Co-Admins: Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket

I'm not talking about the assistant administrator {or five} that you may have to eventually hire to help out with your high-end tasks on your forum. I mean when you and your buddy get this GREAT idea to open an RPG, or just a forum, together!

It's a marriage made in heaven, right? Both of you bring different strengths to the table and nobody has to sit around alone waiting for the first members to trickle in. One can do graphics, maybe; another one sets up the boards, and when the show opens, the forum's already got interaction and activity.

So why then do I keep hearing about sites {and friendships} gone to hell in some way relating to co-adminships? I began to hear about it again, and again. Sure, single-owner forums also fall to pieces for various reasons; most RPGs will not live to see their 6 month birthday. AND {this is a disclaimer!} not ALL co-adminships wind up in ruin. I'm sure there are many of them thriving out there. But from what I have heard and seen, the risk is there, and it has led me to make my point on this article that in general, two people opening a site together claiming equal power is a bad idea.

It's not a democracy.

You've heard this before. Well, the running of a forum seems to require that there be one person who has at least executive, if not total, control. Running a forum council style is, I have found, the best way to do it. But if no one person is that leader, that tie-breaker and the one whose final decision is at the ready should it be needed, then there seems to be a breakdown of order. You and your co-admins may be BFFs but you're bound to disagree on something. Maybe you can sort it out. Maybe it becomes a point of contention on the boards. All it takes is one seed of discontent. A forum's staff runs like a business does and there is no way around this. Business may be co founded but you generally don't find them co-owned at least not in the sense that both have absolutely the same level of power.

Inefficiency.

You'd think this would be the last problem you'd have. Two owners=twice the efficiency! Well maybe in the setup and very early phase, yes. But you're going to have people seeking your advice and decisions for everything, and since both owners need to be in the know, to keep on the same page they'd need to relay everything to each other, asking what the other thinks, though this happens in a council-run game anyway, with two equal weighted owners there is a lack of focus on just who is running the show, and as a result, ambiguity on the part of members on just whom to go to.

Of course, you and your co-admin might have decided that it's more efficient to each manage different areas of the game. But that opens up another can of worms: Whose show is it, anyway?

Power struggle.

This will set in sooner or later. All two-way relationships have a dominant and a submissive member. This isn't necessarily like it sounds; both generally find that one is just better not at bossing the other around, but is simply the one who takes the most initiative, and naturally the other follows. It will happen in your forum between you and your co-admin. The problem here is that you really ARE in charge of a community, and therein the arguments over just who is in charge begin. Your co-admin made a decision without your say? Your members seem to be gravitating towards one owner and not the other as a leader? {Because they will almost immediately notice who seems to be doing more of the leading and will look to that person. They may even notice it before you do; seeking out the leader of your group is instinctive.} Your members are roleplaying more with one owner and not the other? It all comes back to the plain fact that not all roleplayers and managers are created equal. And when you supposedly start on perfectly equal ground and inequities arise, particularly in how your members treat the two of you differently, comparisons and rivalry will inevitably arise. Watch the differing skills and abilities of the two of you come into view as you run your game, jealousy flourishes and your friendship crumbles.

The lousy co-admin.

So you're 6 weeks into running your game together and it's become painfully obvious: Your co-admin sucks at this. They may be rude to members, or fail to enforce the rules, or fail to do much of anything meaning guess who winds up doing most of the work or even all of it. Congrats, you're a head admin without all the necessary privileges of one. Welcome to hell. Because it's not even as simple as just winding up doing all the work. Your co-admin still wants their half of the pie! How do you tell them their management skills suck? This is your BFF or at least a good friend. So you're doing double duty mopping up after their messes: their arguments with members, their drama fests in the Cbox, or maybe their Mary Sue roleplaying that, because they're an owner, has no real stops on it. They're bringing the whole thing down and there's no getting rid of them.

The AWOL co-admin.

This one isn't one that anyone sees going into it. But sometimes, one of you just loses interest. so you're stuck running the show yourself. You never anticipated it, but now you've got to decide whether you want to, so you decide to brave the storm, promoting another mod or co-admin if you need to--which, even if it's another co-admin, will still place you as the owner, both in your members' eyes {you were there first} and that of your new helper. So the game is running smoothly, it's growing, it's a blast, and then one day, you turn on your computer, go to your site and there's a blank screen. You find out your site was deleted! By whom? The admin! But you didn't do it...were you hacked? Noooo the co-admin came back and perhaps decided that he/she didn't like what you'd done with THEIR site during their absence. Real life came up that forced them to be away! Their dog died, their house burned down and they lost their job. And you with your selfish interests just decided they didn't matter. Of course this is an extreme case, but you probably have no idea how many times I have seen exactly this or almost an exact same case be described on RPG assist forums. My point is, that when a head admin goes AWOL you can't tell what will come of it. You don't know what to do. Do you go on without them? Do you start another game on your own? {Even this could piss them off as you'd be moving on without them, shame on you!} Or do you just have yourself committed after all this insanity that was never necessary in the first place?

A tip.

Determine just who is the owner if two of you decide to jointly set up a game. One of you needs to have the ultimate executive control, and this needs to be made clear at the outset--before emotion and other investments become a factor. And don't waver later on.

I think that's about the only tip I have that would prevent the disasters described above, and even then, it won't prevent all of it, but it will certainly set you on a better path than true joint ownership. Two heads are definitely not ALWAYS better than one.