Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#51

Post by nightpool » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:13 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #38

Stefan-H wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The censorship is not happening by the community, it is coming from the admins that are on the reddit payroll. There are some posts that are auto-deleted based off of keywords during some of the more turbulent times in reddit.

Also adding to what Stefan said, the admins have been deleting subreddits too, sometimes the wrong ones (for example they deleted an Whale Watching subreddit believing it was a fat people harassment subreddit...)

Bullshyt. They deleted a Whale Watching subreddit because it got taken over by users from FPH looking for a new home. Some of the mods of that sub were FPH admins and were communicating to other users that it was a "backup sub" they could use when they got banned. As soon as the furor died down, the sub came back.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#52

Post by hoopd » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

A discussion between an admin and the science mods leaked: http://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked_...

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#53

Post by nilkn » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

zedpm wrote: post #3

Maybe this will be enough to silence the folks on here who insist that nothing is wrong with Reddit management and that it's just a bunch of angry children complaining without cause. The mods in question are adults and professionals, and they've clearly and succinctly explained their grievances with Reddit management. This piece doesn't touch on some of the other issues that have angered users, particularly the matte…

> Maybe this will be enough to silence the folks on here who insist that nothing is wrong with Reddit management and that it's just a bunch of angry children complaining without cause.

Why can't it be both?

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that it is.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#54

Post by zwerdlds » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

nanny wrote: post #34

joosters wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article explains, the issues aren't to do with Victoria herself. In that respect, why she was fired doesn't matter. Note that the story is not a campaign to bring her back personally. Corporate Reddit should have had a plan in place when they got rid of her, but as it became clear, they hadn't thought about it at all. That's what the mods were complaining about.

>Corporate Reddit should have had a plan in place when they got rid of her, but as it became clear, they hadn't thought about it at all. What if she did something really bad and was fired on the spot? How could they "have a plan in place" for a situation like that?

Jumping to conclusions aside, wouldn't they communicate that?

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#55

Post by paulhauggis » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

zedpm wrote: post #3

Maybe this will be enough to silence the folks on here who insist that nothing is wrong with Reddit management and that it's just a bunch of angry children complaining without cause. The mods in question are adults and professionals, and they've clearly and succinctly explained their grievances with Reddit management. This piece doesn't touch on some of the other issues that have angered users, particularly the matte…

"Reddit management and that it's just a bunch of angry children complaining without cause."

Anyone that makes these sort of decisions based on absolutely no evidence besides that she was fired, is childish and should not be a moderator.

"The mods in question are adults and professionals, and they've clearly and succinctly explained their grievances with Reddit management."

They might be physically adults, but emotional intelligence for many of the mods seems to be lacking.

"particularly the matter of heavy-handed censorship that appears to be applied inconsistently"

The mods are just as bad when it comes to censorship...decisions based on pure emotion, political views, and personal grudges. Exactly what you don't want when it comes to someone moderating a community.

Reddit is what the world was like in the middle ages and the reason we don't solve all of our issues with a lynch-mob.

Many don't see it because they don't like the people that are being silenced, bullied, and marginalized.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#56

Post by wvenable » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

splitbrain wrote: post #4

gesman wrote: post #2

>> ...We are disheartened by the dismissal of Victoria Taylor, who was one of the most high-profile women at the company — and in the technology field. We hope Reddit recruits someone with the talent and necessary background to fill her position in a similar capacity... May I propose a good candidate? Victoria Taylor.

Does anyone know why she was fired? Few things get you fired immediately, so I guess it's something quite bad. As much as I agree with the IamA moderators about shitty decisions at Reddit, their owners might deserve credit for not disclosing whatever Victoria did to get fired.

On the same day the admin responsible for reddit gifts was always let go. And over the last 6 months there has been a lot of turnover.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#57

Post by joshuapants » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

habitue wrote: post #44

robrenaud wrote: post #26

How hard would it be to fork reddit AMA on a third party site? I'd imagine if you got Victoria on board, a lot of the mods/community would follow. Certainly some custom support for the AMA would be nice, like getting cleanly summarized final outputs and highlighting direct conversation with the askee, and making it easy to find highly upvoted non-answered questions.

This is pretty much what voat is. The biggest issue is handling the traffic. Only a fraction of users went to voat and it was offline for days, crippled by the traffic. edit: I previously said Voat was a reddit fork, that wasn't correct.

> This is exactly what voat is, a Reddit fork

Voat mimics Reddit functionally, but I don't think it's a fork

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#58

Post by throwaway_97 » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

I think the management is doing the right thing for the long term. They will try to make it more and more social and maybe even try to act as a news portal; things that bring in profits. It should attract a lot of new people. It won't be the reddit you remember but it will be a more profitable reddit. On a personal note I feel nothing as I find reddit to be quite a distraction to my productivity and many subreddits of my interests are dead.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#59

Post by vonmoltke » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

nanny wrote: post #43

vonmoltke wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, what is reddit corporate supposed to do when they want to fire an employee? Message the mods and say, "Oh, btw, we're going to fire Victoria in a couple days and Xyz will take over her duties, just thought you'd like to know."? That's simply out of the question, and not enough people even thought about this scenario. When you have people travelling from out of town specifically to meet the person you are a…

Did you consider that it might not have been an option? That maybe it was an unexpected termination, and they didn't have a way to know about or contact the people arriving from out of town? You don't have enough information to speculate like that.

> Did you consider that it might not have been an option? That maybe it was an unexpected termination, and they didn't have a way to know about or contact the people arriving from out of town?

Then you get a substitute for the appointment, even if you have to delay it. You don't just tell the client that the appointment is cancelled and to have a nice day.

> You don't have enough information to speculate like that.

There is no information that can make the way the out of town guest was treated acceptable.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#60

Post by nightpool » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #37

nightpool wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moderators of IAmA have said that they believe the decision was made to fire her before the Jesse Jackson AMA happened. EDIT: whoops, didn't mean to downvote you. mobile misclick :(

Which is still speculation.

Sorry, I was a little vague. The mods of r/IAmA have been in contact with reddit admins about the situation, and from how the timeline was explained to them by reddit staff, the decision was made before the Jesse Jackson AMA even happened.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/3bw7ms/top_mod_of_r...