Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Last year I made a Facebook group for members of my community (it's a gated community thing except the gates never close). Since then lots of people have joined and have been using it as a noticeboard (my intent).

There was an incident last week where a poster asked if anyone could take in her dog, and then she explained that she needed to get rid of it because of her snooty neighbors. Heated discussion ensued with people expressing their opinions about dogs in our neighborhood and the poster's landlady who used to live there chiding her for hatin' on her (her own former) neighbors. Later I realized that I should have deleted the post when I first saw it and asked the intial poster to re-post without the neighbor negativity. I have since added a rule to the group's description that, basically, you shouldn't talk smack about your neighbor in the group.

I'm reluctant to delete anything and until now my stance has been kind of hands-off. But I discovered that one of the neighbors being talked about was someone I knew and liked, and it made me angry that she felt bullied. I'm thinking of implementing a three-strikes program, where I delete and message users who use the group for passive-aggressive notes, and stressing that being in the community group is a privilege and not a right (it's a closed group; I have the power to delete posts and delete and remove the poster from the group). I want to be intolerant of cyberbullying/passive aggression in my group. On the other hand, I don't want to be "that person" who appears to be a gigantic tightwad. Thoughts?

I think you're totally within your rights as Admin to moderate like that. We don't anyone to be ticked off.

I think you have to be "that person" to some extent or get rid of the group altogether. They've been told the rules, it should be obvious why they exist, and if they don't like it they can create their own group.

yeah. If these were all online people, it would be easier, but these are people I see every day while I'm going to get my mail or driving to my house. I did end up deleting a comment on another thread and no one seemed to get upset about it, so maybe it won't be too bad.

oh my gosh, I wish Facebook had controls for locking threads. I finally got around to making official rules and a three-strike system, but this is not fun.

We have a neighborhood Facebook group and we have multiple mods. I have no clue who they are. Things and people get deleted. Usually because they're not legitimately in our neighborhood, though. But I could see them tossing something like that out asap. I would suggest getting another mod or two that you trust, so you don't have to take the heat for everything, then enforcing the rules.

Yeah, we are a closed group so I check everyone who requests to be added to see if they actually live in our neighborhood. I've set some rules so any future terrible disagreements should be a little easier to manage, but it always stresses me out. I'm not sure if I could get someone else to mod, but you're right, I should find someone to help me.

Seriously. Share the load. Don't take all the responsibility. It's stressful. As you know. Share the stress!

Besides, then you have someone to talk to when making hard decisions. "Should we delete this one? Or should it stay?"

but then I'll be responsible for someone else's decisions, which I might not agree with :-/

Well, that's why you pick someone you can trust and then you both share responsibility. (In the group moderating situations that I'm familiar with, the mods tend to have a light touch, and only delete comments or shut down threads if they are particularly egregious.)

I stated my opinion on a local topic and the person I disagreed with refused to "give in to this lunacy" and left the group. Sheesh.