guys wanted to make the forum the "next big thing", with their only offering being that you could express yourself and use the site as a platform of free speech, without being censored (barring illegal content). What it ended up being was a group of power-abusing mods and admins trolling the very small user base very early on, driving people out before it even got the chance to grow into anything. From there, a few database mishaps and the entire forums getting lost on more than on occasion lead to everyone leaving except for the mods and admins themselves. Anybody who was friends with them didn't remake their accounts after everything had been lost.
Moderators can make or break a system, and it really comes down to whether they're lax about thing and intervene appropriately, or if they're in it for a power trip.
I was part of this one forum at one point in time. These guys wanted to make the forum the "next big thing", with their only offering being that you could express yourself and use the site as a platform of free speech, without being censored (barring illegal content). What it ended up being was a group of power-abusing mods and admins trolling the very small user base very early on, driving people out before it even got the chance to grow into anything. From there, a few database mishaps and the entire forums getting lost on more than on occasion lead to everyone leaving except for the mods and admins themselves. Anybody who was friends with them didn't remake their accounts after everything had been lost.
Moderators can make or break a system, and it really comes down to whether they're lax about thing and intervene appropriately, or if they're in it for a power trip.