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

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

#111

Post by slg » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

ChrisPebble wrote: post #108

imjk wrote: post #32

"We feel strongly that this incident is more part of a reckless disregard for the company’s own business and for the work the moderators and users put into the site. Dismissing Victoria Taylor was part of a long pattern of insisting the community and the moderators do more with less." I think this really gets to the heart of it. The moderators of the site only learned of the termination after a celebrity flew out to…

Ignorance more than callousness appears to be the sin here. From snippets of communications posted with the mods it looks like they weren't really aware of what Victoria did for the mods. Since the community is their "product" I find it disconcerting that they're not more familiar with the details of how these relationships work and what Victoria actually did. I would actually find it more comforting if they were awa…

Devils advocate, that is partly Victoria's fault. If your managers don't know what you do all day, I don't think it is surprising that you are fired. Yes, it is a sign off bad management, but it is also a sign off an employee not communicating up to management.

EDIT: The downvotes seem to indicate I wasn't clear. I'm not saying the Reddit management team thought Victoria wasn't doing any work. However, it was clear that Victoria was spending time doing things that management didn't know about. From the sound of it, Victoria saw work that needed to be done and did it. Her job responsibilities likely continued to expanded as IAMA grew. However if management truly didn't know how involved she was in that, that is a failing of both management for not staying involved in the process and her for not communicating up the extra work she was doing.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

nanny wrote: post #13

When you consider exactly how much information we have to go on, I think people are overreacting by immense proportions. Do we even know why Victoria was fired yet? Maybe she was about to blow the lid off a vast internet conspiracy. Or maybe she's actually the bad guy, and she went crazy and tried to destroy the office. We just don't know, and we might never know. Besides, what is reddit corporate supposed to do when…

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by tfinniga » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

steve-howard wrote: post #96

embik wrote: post #46

What really baffles me is the way reddit management handled this situation. There were many things they simply fucked up - They did not install the new AMA team properly (hell, the subreddit mods did not know about it), they reacted childish to the shutdown (something along the lines of "popcorn tastes good" - one of your biggest communities just shut down because you failed to do basic management, in what universe i…

"Popcorn" as a metaphor for drama is a daily in-joke at SubredditDrama, where that comment was posted. What kn0thing didn't count on was that a lot of readers had never been there before and instead took it at face value.

The way I took this statement was roughly "I will enjoy watching this drama unfold, but I won't do anything other than watch". Is that inaccurate?

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

#114

Post by smileysteve » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

nanny wrote: post #13

When you consider exactly how much information we have to go on, I think people are overreacting by immense proportions. Do we even know why Victoria was fired yet? Maybe she was about to blow the lid off a vast internet conspiracy. Or maybe she's actually the bad guy, and she went crazy and tried to destroy the office. We just don't know, and we might never know. Besides, what is reddit corporate supposed to do when…

> Besides, what is reddit corporate supposed to do when they want to fire an employee?

Reduce single points of failure, broadcast schedules and meetings.

Before the termination is complete have the replacement with an action plan.

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

#115

Post by amyjess » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

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 emotion…

This actually reminds me of when Unidan was shadowbanned.

Unidan was a super-popular redditor who loved educating people about science, and he would pop up everywhere and deliver useful information written in a way most laymen can understand. People loved him.

He got banned right after getting in an argument with somebody, where he was being really aggressive and heavy-handed. A lot of people flipped out and claimed he was banned just for getting into a heated argument. They attacked the admins, and then they proceeded to stalk and harass the girl he got into an argument with. They followed her around, downvoted all her comments into the negative triple digits, and effectively made her account useless.

A day later, it turns out that for his entire history as a redditor, he had been using five sockpuppets to upvote his posts and downvote all the posts around him so his posts could become more visible, and that was why he was banned.

So the community turned against him. All his posts on his new account were being aggressively downvoted, the word "Unidan" entered popular use as a slang term for someone who uses vote bots to puff up their karma, and he ended up pretty much disappearing from reddit after a while (he tried to come back a few times, but nobody wanted to hear what he had to say anymore).

As for the girl who got stalked, the admins removed the limits on her accounts placed by the downvotes, the community followed her around upvoting her for a while to restore her karma, and the devs introduced new anti-brigading measures to make sure an organized downvote brigade like that can never fuck somebody's account up again.

I have a feeling that when we find out why Victoria was fired, the community will turn on her and start apologizing to the admins, because this sounds like the exact same situation.

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

#116

Post by luso_brazilian » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

steve-howard wrote: post #96

embik wrote: post #46

What really baffles me is the way reddit management handled this situation. There were many things they simply fucked up - They did not install the new AMA team properly (hell, the subreddit mods did not know about it), they reacted childish to the shutdown (something along the lines of "popcorn tastes good" - one of your biggest communities just shut down because you failed to do basic management, in what universe i…

"Popcorn" as a metaphor for drama is a daily in-joke at SubredditDrama, where that comment was posted. What kn0thing didn't count on was that a lot of readers had never been there before and instead took it at face value.

I believe it was the opposite, people got outraged because they got the exact meaning of the joke.

People were expressing loud and clear their grievances and one admin response was in the lines of "we know about it, let's do nothing and watch the drama unfold, it will die down".

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

#117

Post by johnward » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

ChargingWookie wrote: post #97

amyjess wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was supported by a loud and vocal minority of witch-hunters. Most people just want to use reddit normally.

How do you know that?

I don't think poster knows for sure but you can assume based on traffic levels to comments and just general web stats. A majority of users don't comment on anything. Most people don't even create an account to vote. They probably don't even know what was going on.

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

#118

Post by basch » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

imjk wrote: post #32

"We feel strongly that this incident is more part of a reckless disregard for the company’s own business and for the work the moderators and users put into the site. Dismissing Victoria Taylor was part of a long pattern of insisting the community and the moderators do more with less." I think this really gets to the heart of it. The moderators of the site only learned of the termination after a celebrity flew out to…

This article is falling on me as tone deaf. Most people who frequent the site dont care at all about the plight of the moderators. Moderators are not elected, they arent forcefully drafted, they dont step down when the community dislikes them. They are landowners who got there first, followed by a lot of cronyism/nepotism. It's an old boys club. They do a lot of hard work for the site, but they would be easily replaceable if the site rules didnt protect them. The moderators think they are special, the admins see them as interchangeable. Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. It is a task that could be crowdsourced better so more people are doing less work. Slashdot had better moderation tools than reddit. When I see the moderators throw tantrums demanding more respect, it reminds me of Reagan firing every air traffic controller who went on strike, people who thought they were above being replaced. The reddit admins should fear the power they have given the moderators, and are probably brainstorming ways to reduce it.

The "woe is me" cry of the moderators doesnt resonate with the majority of the userbase, because the moderators volunteered. The apathetic majority doesnt comment in situations like this, so you wont hear their voices. In the immortal words of southpark, if you dont like America, then you can get out. But everyone knows they wont actually step down, because they crave the power they have accumulated, and are using the veneer of "we do this because we love the community" to generate a populous outcry that they know will gain them even more power. Theyre not fooling me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...

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

#119

Post by keithpeter » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:45 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.

OK, $FamousPerson shows up at reception asking for an employee who has recently been escorted off the premises with their possessions in a black plastic bag (been there, got the video and t-shirt). You sort of know that random $FamousPeople showing up is part of $BusinessAsUsual. You have just realised that you have apparently no procedures whatsoever for booking appointments for personal visits to the building (e.g. popping something on a corporate Google calendar or Outlook).

So, you get $HighRankingPerson - preferably one with good empathy and small talk skills - to meet $FamousPerson, explain that, unfortunately, there has had to be a change of plan today. Meanwhile $TrustedPersonalAssistant has Googled $FamousPerson, worked out likely food preferences and made contact with $FamousPerson's PR people/publisher/agent/whatever. Nice restaurant booked for lunch. $FuturePlans discussed over (rather good wine | excellent smoothies | extremely expensive vintage cheese and crackers | exceptional artisian toast). Limousine booked to get $FamousPerson back to airport in time for trip home.

Not rocket science is it really? (I speak as one who has been told to F$$k Off by Royalty).

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

#120

Post by paulhauggis » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

lmartel wrote: post #76

paulhauggis wrote: post #11

This article makes it seems like the moderators actually work for Reddit, which isn't the case. This is the problem, actually. Because it's not a paid position, the company can't use that as leverage in situations like this. The moderators essentially have nothing to lose. Even in the article, it states that it was shutdown because of the abrupt termination of Ms. Taylor. Anybody that makes these sort of emotional de…

If you were the CEO of Reddit it would go the way of Digg. The community is what makes the site successful, and the moderators shape the community, in addition to being the chief content creators. Developing an adversarial relationship with the community or the moderators is the absolute fastest way to torpedo the site. In addition, as a few other comments on this article have pointed out, the shutdown was not a reac…

"If you were the CEO of Reddit it would go the way of Digg."

If I ran Reddit, it would be just as popular and much more profitable. The mass Digg exodus happened because their decisions ruined the content and the average user got tired of the bullshit. This has nothing to do with moderators.

"The community is what makes the site successful, and the moderators shape the community, in addition to being the chief content creators."

Are you a moderator? Do you really think the moderators create content?

Here is an example:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics

Everything on the front-page is taken from other sites. The moderators created nothing. The users even posted the links..so they didn't even do that.

"but to years of serious issues and mismanagement."

Why no protests before this incident then? and why are there so many people protesting her firing?

"The first subreddit to shut down did so because it literally couldn't keep functioning without Victoria, and the rest saw an opportunity to finally voice their complaints and be heard."

Well, you shouldn't base your entire success on 1 person. A smart moderator would have multiple backups.