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

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

#131

Post by munificent » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #118

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 replac…

> Most people who frequent the site dont care at all about the plight of the moderators.

They care about the quality of the comment they see on the subreddits they follow. That transitively means they really care about the plight of the moderators. They just don't know it.

> Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters.

On the well-moderated subreddits—which are increasingly the largest ones—they do a hell of a lot more than spam filtering. Moderators at subreddits like /r/NoStupidQuestions, /r/science, or many of the "Ask ___" subreddits are responsible for instilling the voice and culture of the subreddit.

> 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.

I'm not saying they couldn't be replaced. But if you do that, those subreddits will fundamentally change. And, in many cases, the userbase may go elsewhere before the subreddit finds its feet again.

> In the immortal words of southpark, if you dont like America, then you can get out.

I don't think reddit needs to worry much about moderators leaving. But they should really worry about content contributors leaving. The Digg v4 exodus happened virtually overnight. There's nothing magical about reddit that ensures that can't happen to them.

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

#132

Post by slg » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #121

slg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't expect my boss to dive into my commit logs to figure out what I am doing. I instead tell him.

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

#133

Post by vonmoltke » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #90

vonmoltke wrote: post #59

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? 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 m…

> Sorry, but is this guest the Queen of England or the Pope?

Irrelevant. You make a commitment to someone, you keep it or make alternate arrangements.

> Did the mods pay for his/her way to New York?

Completely irrelevant, as this is about how the company treated a guest.

> 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.

I would argue that it has been. To what degree, and whether it materially affects the sub, remains to be seen.

> Or that they, the mods themselves, spent their lives savings to fly that celebrity into town.

No, they aren't. Not even close.

> I'm not saying that the celebrity deserved to be snubbed

No, but you are implying that it is a trivial occurrence.

> but non-conspiracy-shit happens, and firing/rehirings can be a chaotic process that yes, sometimes lasts longer than a couple of days.

I know shit happens. I almost used that phrase myself above. However, there is a proper response to shit happening. In this case there should have been some sort of alternative arrangement made for the person coming in, even if it was just a managed delay to figure something out. You do not just turn someone who came to town to see someone at your organization out on the street on their own.

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

#134

Post by zxcvcxz » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #132

munificent wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't expect my boss to dive into my commit logs to figure out what I am doing. I instead tell him.

Do you tell your boss about the code you don't commit?

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

#135

Post by npizzolato » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #104

001sky wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They fired the relationship manager for the AMAs. The way the did that harmed/ruined some relationships. The 'how' is as important as the what in that case, so your comment seems bizarreley off base. This is a wholy different issue that the dust up a month ago. Thats why a petition for the CEO's resignation has 200,000 signatures. The incident 1 month ago promted onlt 10K or so, so this latest issue is a 20x increase…

"The 'how' is as important as the what in that case, so your comment seems bizarreley off base." You forgot the 'why'. Why was she let go? Reddit, the company, was paying her salary and they have the right to let her go if they feel she isn't doing her job. You don't even know the whole story. You are defending the mods based on biased and one-sided information. "Thats why a petition for the CEO's resignation has 200…

They're not mad that she was fired. They're mad because she was fired aND reddit leadership had no plan to help the communities that depended on her work. Instead they left them high and dry. That's a very important distinction.

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

#136

Post by basch » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #131

basch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 replac…

> Most people who frequent the site dont care at all about the plight of the moderators. They care about the quality of the comment they see on the subreddits they follow. That transitively means they really care about the plight of the moderators. They just don't know it. > Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. On the well-moderated subreddits—which are increasingly the largest ones—they do a hell of a…

>they really care about the plight of the moderators

no they dont. its like henchmen in a movie. if some fall more will take their place. its a thankless task. they dont care at all about the individual, they just care that the group functions. the group will function without the individual as long as there are reenforcements.

>in many cases, the userbase may go elsewhere before the subreddit finds its feet again.

probably to another subreddit, like when /r/trees replaced /r/marijuana (thats still a win for reddit corp)

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

#137

Post by res0nat0r » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

jonlucc wrote: post #126

res0nat0r wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sure? Questions go there, then the person will follow up with whatever human replies and act appropriately. People leave companies all of the time unexpectedly, the world ending drama made it hard for most people to take seriously. Any immediate issues could have been handled with some speedbumps, if the mods were willing to act reasonable and proceed forward.

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

#138

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #104

001sky wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They fired the relationship manager for the AMAs. The way the did that harmed/ruined some relationships. The 'how' is as important as the what in that case, so your comment seems bizarreley off base. This is a wholy different issue that the dust up a month ago. Thats why a petition for the CEO's resignation has 200,000 signatures. The incident 1 month ago promted onlt 10K or so, so this latest issue is a 20x increase…

"The 'how' is as important as the what in that case, so your comment seems bizarreley off base." You forgot the 'why'. Why was she let go? Reddit, the company, was paying her salary and they have the right to let her go if they feel she isn't doing her job. You don't even know the whole story. You are defending the mods based on biased and one-sided information. "Thats why a petition for the CEO's resignation has 200…

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by vonklaus » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #118

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 replac…

> it reminds me of Reagan firing every air traffic controller who went on strike

Unionized laborers collectively bargaining for more money from the company they work for is almost the exact opposite of unpaid volunteers maintaining the profit making infrastructure of a for profit corporation.

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

#140

Post by ChrisPebble » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:55 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…

We need to differentiate between fault and responsibility. Victoria may very well have been at fault, but the responsibility for steering the ship was management's and they appear to have been unaware that you needed someone in the engine room to make sure everything kept working.

Even if Victoria hid everything she did and didn't document anything, the tone of the initial response was one of surprise that seems to indicate they didn't fundamentally understand how everything worked.