Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin • Hacker News Board

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#221

Post by dikaiosune » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:41 AM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #154

adventured wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak Reddit was 2011-2014. The people running the 'business' just don't realize it yet. Three years from now, Reddit will be half as influential as it has been these past three years. A community like Reddit is incredibly challenging to keep balanced long-term. Services like it just tend to blow-up eventually. The upside is, innovation will probably come out of its meltdown, new types of services will bloom, and wipe…

I agree. If you don't believe this, ask yourself where is SomethingAwful now?

Also Slashdot, digg, etc. These things have a limited shelf life.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#222

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:42 AM UTC

kefka wrote: post #193

blhack wrote: post #33

It's kindof astonishing what is happening over at reddit right now. "The internet" has it's own culture, and the people running reddit right now (one of the places where this culture is the strongest, imo), seem to have no idea how to interface with it. It honestly feels like it got taken over by silicon valley middle management marketing types or something, and now they just can't seem to figure out why the users ke…

Reddit has gone from someone who understood 'The Internet' : “We will not ban questionable subreddits,” Reddit’s CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote in the aftermath of that catastrophe. “You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create and what kind of rules you will enforce. We will try not to interfere — not because we don’t care, but because we care that you make your choices betw…

[deleted]

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#223

Post by alayne » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:42 AM UTC

thought_alarm wrote: post #87

Quickly! Everybody back to Usenet!

Just make sure you stick to alt.*, because of those fascists who control RFDs.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#224

Post by geofft » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:43 AM UTC

kefka wrote: post #193

blhack wrote: post #33

It's kindof astonishing what is happening over at reddit right now. "The internet" has it's own culture, and the people running reddit right now (one of the places where this culture is the strongest, imo), seem to have no idea how to interface with it. It honestly feels like it got taken over by silicon valley middle management marketing types or something, and now they just can't seem to figure out why the users ke…

Reddit has gone from someone who understood 'The Internet' : “We will not ban questionable subreddits,” Reddit’s CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote in the aftermath of that catastrophe. “You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create and what kind of rules you will enforce. We will try not to interfere — not because we don’t care, but because we care that you make your choices betw…

Hrm, well, Yishan supports Ellen's recent actions:

http://www.quora.com/Reddit-Strengthens-Moderation-Spring-an...

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#225

Post by lingben » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:43 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #219

lingben wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a 2 way street. The community can be nasty but they do not treat every admin this way. Consider Victoria who was just fired. The whole shenanigan today isn't really about her but about the way the mods are being treated. But my point is that the community really appreciated her work and her approach. When you come in and right off the bat are condescending, haughty, and tone-deaf, as well as non-transparent, th…

That's 'cause Victoria had a different job . People loved Raymond Chen back when Steve Ballmer was CEO of Microsoft. In particular, Victoria had the job of making AMAs happen smoothly, and /r/IAmA is this very weird subreddit, operationally speaking (how many other subreddits have their own mobile app?), that clearly needs a paid staff member. Ellen has the job of being the final say on anything that happens, controv…

with respect, you are missing the whole point of this issue! It isn't about doing X but about how you do X.

If Victoria had done her job with condescension towards mods, if she had been haughty in her communications, arbitrary and non-transparent in her decision making, etc. then you can bet your bottom dollar that she would not have been so valued by the mods and the wider community.

This isn't about making 'difficult decisions' but about how they are made, communicated and implemented.

That is why I added the bee analogy in my previous comment.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#226

Post by zxcvcxz » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:43 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #159

Uhhrrr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the questions were overly disrespectful. It's an Ask Me Anything, not an Ask Me Respectful Things. And it's not the first time someone has called him a shakedown artist or mentioned his out-of-wedlock child.

>Mr. Jackson, You are an immoral, hate-filled race baiter that has figured out how to manipulate the political system for your own gain. You've personally set back race relations year after year and continue to do more harm than good. Extorting money from companies to line your pockets and threatening to bus in protestors and create a fake racial controversy if they don’t agree to pay you off is NOT civil rights acti…

The question was on point though. It was a tough question and it hurt, but the guy isn't just "some guy" he goes on TV almost every night to push his political agenda. He was called out for being a hypocrite and people in his position deserve to be called out for being hypocritical, deceitful, and manipulative.

None of this is anything new though, it's widely accepted that Jackson is a demagogue.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#227

Post by pdkl95 » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:44 AM UTC

"You'll get over it"

Many HN readers should recognize that as the words a certain admin of fark.com.

For those that don't recognize it, the short version of the story was the admins had developed a new front-end to Fark, but they didn't make a general announcement an update was going to happen. The just deployed it one morning... and left for a convention. When the change was discovered a little while later... well... lets just say it was not a popular change[1]. More importantly, nobody know what was going on, making emotions run even higher due to the lack of communication from the admins.

So after being left to stew for 4+ hours - and over 10k posts from confused and angry users - an admin does the absolutly worst thing possible, and made a single post with those four words: "You'll get over it". There were three main reactions to this. Many of us closed the browser and went back to work or otherwise avoided the drama. Maybe 10-15% of users spent the next day flaming the admins at about 10k posts/hour. Finally, about 1/3 close their accounts and left, permanently.

I suspect reddit is in the middle of a similar situation right now.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that the Fark story doesn't really end there. Years later, Fark admin Joe Peacock gave one of the more important talks[3] (at NOTACON 8) I've ever seen, about what exactly went wrong, and the bad decisions that made a catastrophe inevitable. Joe discusses what may be the most important lesson for anyone managing a place where users choose to spend their free time: if you don't involve your user in the decisions and changes that affect them, they wil simply find another place to hang out.

[1] which some of us still[2] partially-revert: https://userstyles.org/styles/60176/fark-theme-un-v3-0-relea...

[2] when I remember; apparently haven't posted last year's fixes sigh

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI (in typical fark style, a few of the talk's slides may be borderline NSFW)

TL;DR - just watch [3], where a fark.com admin gives some *very good advice on how to interact with your users.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#228

Post by dikaiosune » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:44 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #159

Uhhrrr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the questions were overly disrespectful. It's an Ask Me Anything, not an Ask Me Respectful Things. And it's not the first time someone has called him a shakedown artist or mentioned his out-of-wedlock child.

>Mr. Jackson, You are an immoral, hate-filled race baiter that has figured out how to manipulate the political system for your own gain. You've personally set back race relations year after year and continue to do more harm than good. Extorting money from companies to line your pockets and threatening to bus in protestors and create a fake racial controversy if they don’t agree to pay you off is NOT civil rights acti…

The phrasing is awful, agreed. But as GP pointed out, it is "ask me anything." further, each of the points raised are the kinds of thing I would expect to be addressed directly in a transparent interview format. Surely that user could have found a more respectful way to phrase it, but asking questions about someone's right to a morally superior attitude when that is central to their PR? Not that out of line.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#229

Post by tehwebguy » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:44 AM UTC

lingben wrote: post #114

forgottenpass wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It honestly feels like it got taken over by silicon valley middle management marketing types or something, and now they just can't seem to figure out why the users keep getting pissed off at them. I can't agree more, back in the jedberg/HueyPreist days the staff felt like reddit users, now you get the feeling the office just looks at the community as a magic box of unpaid labor. Anyone putting in real effort is bette…

reddit is one of the simplest and easiest sites for a new user to learn to use. Somehow, Ellen Pao doesn't know how to use reddit, nevermind what the culture and community that has built over a decade truly means. She meant to send someone a pm but did a selfpost instead and then hurriedly erased it and banned everyone that responded to the selfpost: https://archive.is/9RFIp Reminds me of my grandmother sending me a…

Do you know if any users in that thread were actually banned?

I checked out the reddit for the top level posts and it appears that many of them, even the ones that posted the most mean spirited comments in that thread, seem to be active. Most of them have plenty of recent comments with votes and replies.

Maybe the banned had their comments deleted? I don't think that's how it works though.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#230

Post by NhanH » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 3:45 AM UTC

_red wrote: post #171

spiralpolitik wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely investors are getting restless and want to see some return. In these cases management feels it needs to have things under its control and starts removing power bases from lower down the org chart so that everything stays on message. AMA is Reddit's only viable asset so having it under control of someone who isn't part of the management clique is unthinkable. Usually these attempts fail and the company is…

I agree. However a counter-point is that its quite possible that they are trying to pivot reddit into a mainstream site, and thus are more than willing to burn most of the current user base. They don't need/want hard-hitting questions during AMA's, nor do they want freaky fetish subreddits, nor long winded post describing the intricacies of the Federal Reserve. They want cat pictures, pictures of freshly baked cakes,…

Reddit is already mainstream by any sense of the words. The reason it's full of hateful, annoying etc. people is because that's how anonymous human behave. Reddit is not a super secret group that only hateful bad apple knows about. You can try to clamp down the bad content, but alienate the user base will end up badly because there will be no one left to join.