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

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

#251

Post by amyjess » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #236

amyjess wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The fact that Victoria was canned accounts for maybe 10% of the outrage. The other 90% is the way the firing was done (uncommunicated, disruptive, and all around poorly handled), and is what led to the annoyance boiling over.

Oh, that's a perfectly valid complaint, and it's one I agree with.

But there are a large amount of people treating Victoria as a saint. I've seen a lot of posts going "They fired the one admin everyone actually liked!", and I'm worried there's going to be a huge backlash when the reason she got fired leaks out.

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

#252

Post by codingdave » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:30 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…

I have yet to see anything that looks like disregard for reddit's business. On the contrary, everything I have seen has implied that reddit is trying to monetize the community, and the community does not like it.

Of course, I don't have any inside information, so I could be wrong on all counts, but the rumor is that Victoria was fired for resisting turning AMAs into a revenue stream. I have seen other moderators complaining that they have been feeling a push to monetize their work, and have been strongly resisting it as it would hinder free speech.

While the moderators are probably correct, it points more to a basic disagreement about what the site is. Most redditors feel that the site is all about community, and maintaining said community is the #1 goal. But the actual management team of the business surely needs to be looking at monetization.

That is the core disagreement - it is not about recent events, it is about the fact that one side wants to monetize reddit, and the other side does not.

Again, not actually knowing anything, this could be way off base... it is just my perspective as an outside observer.

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

#253

Post by lmartel » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:31 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #120

lmartel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conten…

How do you have "multiple backups" of a full-time, paid staff position at a company you don't work for?

Perhaps the AMA mods shouldn't have let Victoria take on so much work and responsibility, but she was explicitly put in that position by Reddit-the-company. Removing her from that position without warning was a disservice to Reddit-the-community, even if the AMA mods should have been better prepared.

And no, I'm not a Reddit mod, I wouldn't even really call myself a Reddit user. I prefer HN and other niche forums for coherent discussion and imageboards for "internet culture" (and shitposting), and personally find Reddit to be an awkward hybrid of the two.

That said, this situation has the potential to bring important lessons about online communities into the mainstream, so I think it's worth correcting folks who are blaming the wrong people.

EDIT: and to clarify the dig at Digg, the Reddit mods are not the only ones getting upset. The userbase has rallied behind the mods because of their own long-standing issues, mostly regarding Reddit-the-company censoring Reddit-the-community to appeal to advertisers.

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

#254

Post by tmd83 » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:31 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.

Your boss don't really need to see every commit to know what you are doing. It should be visible/understandable from the product. And most people who are beating the drums talking about what they are doing at micro level are more focused on making themselves look good than doing the work. So its a bad thing to rely upon.

And you should be fired first from your managerial post if you fire someone yet not know what kind of work they do and what they are responsible for. For that matter you should be blacklisted from holding any managerial position moving forward.

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

#255

Post by Merovius » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

zxcvcxz wrote: post #134

slg wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If I expect this code to be relevant to my job and their evaluation of it: Sure. Why wouldn't I?

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

#256

Post by okasaki » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #225

nostrademons wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Reddit equivalent to this is voting, and then the Reddit equivalent to meta-moderation is moderation.

Not really. Reddit's system is a pale shell of Slashdot's system and doesn't have any kind of "watching the watchers" features. Imagine how Reddit would be if you could pick reasons for votes, and then, say, filter posts so you see things which were upvoted for being insightful, rather than being merely funny.

Reddit moderation is about controlling submissions, not voting on comments.

Last time I checked slashdot's submissions are controlled by its staff.

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

#257

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:38 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…

Reddit's moderator system isn't perfect, by a long shot. As with its voting systems, it's subject to abuse: calous moderation, power-tripping, and a lack of integrity, if not outright corruption. Reddit's own rules make ensuring quality moderation difficult -- admins cannot remove moderators unless they violate site rules. This leads to situations such as /r/xkcd being overtaken by a group of neo-nazi holocaust denying anti-semitic MRA promotors. Eventually resolved (see the subreddit's wiki for details).

But: Reddit absolutely relies on moderators. Which means that it's putting power in the hands of an unpaid workforce.

I actually find Reddit's moderation tools and systems pretty useful and better than most, though I manage only two small subs (each So, no, individual Redditors may not individually care about the personal plights of moderators, much as you probably don't put much thought into the working conditions of the person who installed and adjusted the brakes of the car heading toward you. But you absolutely have a vested interest in the consequences of their work.

More on what does and doesn't work well at Reddit, from about a year ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/20yhxc/reddit_...

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

#258

Post by genericuser » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

burglecut wrote: post #215

slg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are defining the community as people who interact with the site (or maybe content creators). I am defining it as people who visit the site. The old 90-10-1 rule suggests the community how you define it is only a small subset of the community how I defined it. If someone doesn't care enough to even create an account on Reddit, what makes you think they have strong feeling about the personnel decisions of the compa…

It doesn't matter if the 90 don't feel strongly. What happens when the 10 move to another site?

And what site would they move to given the current options? Reddit might as well be the only game in town now a days pretty much.

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

#259

Post by kevdigital » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:40 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…

The other subs shutting down "in protest" I found laughable. I had a hard time understanding what exactly they were protesting and the vocal minority sounded like a lot of people just raging against the machine. Reddit the company is the power structure and people just want to tear them down.

But why exactly? Not sure. This reminds me a lot of Occupy Wall Street. People see one protest breaking out then pile on with their own grievances. There was a lack of communication to the /r/iama mods about Victoria being let go...ok...now we're complaining about mod tools and censorship??

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

#260

Post by Nadya » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 6:42 PM UTC

kevdigital wrote: post #259

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 other subs shutting down "in protest" I found laughable. I had a hard time understanding what exactly they were protesting and the vocal minority sounded like a lot of people just raging against the machine. Reddit the company is the power structure and people just want to tear them down. But why exactly? Not sure. This reminds me a lot of Occupy Wall Street. People see one protest breaking out then pile on with…

This has been building up for a long time. Recent events was just the catalyst.