A little over a week ago, I posted a little tidbit about WordPress support, and supporters, titled WordPress Support, who we are and what we do.

In it, I provided a gist, which I ended by putting emphasis on being kind to each other.

It’s not, unfortunately, not unheard of (or uncommon for that matter) that people violate one of our Forum Guidelines when action is taken against them. The guideline concerning contacting moderators, where we explicitly warn users not to follow someone to their sites, social media, and so forth just because you disagree with them.

I have, until today, never had this happen to me, but here we are, I got one, and I would like to think that I started with a bang!

I’ve provided a screenshot of the email, not to publicly disgrace anyone (hence why there’s no name or contact details included), but to give a representation of the kind of content we filter away on the forums, on a nearly daily basis. It just so happened this user was in an extra bad mood, and chose to take it a step further this time.

This isn’t a nice message, but honestly… I’ve seen worse.

To whomever sent it, I’m sorry you are having a hard time, and I do hope you find a way to work through it. That being said, I do not know who you are, I will not go digging to discover it either. I do, however, believe your actions here validate my decision to ban your account, to protect the rest of our community from this toxic behavior.

So let me reiterate, be kind to each other. Supporters have a high rate of being burnt out, and behavior like this does not help in any way.

And should you, ever, receive any kind of message like this because of your involvement in WordPress, please let us know. We’re always here for you, you may reach out privately, or in the #forums room on the Making WordPress Slack.

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Featured image photo by Sandrachile . on Unsplash

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