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

#431

Post by anabis » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:14 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #233

Kranar wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Victoria being fired is basically the last straw in what has been close to a year of friction between the people who volunteer to provide and manage reddit's content (the moderators) and the people who profit off of their work (reddit the corporation). This event basically exemplified the fact that reddit as a corporation doesn't care one bit about their volunteers/moderators and the subs going private is basically t…

It's always struck me as weird that Reddit moderators are volunteers. While this may or may not have been justifiable, I'm not sure it was ever tenable that IAmA had a dedicated, paid staff member to make the subreddit run, answerable to Reddit the corporation and not to the subreddit moderators. (To what extent are the subreddit moderators answerable to Reddit the corporation, or vice versa? Remember that time that…

Japan's 2ちゃんねる http://www.2ch.net/ has had volunteer moderators for a long time, so it should be workable.

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

#432

Post by lawnchair_larry » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:14 AM UTC

mtrpcic wrote: post #287

mintplant wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't lump this in with the anti-Pao brigade. Like her or not, the issue of admin-moderator relations goes back long before her tenure. I say this as a (currently inactive) moderator of a default subreddit.

Whichever side of the Pao debate you fall on, you have to admit that the CEO of a site that is of the size, scale, and simplicity of Reddit should understand the core functionality of the site.

Shouldn't this be a criticism towards Sam et al, not Ellen? She was offered a good job and took it. Good on her. The failure lies with how completely out of touch the ownership is.

They became good at money and bad at people, which usually happens. Unfortunately for them, reddit is little more than the people.

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

#433

Post by brobinson » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:15 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #78

pgrote wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, I just want to talk about Rampart.

(Translation for the reddit-impaired: Woody Harrelson came to IAMA trying to do publicity for his movie Rampart. His cluelessness and apparent entitlement nearly blotted out the sun.)

I believe that was actually Woody's PR agent, right?

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

#434

Post by ljk » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:19 AM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #7

Smerity wrote: post #5

One of the most telling points is from /u/imakuram, moderator for /r/books: "This seems to be a seriously stupid decision. We have several AMAs upcoming in /r/books and have no idea how to contact the authors."[1] They really shot the communities in the foot by not giving them any notice or support. Given that the key feature in ensuring the quality of Reddit is the moderation "donated" by the community, this is a de…

Alexis is not helping matters either: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam...

can there be a site owner who treats his site users with respect? Same thing with zuckerberg calling fb users idiots....

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

#435

Post by lagadu » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:19 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #347

Malician wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're trying to make a sarcastic point here (unless I'm mistaken,) but that's probably quite true as written. Even /r/askscience supports this move [1]. It is one of the most heavily moderated subreddits on the site, with professional staff. These aren't rabblerousers, they are very hard-working volunteers who are fed up with the administration. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3by2nk/a_messa…

The comment I replied to was trying to say that this isn't about the firing, and is about the process of limiting free speech and restricting subs in a non-transparent manner. I see none of that in the /r/askscience post. It seems to me that there are two major, unrelated tensions in Reddit at the moment: 1. Certain people want Reddit to be a haven for free speech, including speech that coordinates abusive actions. T…

> but they are fundamentally unrelated complaints

They don't sound unrelated: both complaints seem to point towards a fundamental disconnect between reddit's management and its userbase.

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

#436

Post by lawnchair_larry » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:20 AM UTC

koko775 wrote: post #13

chernevik wrote: post #8

Jesse Jackson had an AMA that did not go very well. Several of the most upvoted questions were simply disrespectful. The Reverend's answers were mostly boilerplate and often unresponsive to the question. The AMA seems to have been part of some PR rollout -- Mother Jones had an article three days ago about Jackson taking on Silicon Valley. The event seems to have failed the rollout's objectives. Not a great moment for…

I'm pretty certain AMA disasters do not qualify as fireable. And firing the facilitator with a history of good AMAs for that reason is hardly an appropriate remedy even if that is so.

People rarely get fired for fireable things. They get fired because management doesn't like them, and were waiting for any excuse.

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

#437

Post by Frozenlock » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:21 AM UTC

ep4d4s wrote: post #411

Frozenlock wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the handful of people who put in effort under reddit's brand are in an exploitative relationship. In some ways, it feels like Twitch.tv. I'm a little sad when I think of all these people making an 'exception' with twitch.tv by turning off their ad-blocks, by gladly giving $5 per month PER subscription (and some people subscribe multiple times on the same channel), by excusing a streaming website that still uses Flas…

The music detection stuff I feel was probably bigger than them. DMCA and whatnot. You forget YouTube follows suite in this regard. Not keeping videos forever honestly made sense to me. They were very scientific about it in their blog post and showed that honestly, nobody is really watching these archives. If at most they're there to watch a certain clip (which can be highlighted which ARE kept forever). Banning cleav…

How are they exaggerated? Some of these can be 'good', but they still are all unilateral changes, which is precisely the problem with the false sentiment of community.

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

#438

Post by ljk » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:22 AM UTC

bgilroy26 wrote: post #355

HappyTypist wrote: post #289

Marc Bodnick commented on why Victoria was fired: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png I consider him to be a reputable source and the claims are very plausible. Out of touch management never know how out of touch they are.

This s the best information we have so far, but it's confusing. There have been a bunch of video IAMAs before

maybe the porposed video IAMAs will be rampart-like "IAMA"s? that'd fit with the suggestion about going more commercial

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

#439

Post by scrollaway » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:29 AM UTC

Frozenlock wrote: post #335

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…

>the handful of people who put in effort under reddit's brand are in an exploitative relationship. In some ways, it feels like Twitch.tv. I'm a little sad when I think of all these people making an 'exception' with twitch.tv by turning off their ad-blocks, by gladly giving $5 per month PER subscription (and some people subscribe multiple times on the same channel), by excusing a streaming website that still uses Flas…

I'm not sure this is an "exploitative relationship", unless you also define your relationship with a supermarket chain or netflix to be "exploitative". You give money for a service. Said service tries to extract money as efficiently as possible.

It's a capitalistic relationship, certainly. But it's very different. reddit volunteers provide their efforts to improve reddit's brand, for free, generally just for personal gratification (from people who will turn on you and drive you to suicide the moment you make the wrong move). Thos efforts are exploited by reddit, rather than rewarded.

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

#440

Post by lagadu » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:31 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #397

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it clearly was. That's the problem. It's not clear. There's a lot of unanswered questions there: how does off-site activity on Tumblr and other sites get linked back to specific people and the overall thrust of a subreddit? How do you even solve that problem in general? I have personally observed chan (not 4chan) threads involving skimming certain subreddits and finding targets to harass without even having Red…

Reddit does have a consistant position: 1) don't brigade. 2) don't dox 3) mods can mod what they like; the commonly agreed best subs use extensive vigorous modding 4) admins aren't going to get involved unless you break the tiny number of rules. Reddit should release the graphs that subs have of visitors. A FPH brigade causes 10,000 extra visitors, thousands of extra votes, and hundreds of comments. In smaller subs t…

Brigading is not against reddit's rules[0], despite semi-popular belief. Some big subs actually encourage it by not allowing np (non-participation) links to be posted on their sub[1].

[0]https://www.reddit.com/rules/ [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/39nwjh/meta...