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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

#601

Post by Crito »

orbitur wrote: post #538
eclipxe wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tide changed with Pao. All of those were roadblocks, but never had the community turned so swiftly against the admins until Pao arrived. There's an entire subreddit dedicated to denigrating Pao. kn0thing has had missteps but generally has had the respect of the community. The community largely does not respect Pao.

> The community largely does not respect Pao Any criticism I've read seems to be based around how she's a woman and she used her womanness to get ahead. Nothing she has done as the CEO of Reddit is evidence of the need for the awful insults and copypasta I've seen lobbed at her. And these aren't hidden in the recesses of MRA subreddits, they're the top comments on any thread with any mention of Pao.

Let me guess, they they hate Victoria as well is because she is also woman.

Oh wait, they don't hate Victoria. Huh...

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

#602

Post by geofft »

chernevik wrote: post #526
geofft wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm not sure I see how that relates to the departure of a Reddit employee facilitating that AMA. He answered the question, right? Whether the answer is terrible maybe impacts what you think of him , but not what you think of the person making the AMA happen (either as a person or as an employee), right? Or did he not actually answer the question, and did someone else answer in his…

It is a demonstration that the Reverend doesn't much care about fairness to individuals, and so would not feel qualms about insisting someone be fired because he was embarrassed.

OK, and why would Reddit go along with that? IAmA was one of the most monetizable parts of Reddit, and it needed a full-time staff member to work. The site was already vaguely unhappy with the admins (though maybe those folks were leaving). Jesse Jackson's personal support doesn't mean much to Reddit, I'm pretty sure. Even if it made sense for him to want Victoria fired, which I'm not sure it does, and even if nobody at Reddit felt qualms about firing their coworker, it still makes no business sense why this was the right move for Reddit.

Quoting the International Business Times: "The AMA in question, which took place just two days before Taylor's firing was revealed, was widely regarded to be nothing short of a disaster. When the top question on the AMA calls the person answering questions 'an immoral, hate-filled race baiter that has figured out how to manipulate the political system for your own gain', you know you are in trouble. [...] However the suggestion that this was the reason for Taylor's firing does seem tenuous at best, and outright ridiculous in reality." There are some more plausible reasons in that story. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reddit-revolt-why-was-popular-direc...

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

#603

Post by intended »

lingben wrote: post #225
geofft wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'difficu…

That's incorrect.

I'm one of the "nicer" mods on my subreddit because I'm polite and very careful and careful in how I construct my responses to actions.

But at the end of the day I'm also liked because I'm not the most active mod. The very act of exerting power over another user, especially someone who has never stopped to think about the rules or the site history, results in resentment.

The better your mod team is at being able to implement the rules, the more friction there will be.

People will also come out to complain more than compliment.

This results in distancing from the community, just because of how painful it can be.

Good tools to moderate create more ways to censor people, track them, decide what words are ok and others which are not.

In short, Victoria is far removed from the kind of things which make people hate admins.

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

#604

Post by astrowilliam »

jammi wrote: post #391
wingerlang wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loading animation in the beginning, I'm bored already. After loading, it just looks like some clickbait buzzfeed or auto-generated "read these 5 articles more, please" because of the big pictures set in a grid.

Yep, his site sucks. Basically reminded me of what digg looked like after v4 with its "new digg" thing once the users were gone.

Thanks for the honest and brutal feedback.

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

#605

Post by geofft »

caskance wrote: post #593
geofft wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>People loved Raymond Chen back when Steve Ballmer was CEO of Microsoft. Why the past tense? Did people suddenly stop loving Raymond Chen for some reason?

Yeah, that tense was unclear. How about "Even when Steve Ballmer was CEO of Microsoft, people still loved Raymond Chen"? (I think few people hate Satya Nadella the way people hated Ballmer and hate Pao, that's all.)

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

#606

Post by geofft »

lagadu wrote: post #435
geofft wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kind of. Reddit cares a lot more about keeping the defaults around than keeping the smaller questionable subreddits around. I genuinely don't think they want to ban the distasteful but non-harassing subreddits (partly because they don't want to be known as a site that would ban those subreddits), but if one of those subreddits decided to one day get up and leave of their own accord, they wouldn't shed a tear. If, say, /r/IAmA decided to get up and leave, that would be a problem. This happened once [1], it was a problem, and (IIRC) Reddit management stepped in.

So yes, they're disconnects. But one is a disconnect between a userbase / the moderators of subreddits that Reddit the company is not very invested in keeping, except to the extent that in general, they want to keep subreddits that don't break rules. The other is a disconnect between subreddits that Reddit relies on.

That's why when tension 1 flared up a few weeks ago, Reddit banned some subreddits and implicitly threatened others with banning, and when tension 2 flared up yesterday, some other subreddits threatened to shut down and successfully forced Reddit to care.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ju5cf/goodbye_iama_it...

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

#607

Post by geofft »

geofft wrote: post #246
chernevik wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't. But see this exchange in the archive ( https://archive.is/jouWQ#selection-17025.0-17025.134 ) 'Have you felt regretful for rushing to judgement after condemning the "perpetrators" of the Duke lacrosse rape scandal during 2006-07?' 'No, the pattern is consistent. And we never want injustice to occur. But the pattern is fairly obvious, and a very obvious pattern that must be ended.' The Reverend isn't intere…

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm not sure I see how that relates to the departure of a Reddit employee facilitating that AMA. He answered the question, right? Whether the answer is terrible maybe impacts what you think of him , but not what you think of the person making the AMA happen (either as a person or as an employee), right? Or did he not actually answer the question, and did someone else answer in his…

Replying to myself to include a relevant point (reported by Digg, of all people): /u/kickme444, a Reddit employee and founder of RedditGifts, was also let go. RedditGifts was the other weird subreddit that had paid staff at corporate.

http://digg.com/2015/redditrevolt-victoria-taylor-ama-reddit...

I think it's increasingly hard to believe that this had anything to do with Jesse Jackson's AMA.

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

#608

Post by lnanek2 »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #44

This is just amazingly tone-deaf on Reddit's part. I don't even read IAMA regularly and I knew Victoria was well-liked. What is Ellen Pao paying attention to if not their highest-profile subreddit? Did she have no transitional plan?

Supposedly the transition plan is to start monetizing IAMA: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png

Something Victoria opposed, so getting rid of her is part of the plan.

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

#609

Post by lnanek2 »

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…

I think the moderators are doing a good job. Read what the IAMA mods have stated. 1) They couldn't do their job with Victoria fired and no liaison so took things down temporarily while they figure out a new way to work. 2) They communicated with the admins and offered to restore things if they were assured there was no plan to start limiting the IAMAs to money making purposes. 3) Admins refused and now IAMA mods are going to run the IAMAs on their own.

So Victora didn't want the quality hurt for monetization purposes and was fired. Now the mods stepped up and said they don't want it either. Immediately we got a really high quality IAMA from a Reddit employee fired by Pao for having cancer. Do you think we'd ever see real back and forth about topics like that if it was just pre-scripted money making IAMAs left?

Victoria and the mods seems to do the absolutely best things they could do for the quality. If I just wanted advertiser sponsored content I'd still be a digg user, which is what that site turned into.

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

#610

Post by hga »

geofft wrote: post #607
geofft wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm not sure I see how that relates to the departure of a Reddit employee facilitating that AMA. He answered the question, right? Whether the answer is terrible maybe impacts what you think of him , but not what you think of the person making the AMA happen (either as a person or as an employee), right? Or did he not actually answer the question, and did someone else answer in his…

Replying to myself to include a relevant point (reported by Digg, of all people): /u/kickme444, a Reddit employee and founder of RedditGifts, was also let go. RedditGifts was the other weird subreddit that had paid staff at corporate. http://digg.com/2015/redditrevolt-victoria-taylor-ama-reddit... I think it's increasingly hard to believe that this had anything to do with Jesse Jackson's AMA.

Per https://twitter.com/kickme444/status/616841444121165825 it was a few weeks ago.
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