I’ve been through essentially the same thing. I don’t have any particular pity for people who start blogs or sites or services and grow frustrated with dealing with people and finally shut them down. It’s just part of the world these days. I also don’t think it has anything to do with gender (though some would like to make that an issue, apparently).
I’ve offered a free service and site for a decade. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars building, maintaining, moving, rebuilding and operating it. Not to mention countless hours, days, weeks, months… years.
For the most part, it’s worth it. I don’t make a time. I don’t charge a dime. I only allow very specific advertising (which doesn’t pay a twentieth of the costs) and that’s not for me to make money, but to allow people with something topical to get some exposure for their services or sites or businesses.
Out of about 50,000 or so registered members, only a very small number are actual problems. An almost immeasurably small percentage. However, they can have quite a significant impact when they post things on the web damaging your reputation for no other reason than being upset that you banned them for harassing other users or defrauding other people. Or when users harass you by email or instant messaging or even the telephone. Or obtain your private information and start hassling you through various offline messages. Why? Because they couldn’t behave on the site and you had to ban them.
I’ve had many death threats of various flavors and creativity levels. I’ve had people attempts to viciously hurt my reputation. All as a way of repaying me for an entire decade of my life at the expense of a lot of other aspects of my life and interests that I could have pursued.
Not to mention just the day to day task of making sure people generally get along without upsetting the entire apple cart and making everyone leave because of a few bad guys.
There are a number of times I have considered just throwing in the towel. However, unlike some of the other people who have done so, I realized that my services and project were a piece of myself. They were the result of a huge chunk of my life and energy and dedication. As much as I hated dealing with things now and then, it’s hard to justify throwing away a decade of your life over a few asses.
As for Sierra. Yeah, the guy who did what he was doing was a harassing ahole. It’s unfortunate that Sierra and others had to make it less about a guy who was being a total douchebag on the internet and making life difficult for people and threatening them… and more about how he was doing all of that… because he’s a woman-hating bastard just (as many commentaries and posts and blogs about the incident tried to relate it) “like so many other terrible, vile, evil, bad bad males”.
I feel that whole aspect of it really detracted from the underlying point and made it a muddled, uncomfortable discussion that put a whole lot of reasonable people into a defensive position.
That said, the day some dill on the internet scares me out of doing something I want to do - even if they have my personal information and carry it into real life - is the day I might as well just tar and feather myself. Those are just my convictions.
Of course, being scared out of doing something you love versus simply ceasing something you love because the frustration and effort and hassle involved started to seriously outweigh the positives you gain from it is entirely different.