Hell Yeah PG, a Facebook page encouraging people to share their good news about Prince George, was shut down Tuesday night by the creator of the page, Scott McWalter.
According to David Mothus, an administrator for HYPG, McWalter made the decision to post a notice about a lawsuit by John Brink coming before the courts on Wednesday on the HYPG page. McWalter is an employee at the Brink Group of Companies.
Moderators and administrators of the page, who are all volunteers, disagreed with the post. In reaction, McWalter removed everyone who had control of the page and left his post on HYPG.
Once the public reaction to the post became negative, however, McWalter deleted the contentious comments and shut down the page, writing 'thanks for the memories, Prince George' as the last post on the popular page.
Mothus said he went to visit McWalter in person Tuesday night to talk to his friend about the decision.
"I told him I thought it was a terrible decision to shut down the page because the community feels that they own this," said Mothus. "Ultimately what the page needed, and we've known this for months, the page needed to stop having businesses on it and it needed to just become a community board."
The contests and business posts were there to engage the community so people would stay on the page.
Administrators and moderators feared the Facebook page would lose traction and fade as a result of removing the businesses and contests.
"Then it just dawned upon us a couple months ago - we thought who cares if some people leave the page, let's just let it be a place where people can post cool pictures and post 1,000 cool pictures, who cares?" said Mothus. "And let's stop making it corporate and it was heading in that direction and as we were heading in that direction - we had just posted there were no more contests for the whole month of March and so we were eight days into that when this happened."
HYPG had a huge impact on social media, with other communities asking how they could start their own Hell Yeah page, he said.
HYPG was created in March 9, 2014 to counterbalance another Facebook page called WTF Prince George.
HYPG's intention was to be a community bulletin board of all things positive. It had more than 35,000 members as of Tuesday.
HYPG also supported community projects, including putting the call out for donations to the Association Advocating for Women and Children, bringing awareness to individuals like Ranjit Singh Rarru, who feeds neighbourhood families in need several times a week out of his duplex on Victoria Street, and little Sunjai Sharma whose mega sales of chocolate bars to raise funds for BC Children's Hospital are record breaking.
HYPG has also sponsored a Chamber of Commerce award called the Hell Yeah Ambassador, and started the Hell Yeah cash mobs in partnership with the chamber to give local businesses a boost by inviting residents to visit the business on a certain day with $20 in hand to spend there.
McWalter could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
There is no word on the future of HYPG website. The most recent post on the website appeared on March 2.
