Getting crowded out
Hello there~ If you share a Discord server or some such with me wherein I used to post on a regular basis, and have been wondering why I've perhaps not been quite so active there as of late, this post might give you some insight~
It's like this: There'll be a nice, pleasant little online community, right? It might not be the biggest or the most active space, but that's fine—it'll be thriving in its own way all the same.
But then, someone will say, "Hey, I want to invite more of my friends, is that OK?" More often than not, since there's a great deal of trust and respect and what have you between the community members, the answer is yes. And in the cases where only one or two people are invited at a time, there's usually not a problem... but that assumes a certain degree of conscientiousness on the part of the server's operator(s) in handing out invites, which is often not the case.
Unfortunately, the issue I've been repeatedly running into is that the community will suddenly have a large group of people join all at once: Three, four, or even five or more new members, typically who all already know each other rather closely (as well as the user who invited them). Very quickly, the space becomes their new primary hangout spot, and all of their hobbies, their in-jokes, and their shitposting begins to crowd out the old atmosphere and culture.
I've seen it happen over and over, where a gaggle of new users will join all at once, then the old members—my friends—will begin either to go silent or to leave outright, one by one, until all that remains is the new group. And then, as the server loses its charm and appeal due to the members who made it that way no longer being present, the new group eventually grows bored with it and wanders off elsewhere, leaving the server a husk of what it once was.
In some cases, it doesn't even have to be multiple people. If you have a small and relatively quiet space, even a single new member can have an outsized influence, doubly so if they post very frequently and join nearly every single voice call, and triply so if their attitude is abrasive, or if most of what they post is strange, shocking, or deliberately controversial, etc.
It's for this reason that, in communities that I'm actively moderating, I make a point of reaching an agreement with the other staff ahead of time that someone "failing a vibe check," as it were, can and should be grounds for kicking them from the space at least temporarily, even if they technically haven't broken any rules. But I don't have that kind of control over most of the servers I'm in—nor would I want to, considering how lousy some of my past experiences as a moderator have been, heh—so this problem keeps resurfacing, and I keep having to move from place to place afterward.
One of these days, I'll make a proper Kyou System community and rule it with an iron fist...!