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

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

#291

Post by HappyTypist »

pdkl95 wrote: post #227

"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..…

This is a great talk for anyone managing communities. Reddit's current situation does bear many resemblances, especially with kn0thing's "Thank you for the feedback. I hope you change your mind about reddit, but if not, you're entitled to your opinion." response.

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

#292

Post by rtpg »

deciplex wrote: post #249
rtpg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tell that to the admins that just cut a beloved person without prior consultation or a continuity plan. Let's think about the fact that this is possible for a company to do this to a full-time employee with several years experience next time an election comes up. Unfortunately, not all of us get the luxury of advance notice on firings/layoffs

You seem to be making a statement about the law - I don't think anyone is suggesting that what Reddit has done here is against the law. Instead, what Reddit has done here strikes many people as rather stupid.

I don't think what Reddit did is illegal, I'm lamenting that it isn't. Independent of skillsets, people should get treated with a minimum of respect.

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

#294

Post by natrius »

geofft wrote: post #274
natrius wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who loves reddit, this dichotomy is the clearest sign that it has no future. Anyone who values freedom of expression and knows how to program can help build a decentralized reddit that no one controls on top of platforms like IPFS and Ethereum's Swarm. Every attempt at building a reddit clone fails because reddit enjoys tremendous network effects. But decentralization yields its own network effects—you don…

I wouldn't say I love Reddit, but I'm certainly an active user. But I'm not subscribed to any of the subreddits that were affected, and I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for this thread. There are lots of little communities that work well, with their own things they value. (There was a particular thread over on /r/OrthodoxChristianity, now removed, that would have been hilarious if it wasn't sad: a member of the…

I agree with your prerequisites. I think they can be achieved.

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

#295

Post by vonklaus »

markdown wrote: post #196
nols wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spare us, Reddit's been mismanaged for long before Ms Pao started there. Just look at Alexis Ohanian's (kn0thing) comments[0]. Not to mention the celeb nudes debacle, which was allowed then disallowed and announced by a sysadmin [1]. And the then CEO Yishan Wong publicly fighting with a former employee [2]. Then we can go way back to /r/jailbait and the Violentacrez affair, the only mod to be awarded a golden trophy…

> And the then CEO Yishan Wong publicly fighting with a former employee This was awesome. The employee started the trash talk, fully expecting Reddit not to defend itself (as expected of bullshit corporate america). It was perfect /r/justiceporn when Wong came out swinging in response. Glorious to see.

whether it was political or performance based, he did raise a rather rational point. If your company is unprofitable/showing weak earnings, it might not make sense to give away 10% of all of the money you take in over the fiscal year.

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

#296

Post by codezero »

vonklaus wrote: post #194
codezero wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go further and say their users don't provide content, but instead act as evaluators and filters for others' content. The thing is, almost anyone can evaluate content for basic human emotional or intellectual value. The community built up around shared interest and that is itself hard to replicate in a way that achieves critical mass.

> I'd go further and say their users don't provide content, but instead act as evaluators and filters for others' content. my post was a bit unclear, i meant they literally provide it to the site by finding it and posting it. They act as the first tier of the filtering mechanism(votes being secondary). > The community built up around shared interest and that is itself hard to replicate in a way that achieves critical…

I basically agree with everything you've said here, so when I pose this question, just consider it food for thought:

Aren't reddit moderators the vocal minority? Indeed, they are the ones exercising a great deal of control over reddit and its community.

Critical mass is pretty ambiguous. Is it defined by people who run subreddits, people who visit them, people who vote on them, people who buy reddit gold?

I am still amazed that 4chan, with its insane volume, went so long with basically a small handful of moderators. It was possible because it was very hands off.

Even though reddit has a very open philosophy, moderators of subreddits are anything but hands off.

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

#297

Post by X-Istence »

personjerry wrote: post #71

This seems like an abuse of power to me. The people who have closed the subreddits are the moderators. These moderators should represent the desires of the users . In this case, they are instead caring for their own personal feelings/ease of moderation through communication with the Victoria. As a result, hundreds of thousands of redditors are cut off from their friends and fellow subredditors. Even the AMAs are cut…

You do realise that these moderators are unpaid and don't report to anyone, least of all the people using reddit.

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

#298

Post by bradleyjg »

innguest wrote: post #237
nols wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years all it would've taken is a solid competitor with good technology and management and Reddit is gone. Right now Reddit's really the only game in town. If someone were to come along with technology that wouldn't regularly crash and tools to help the moderators moderate and allow the community managers to quickly and effectively respond to problems; and a solid management team to be proactive and keep improving…

Yeah, because those are all the things that keep IRC alive... not. You really don't think it's an architecture problem? Do you really think "all" we need is "good tech" and "good people"? Everyone thinks that, and thinks they have that when they start something. What we need, I think, is a forum/thread/whatchamacallit protocol, like IRC is that protocol for chat. Am I crazy?

It's called NNTP and predates HTTP.

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

#299

Post by adventured »

derefr wrote: post #271
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…

On the other hand, Reddit has tons of mostly-isolated subcommunities that will continue to thrive, because they aren't really dependent on the Reddit userbase; they're just the moral equivalent of hosted copies of the reddit codebase, like WordPress.com instances of WordPress. I can imagine that people will stop thinking of "Reddit" as a website that everyone visits with "default subreddits" et al, but they will poss…

I agree, lots of communities that peak and decline, also continue forward perpetually - such as FARK, Digg or Metafilter - with smaller dedicated user bases. That's the most likely outcome for Reddit. It's so relatively inexpensive to operate, it's unlikely to fold. More likely it'll be swapped around in acquisitions, spin-offs, etc. as different parents try their hands at getting the mojo back (the MySpace / Digg scenario).
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