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

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

#121

Post by munificent » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #111

ChrisPebble wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> If your managers don't know what you do all day

If your managers can't tell what you do all day when they merely need to go to reddit.com/r/IamA and see dozens of upvoted posts from celebrities whose top comment says, "Victoria is here helping me...", then I don't think you can really blame her for that.

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

#122

Post by res0nat0r » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

jonlucc wrote: post #99

nanny wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Well, that's the point of a contingency plan. Where I work, we have an emergency evacuation plan. They don't only start coming up with that plan when the building needs to be evacuated. They have it in place in case they need it.

Their backup plan was to email immediate issues to ama@reddit.com, but that didn't satisfy the nerd rage, so the users had to go into nuclear mode.

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

#123

Post by timr » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:48 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…

It's interesting that you're quoting that line as "the heart" of the piece, when it's the one line that seemed to reveal a less-than-reasonable motive: most of the rest of the editorial was about the way Taylor was fired, but this line was complaining that she was fired at all.

As an outsider to this drama, it sure sounds like people are angry mainly because this person was fired, and they liked her. They're clinging to the details of the way she was fired to give some weight to that indignation.

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

#124

Post by Pyxl101 » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #88

mason240 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not as simple as that. I'm a moderator on several subreddits and, via moderator mail and private messages, monitored events during the shutdown. The impression that I got from speaking to other moderators and users of diverse subreddits across the site is that many of them feel a sense of pent up frustration toward Reddit. The mismanagement of AMA was the straw that broke the camel's back, and so many of them closed in solidarity with IAMA, and as a form of protest. It was not a witch hunt by any means, but simply an expression of "We're all fed up with this. Something needs to change". The protest was effective at getting Reddit leadership to rethink their actions and change course.

It's true that many Reddit users are "lurkers" who simply read the site and never contribute. These people probably never have had cause to become frustrated by the Reddit admins. However, among those who actively contribute, a surprisingly high fraction, from my personal observations, seem to be upset.

I can also say that there was debate among moderator staff on a number of subreddits. It's not as if everyone went along with it unilaterally. However, when moderators of other subs learned how poorly the situation was being handled, and learned how condescendingly Reddit staff responded, the backlash surged. Take for example the snide comments that Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanion wrote to users who expressed concerns: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam...

Or the unhelpful, brusque way that Reddit handled AMAs during that time: http://i.imgur.com/ICSz7Xp.jpg (After reading, compare to statements from AMA mods about how helpful, supportive, and responsive Victoria was.)

I was initially skeptical about the shutdown, but seeing this evidence with my own eyes was enough to swing me into the "pro shutdown" camp or at least the "I don't oppose the shutdown" camp.

The responses from the community in these threads does not give me the impression of a witch hunt:

https://www.reddit.com/r/modtalk/comments/3byqjc/we_hear_you...

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

Reddit and Alexis subsequently apologized and said they didn't realize the "depth of the frustration", but actions like this certainly contributed. Treating people with contempt is always going to make a situation worse. If Reddit had responded promptly, professionally, and respectfully, I doubt so many subreddits would have shut down, and it would have been resolved much sooner. I personally had no complaint with Reddit staff prior to the shutdown, but their handling and response to it concerned me. A company's staff should never treat their users that way. It should not take a massive backlash for admins to think, "Maybe I shouldn't be snide and condescending." The people running an organization need to be the mature ones in the room. The shutdown was Reddit users calling them out on their behavior.

Edit: Why the downvotes? Is this comment not constructive?

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

#125

Post by peeters » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #27

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…

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.

> As the article explains, the issues aren't to do with Victoria herself. In that respect, why she was fired doesn't matter

It absolutely matters. If it was something egregious and for cause, the company probably wouldn't have a choice but to terminate her on the spot. There are a lot of scenarios where they also wouldn't be able to disclose why she was terminated. If that's what happened, yes the company made poor choices for not having a contingency plan, but they may not have had a real choice of how to handle it the day that it happened. They could have been scrambling as much as the community was.

Now, I hope that's not the case because I like and respect Victoria. And the way people like Alexis "Popcorn" Ohanian commented suggests that this really was a case of Reddit's admins not giving a shit about the community. But to my knowledge Victoria herself has not commented on the reason for her dismissal, so it's hard to know whether Reddit had a choice about how to transition.

Anyway my point is the circumstances around the termination do matter in evaluating the way the company acted.

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

#126

Post by jonlucc » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #122

jonlucc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's the point of a contingency plan. Where I work, we have an emergency evacuation plan. They don't only start coming up with that plan when the building needs to be evacuated. They have it in place in case they need it.

Their backup plan was to email immediate issues to ama@reddit.com, but that didn't satisfy the nerd rage, so the users had to go into nuclear mode.

Ok, but that doesn't answer all of the communication points. They had an email set up (despite being a communication platform, but if that's how they needed it, ok) and then they didn't tell the mods what that meant. Are they each supposed to send a question about everything they thought Victoria was going to be doing over the next month to that email?

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

#127

Post by RyJones » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:49 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.

If he demands to be the front-and-center face of reddit, he should act like it.

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

#128

Post by nanny » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

darkstar999 wrote: post #109

coldpie wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally none of these are specific or concrete.

"Bad communication" - they fire Victoria without telling IAMA moderators "Mods feel like they are volunteering for a for-profit company yet treated poorly." is very concrete and specific "Recent top-down decisions that aren't the "reddit way"". - banning of "hateful" subreddits such as /r/FatPeopleHate "A temporary(?) CEO who doesn't seem to "get" reddit, or at least is not the right person for the job." - that is ve…

>Bad communication. - they fire Victoria without telling IAMA moderators

I asked for things that were already "on the camel's back".

>Mods feel like they are volunteering for a for-profit company yet treated poorly.

They are volunteering for a for-profit company. What are some specific concrete examples of mods being treated poorly? I'm a mod of two subreddits (20k and 8k subscribers) and I've never once been "treated poorly".

>Recent top-down decisions that aren't the "reddit way". - banning of "hateful" subreddits such as /r/FatPeopleHate

Who gets to decide what "the reddit way" actually is? My reddit account is nearly seven years old now and I say "good riddance".

>A temporary(?) CEO who doesn't seem to "get" reddit, or at least is not the right person for the job. - that is very specific and concrete

That's laughable: it's not specific or concrete at all. It's an unsubstantiated, open-ended subjective opinion.

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

#129

Post by smudgy » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

It's quite obvious that you have a greivence against part of the reddit user base since, as you mentioned, you have been the focus of their hate before.

I appreciate your opinion on why the other subreddits were taken offline but I must remind you it's just that, an opinion - only that, it means nothing in the bigger scheme of things.

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

#130

Post by bduerst » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

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.

It's a cognitive bias. The assertion from the admins was pretty clear regarding the harassment of individuals and threats of violence, but rather than acknowledge their prejudice, some have tried to make it into a first amendment issue. On a privately owned website.