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Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

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Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#31

Post by todayiamme »

seiji wrote: post #27
todayiamme wrote: post #7

"""James Erwin, a Reddit moderator of several subreddits including r/history, argues that Reddit’s unwillingness over the years to provide strong, hands-on leadership to the site’s community is at the heart of the company’s lackluster business performance. Without a firm editorial grip, the flourishing of disreputable subreddits opened the door for BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, and others, which sift through Reddit…

All the weirdness from Reddit seems to come from historically mixing the CEO role with the Community Manager role. There should be an entire department only dealing with on-site issues and that department should have absolute authority. Reddit grew from a 2 person company where everybody did everything, but did it actually grow up once it got bigger? Reddit has had a valley golden child touch since the beginning, so…

What I'm trying to say is that they don't even have to touch that entire "community" thing. It's a massive headache and it's better to leave it alone than try to whip it into something monetisable. They can treat it as a loss-leader, extract the data it generates, and spin-off revenue generating assets from it.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#32

Post by norea-armozel »

thearn4 wrote: post #26
norea-armozel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This oddly reminds me of how YTMND was back in the day. Now it's mostly a niche site, but when it was semi-popular among certain segments Internet users it had some conflicts erupt between users such as atheists vs Christians being a classic spat on the site. Reddit seems to exhibit some of that coarse nature in its user base at least from my own experiences. I'm not sure Reddit's owners can herd the users into compl…

Ah YTMND... what a sharp rise and steady fall https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=YTMND&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%...

I know. It's sad, really. They still have contributors that make some interesting pages, but it's nothing like the old days. There was one user who took paintings by Bosch and turned them into animations. It was rather unsettling (Bosch's work always looked creepy to me) to look at them initially, but they were damn good imo.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#33

Post by puranjay »

boldpanda wrote: post #19

As a Reddit user and advertiser, I was disappointed when they doubled their ad CPM's in June without notice to advertisers (as mentioned in the article). I can understand incrementally increasing the price with demand, but doubling the cost of CPM's without notice is a big fuck you to advertisers. Now they're more expensive than Facebook and with less targeting capability and you can't change or edit your ads once th…

Question: What has been your experience with Reddit ads? I've heard that they are barely profitable for anyone save a few niche industries.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#34

Post by seiji »

todayiamme wrote: post #31
seiji wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the weirdness from Reddit seems to come from historically mixing the CEO role with the Community Manager role. There should be an entire department only dealing with on-site issues and that department should have absolute authority. Reddit grew from a 2 person company where everybody did everything, but did it actually grow up once it got bigger? Reddit has had a valley golden child touch since the beginning, so…

What I'm trying to say is that they don't even have to touch that entire "community" thing. It's a massive headache and it's better to leave it alone than try to whip it into something monetisable. They can treat it as a loss-leader, extract the data it generates, and spin-off revenue generating assets from it.

Yes, that is one of the dozen new (almost too obvious) things it seems would be a slam dunk for them.

If people are stealing your content, reformatting it, and just placing ads around it, you sure as heck can do that yourself. Sprinkle some magic app dust around it and -bam- drive buzzfeed out of business, which I think is what we all truly want (except for some clueless VCs who value buzzfeed at billions of dollars [vomit]).

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#35

Post by danielweber »

seiji wrote: post #21
rndn wrote: post #3

Reddit is pretty much a case study of upbringing without effective punishment. In real life kids behave because they have skin in the game—if they misbehave, they are not allowed ice cream. On the contrary, if you are banned from reddit, you can simply reset your browser and create a new account. I doubt you can fix reddit with a smarter design, because that won’t change the troublemakers. To fix reddit, you would po…

Reddit has this strange power inversion dynamic where the users think they are entitled to run the site. It's a complete illusion they have for themselves to feel more special. Reddit is a billion dollar company and unless you are in corporate management, you have no say. You can have opinions and attempt to have influence, but you have no flat out rights unless you are a decision maker at the corporation. Reddit is…

There are three distinct groups who all have power: owners, moderators, users. (We saw the power of moderators when the blacked out the site in protest.) Any of the three, if they unite, can end the site.

I've seen all sorts of communities go through the death spams where the owners get annoyed at all the users and wish they would disappear because it would make their job easier. I saw 'pg going in that direction here at HN, complaining what a bother the users were, but he sensibly saw HN as a loss-leader for YC and hired 'dang to be a professional moderator. So the owners and moderators are on the same page.

But most places can't afford professional moderation, and so the moderators have power, and that dynamic can lead to the users feeling (rightly or wrongly) as if they are being abused.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#36

Post by Lawtonfogle »

seiji wrote: post #21
rndn wrote: post #3

Reddit is pretty much a case study of upbringing without effective punishment. In real life kids behave because they have skin in the game—if they misbehave, they are not allowed ice cream. On the contrary, if you are banned from reddit, you can simply reset your browser and create a new account. I doubt you can fix reddit with a smarter design, because that won’t change the troublemakers. To fix reddit, you would po…

Reddit has this strange power inversion dynamic where the users think they are entitled to run the site. It's a complete illusion they have for themselves to feel more special. Reddit is a billion dollar company and unless you are in corporate management, you have no say. You can have opinions and attempt to have influence, but you have no flat out rights unless you are a decision maker at the corporation. Reddit is…

The users can get a new site easier than reddit can get new users. As long as the majority of users are happy, admins have the most power. But scare off enough and it snow balls into another Digg.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#37

Post by seiji »

danielweber wrote: post #35
seiji wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has this strange power inversion dynamic where the users think they are entitled to run the site. It's a complete illusion they have for themselves to feel more special. Reddit is a billion dollar company and unless you are in corporate management, you have no say. You can have opinions and attempt to have influence, but you have no flat out rights unless you are a decision maker at the corporation. Reddit is…

There are three distinct groups who all have power: owners, moderators, users. (We saw the power of moderators when the blacked out the site in protest.) Any of the three, if they unite, can end the site. I've seen all sorts of communities go through the death spams where the owners get annoyed at all the users and wish they would disappear because it would make their job easier. I saw 'pg going in that direction her…

But most places can't afford professional moderation

When you see Reddit employees driving around in their own Teslas, the "can't afford" point seems quite moot. (not that I'm bitter—I'm happy for you—but I'm less happy for me as a result. Brains are awful.)

The weird Reddit dynamic is volunteers have full control and the volunteers aren't courted by the site very much. All moderators of subreddits with more than X thousand subscribers should have monthly conference calls with the core Reddit moderation team to keep everybody on the same page, to address issues before they arise, and to give the moderators more of a feeling of being part of the whole. Also, pay them various amounts from token thanks payments to some multiplier of minimum wage (based on size of community? size of active community? size of active community over the past 30 days? can't make it too gamifyable).

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#38

Post by bittercynic »

The criticism of the aesthetic of the reddit homepage is misguided. By not following current trends in web design, reddit has stronger credibility as a free-for-all where you might find interesting material.

If you want content curated by editors who are directed by big money, there are a million other sites for that.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#39

Post by leftnode »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #22
flanbiscuit wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to Something Awful? My friend was really into that site and tried to get me to join but I ended up gravitating towards Reddit in the end(around 2010/11)

That was absentee managment as well (lowtax basically disappeared for several years).

But it's still very well moderated.
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