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Reddit is still in turmoil

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Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#241

Post by makomk »

tamana wrote: post #177
im4w1l wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Rust leadership tolerates harassment and threats as long as its against the right wing. One of Rust's top people wants to violently purge the tech community. https://archive.is/BtDaA

Twitter is not part of Rust code of conduct, the code of conduct does not apply to off-project politcal conversations. https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/conduct.html

There's nothing in there that excludes off-project conversations, and I cannot imagine such a restriction surviving the first outrage about a project member's off-site views from the left based on previous incidents.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#242

Post by Quequau »

Fej wrote: post #30
twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

It's not just that the site was that way, a free-speech zone, for many years. It was their official policy. They were quite pretentious about it as well, leading the reddit community to believe that this would be the permanent policy. To be honest, that is still mostly how it is; the admins only ban a subreddit when it generates a critical mass of bad press. They don't want to drive away their users. They know how Di…

I think something really important that doesn't get discussed very often when "free speech" comes up is that there really are categories of speech which most reasonable people expect and perhaps even prefer would not be 'protected' (or in the context of Reddit, permitted and perhaps celebrated). More importantly there are categories of speech which are not put forward in good faith but are instead intended to do damage to communities that host them.

Among the various errors the administrators of Reddit may be guilty of, underestimating the damage & toxicity some categories of speech made in bad faith cause and having prepared no mechanisms to help their communities be resistant to or minimize that toxicity might be the most significant.

Digg died because Reddit existed, so there was somewhere for disaffected Digg users to go to. In particular users who by & large were interested in good faith participation. There is no similar analog that exists today and because users who show tendencies to indulge in bad faith participation new alternative sites often struggle with dealing a level of toxic behavior which makes it extraordinarily difficult to maintain growth.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#243

Post by jcbrand »

apatters wrote: post #200
Practicality wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because it's free software. "Beggars can't be choosers" There are very few open software engineers who like improving UX. Since it's free you have to like it to do it, so I don't know if this will ever change.

Is it really that they don't like improving UX, or is it that they don't know how, or don't respect people who understand UX? I like improving UX but when I look at many open source projects from the outside they are run by cranky ubernerds who triumph technical merits above everything else and I can't imagine them being very cooperative with someone whose specialty was "UX."

> I can't imagine them being very cooperative with someone whose specialty was "UX."

Sounds like you've never actually tried.

I maintain an open source project (https://conversejs.org) that could benefit greatly from the expertise of a UX pro. However, to date no-one has approached me to help with this (specifically regarding UX). If you or any other UX people here are interested in helping out, hit me up at https://opkode.com/contact.html

I definitely don't have a lack of respect for UX people, having been fortunate enough to work with someone whom I consider to be a brilliant UX designer.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#244

Post by jules »

twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

The problem with reddit isn't the admins, but that people who have managed to become moderators of prominent subreddits censor posts and thousands of rather innocent comments. For example the Orlando terrorist attack was censored from /r/news, and when they later allowed the posts to go through they deleted most of the comments, including all comments talking about the censorship of the previous posts. They even deleted comments giving info about where to donate blood for the victims. This strategy backfired immensely when the Donald Trump subreddit ended up being the only one reporting on the news.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#245

Post by azernik »

dingo_bat wrote: post #231
dang wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The plan from day one was to make a kinder, gentler imageboard [and] get acquired". This superciliously presumes to know what the founders were thinking, makes it sound like they didn't actually care about Reddit since "from day one" they supposedly had something more trivial in mind, and implies that they were merely in it for a quick flip. In reality they were almost certainly more genuine about it than that; they…

>makes it sound like they didn't actually care about Reddit So the inference made by the commenter conflicts with the inference made by you. So what? Maybe they (reddit founders) really didn't care, maybe they did. Cases can be made for both, with varying degrees of conviction. The whole thing is highly subjective. I don't agree with the conclusion either, but it's not a mindless personal attack. To me it's an opinio…

Intent doesn't matter. It does poison the discussion, and that is not what I come here for. I come here for discussion with a somewhat more professional tone than other fora (like reddit!), and am totally okay with content (including my own!) being removed when it conflicts with that, regardless of intent.

(And honestly, "The plan from day one was to make a kinder, gentler imageboard, get acquired, and make the founders rich." does not play with my notions of civility or informed opinion.)

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#247

Post by yAnonymous »

twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

Both Twitter's and Reddit's problem is that they are applying their rules very selectively.

Twitter, for example, ban political trolls and populists, but tolerate terror organizations and their supporters. Like what the actual fuck...

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#248

Post by makomk »

dingo_bat wrote: post #231
dang wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The plan from day one was to make a kinder, gentler imageboard [and] get acquired". This superciliously presumes to know what the founders were thinking, makes it sound like they didn't actually care about Reddit since "from day one" they supposedly had something more trivial in mind, and implies that they were merely in it for a quick flip. In reality they were almost certainly more genuine about it than that; they…

>makes it sound like they didn't actually care about Reddit So the inference made by the commenter conflicts with the inference made by you. So what? Maybe they (reddit founders) really didn't care, maybe they did. Cases can be made for both, with varying degrees of conviction. The whole thing is highly subjective. I don't agree with the conclusion either, but it's not a mindless personal attack. To me it's an opinio…

HN is something of a safe space for the Silicon Valley startup industry in the "forbids discussion" sense - a place protected from ideas that might make them uncomfortable, that question whether they're actually improving the world or actually understand the people they claim to be helping.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#249

Post by intoverflow2 »

The main problem with Reddit is the users dishonesty to themselves.

Ask a reddit user why they like reddit they'll probably mumble something about AMAs.

Then visit /r/all and a completely different picture will be painted for you as the sites most popular content is a mixture of pornography, racist jokes passed off as being subversive and political ranting.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#250

Post by CM30 »

makomk wrote: post #238
CM30 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation. If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is/isn't acceptable. Twitter doesn't really do this well. If you agree with the staff political stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you're popular en…

Twitter's other problem is that they cannot be consistent in their moderation, because when they ban someone threatening violence against celebrities in the name of, say, feminism the campaign to reinstate them comes from people in the tech industry and press that they can't ignore.

Then they have to become like most large companies and be willing to take criticism from the press. I mean, it's not like Twitter's immune to it already. They're getting hammered from every angle over their platform and its attitudes towards harasment and trolls and moderation.

Which brings me to a point about commmunity management I'd like to make:

Don't even get into this field if you want people to always like you. Or if you're obsessed with your 'reputation'.

Running a community site means making difficult decisions. It means losing friends over the community's rules and principles. It means you will get a very bad reputation from at least some part of society as a bully or dictator.

This is what a community manager is perceived as by a banned member:

http://www.managingcommunities.com/2012/12/03/community-mana...

Unfortunately, it seems Twitter (and a lot of such companies nowadays) seem more interested in keeping their friends in the media than they do running a decent community.

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