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

nytimes.com

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

#81

Post by slg »

embik wrote: post #61
amyjess wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the shutdown of /r/iama was necessary so the moderators could regroup and figure out how to do their scheduling and coördination from now on. The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong . And your claims of censorship are, quite frankly, di…

> The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong. That's not how I observed the situation honestly. A lot of subreddit mods got flooded with "shut down"-requests and some decided against it, some followed the mass. It wasn't really a hostage-takin…

>The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power users to treat the majority of users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing the majority of users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong.

Does that fix the problems with the above sentences? Regardless of who was ultimately behind it, the shutdowns were a "I'm taking my ball and going home" move at the expense of the entire Reddit community.

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

#83

Post by adnzzzzZ »

flatline wrote: post #62
amyjess wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the shutdown of /r/iama was necessary so the moderators could regroup and figure out how to do their scheduling and coördination from now on. The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong . And your claims of censorship are, quite frankly, di…

I laugh when people complain about removal of /r/fatpeoplehate being censorship. The only reason that subreddit was such a problem is because of aggressive moderation and banning of users - i.e. censorship at the moderator level rather than the admin level.

One of the point of subreddits is to let people create their own rules (whatever those rules might be) and enforce them at their own discretion. As long as people aren't breaking reddit's global rules then subreddits should have the right to implement whatever rules they see fit, including heavy moderation. What the parent post was complaining about was censorship performed at the admin level (reddit's management), not the moderator level. Stuff like shadowbans (which have been increasing a lot lately), removing posts from /r/all and so on.

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

#85

Post by jonlucc »

amyjess wrote: post #40
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…

No, the shutdown of /r/iama was necessary so the moderators could regroup and figure out how to do their scheduling and coördination from now on. The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong . And your claims of censorship are, quite frankly, di…

The problem with shutting down the hateful subreddits is that they didn't communicate clearly. In that, they left a lot of room for rumors and speculation about why that sub was shut down for "harassment" when others that seem more harass-y were not targeted. Remember, most users never visited those subs, and weren't in the know about their modus operandi. Those rumors led to the takedowns looking like censorship of distasteful content to many users. If it was censorship of distasteful or rude content, then there are many other subs that should fall alongside those taken down.

I think if they had said that the people in those subs were posting pictures of people and not responding in a timely manner to legitimate requests by aggrieved people portrayed on those subs, the users who don't really care about those subs would have brushed it off.

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

#86

Post by danso »

joshuapants wrote: post #57
habitue wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's correct...Voat is written in C# ASP.NET MVC 5.

https://github.com/voat/voat

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

#87

Post by peu4000 »

ajford wrote: post #9
splitbrain wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given the recent push for monetization of Reddit, it's also entirely possible that she put her foot down against some kind of hair-brained scheme for monetizing AMAs, and was summarily dismissed for refusing to go with the flow.

It's also possible that she murdered 14 children, but it's all conjecture unless an actual reason is released.

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

#88

Post by amyjess »

mason240 wrote: post #80
amyjess wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the shutdown of /r/iama was necessary so the moderators could regroup and figure out how to do their scheduling and coördination from now on. The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong . And your claims of censorship are, quite frankly, di…

They shut downs of other subs was overwhelmingly supported by the users.

No, it was supported by a loud and vocal minority of witch-hunters.

Most people just want to use reddit normally.

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

#89

Post by SilasX »

ritchiea wrote: post #10
splitbrain wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You say "few things get you fired immediately" but I'd say it depends. If you're at a big relatively stable company few things get you fired immediately. If the company is small or in flux (as Reddit appears to be) it can be a lot easier to be fired quickly.

But that doesn't change the logic of how stupid it would be to fire someone with so many loose ends and contacts depending on her.

An employee would need to commit some very serious transgression to justify the urgency, and the destruction that results from such abrupt removal.

"Disagreement about the general direction of a feature" isn't even close to meeting that standard. It was extremely irresponsible.

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

#90

Post by danso »

vonmoltke wrote: post #59
nanny wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

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

Sorry, but is this guest the Queen of England or the Pope? Did the mods pay for his/her way to New York? As the GP said, this is an overreaction -- the mods act as if insulting one celebrity means that IAMA, a subreddit that was originally populated by regular reddit users, has been inconvertibly sullied. Or that they, the mods themselves, spent their lives savings to fly that celebrity into town. I'm not saying that the celebrity deserved to be snubbed, but non-conspiracy-shit happens, and firing/rehirings can be a chaotic process that yes, sometimes lasts longer than a couple of days.

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