Please note that the following is not a private vendetta, and should be of interest to everyone. But bear with me, as the story is a little longer than the ones usually posted here.

I have a disturbing story to tell. It concerns some of the moderators at Help.com, a global website established to help people with their problems. A quick survey of the site indicates that many users suffer mental health issues, including depression, whilst others have queries about general life problems.

I registered my account today and decided to log on as a new user to see if I could meet some new people and say hi. I reviewed a few of the open postings on the site, and saw one that I wanted to comment on. I wrote a few supportive comments to the user who owned the post (the "owner"). Subsequently, one of the site moderators, a "courtybubble" from New Zealand, appeared and made what I thought were some rude comments to the owner on his post. Even the owner said she was bordering on rude in his written response. So I indicated in my second response to the owner that I thought courtybubble's response was inappropriate. Courtybubble immediately responded with a threat to ban me from the site, and said she would do so if I left further "rude" messages (I was very polite, by the way). I then visited another open posting, said hi, and related my recent experience with courtybubble as I was genuinely puzzled by her violent response (this user indicated he knew her, or at least her avatar). The next thing I knew, my comment to this second user had been removed and I was threatened a second time by courtybubble with a ban.

I decided to get to the bottom of this peculiar behaviour by visiting courtybubble's user page, which is open to the public. On her page, I found a large audit trail of discussions between herself and other moderators, complaining not only about me (one moderator said she smelled "a rotten fish" and threatened to ping my pc so she could locate me) but a whole range of other users, whose worst crime, as far as I could discern from reading their postings, was to retaliate against courtybubble and her friends when provoked with rude language by courtybubble (like any normal human being would). Courtybubble and the other moderators even deleted the responses of some poor woman called Lynn whose son had been run down by a car, because they had a running vendetta against her. All this information by the way is open to the public and can be googled (you can surf the Help.com site without registering or logging on).

In the end, I decided that behaviour is indicative of nature, and that none of the information I posted on this site would ever be safe or secure – I have no idea if courtybubble and her friends would ever misuse it. So I decided to leave and never use this site again. But before doing so, I sent the following "shoutout" notice to courtybubble:

"Hi Courtybubble,

Your new friend here. To be honest, I don't dislike you at all, but am wondering why you are so blunt with people? I am new to this site, have some genuine problems that I would like to share, and would also like to help other people. I am also introverted by nature, so it would seem logical to come to a site like this for help. I could be very wrong, but I've read some of your posts and some of your shoutouts with your friends - who are also moderators and therefore control the site content, like you - and there seems to be a conflict of interest. You and your friends seem quite willing to provide criticism and use less than polite language with other users, but threaten to ban anyone who does the same back to you. There seems to be a genuine power imbalance with other users. I don't want to cause trouble at all, but I seriously don't know if I should continue using this site, or recommend it to my friends who have serious need of advice, in case they get hurt by the moderators' behaviour. I'm asking because I would really like to know. I don't think it is any users' interest to live in fear of a moderator, when they are already feeling sad and depressed."

I really feel that if this site is to genuinely fulfill its purpose as a helpful forum for needy people, that the site owner should do something to resolve the power imbalance or misuse of power by the moderators. Also, reading their posts, it would seem many moderators are just university students (some studying psychology by the way!) who are just too young and immature to responsibly moderate a site like this, with genuinely needy members.