When you manage an online community that has standards or guidelines of any kind, you’ll have to ban people. You can only warn people so many times before their actions lead to that result. I don’t ban people, people ban themselves.

When people are banned, or even when they are simply told that they can’t do something, they can look at the community manager in an odd way. They’ll call you names, compare you to some of the most brutal dictators in the world’s history and make judgments on your quality of life and systems of belief.

Some community administrators and managers are terrible people. They are only human and there is a percentage of humanity that are terrible people. So, it is only natural. When a person encounters one of these people, who also is running an online community, they may decide to judge all community managers by the actions of that person. And then, of course, you have the people who did things that were really inappropriate and they either ignore it, don’t realize it or lie about it, believing that they are a party that has been wronged.

“I think people should get out of these ‘online communities’ as most of them are run by petty tyrants, all around 20 years old,” wrote “A customer” in a comment in the Amazon.com discussion area for my book. “It’s only getting worse – not better. I don’t care for O’Keefe’s tone in regards to ‘troublesome’ members and as usual, no one ever sees that admin. itself creates so much trouble. I’m sick of it.”

Without further comment, I now present to you: the Facebook profile of a community manager, as viewed through the eyes of a banned member.