Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief • Hacker News Board

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#461

Post by _jal » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:12 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #300

badsock wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but those last two lines read to me like a callout to #gamergate's "It's about ethics in journalism" BS.

So now we're dropping random controversies in the middle of discussions to try make a point? This post is really attracting the worst in people.

Seriously. Somehow this topic became a slightly less obnoxious Gamergate twittergasm.

So, does anyone have guesses as to what the material issues were in the board wanting her gone? I confess to having little interest in Reddit most of the time, so I haven't paid attention to what's going on there (outside of the recent firing-related explosion).

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#462

Post by tmerr » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:12 AM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #200

As someone who frequents only a couple of subs on Reddit (which were completely insulated from this fiasco), I have no idea why people were so pissed off. So she made a bad decision. Big f cking deal. "She's killing the community!". Well, if your idea of 'community' is making public rape threads (while you use a throwaway) and threaten to kill a person, then maybe your community deserves to die. Reddit has a lot* of…

I think users were pissed off because of the lack of transparency. No one knew what the admins were deleting. It was up to the community to find out which subreddits were banned and why. Further the admins never logically explained their decisions, for example, to ban fph over srs. From the outside it seemed like an arbitrary power trip. And for what? Reddit's moderation system is perfect: let users form their own communities and moderate them as they wish. Some of the communities will be terrible but that's the beauty of it; you don't have to go to them. This system is what let reddit grow to the size it is today. While hackernews takes a different approach (moderation at the admin level isn't unusual) that is only manageable for a site of a smaller size.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#463

Post by morbius » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:13 AM UTC

generic_user wrote: post #313

magicalist wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits. All of which is factual information available to the public and even the media has to admit these things are facts. Oh please. You can disclaim the disgusting statements made all over reddit recently as not part of a coherent community or whatever, but don't pretend they didn't exist a…

The most disgusting posting I have seen is by our good friends the yellow journalists trying to weave there 'Reddit is misogynist' narrative. While Redditors are upset that Pao fires perhaps the most competent and well liked woman working at Reddit. Urinalism is largely discredited at this point due to there bias and agenda.

Victoria was beloved despite the fact she was a woman, not necessarily because of it. I understand what you're trying to say, but it doesn't really hold up.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#464

Post by danielweber » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:14 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #291

DennisP wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the subreddits. With my subscriptions I barely noticed the whole thing.

As I mentioned last time this was on HN, me three. I think there's an interesting cultural weirdness about Reddit here. Part of the problem with brigading is that if you link to another post in another subreddit, you're already logged in and have exactly as much power to upvote and downvote and comment as you did on the subreddit where you came from. There's the entire "no participation" community-by-obscurity trick,…

There are many technical solutions here.

First is realizing that there are technical solutions. Some people say "you don't want technical solutions to social problems" but the fact that subreddits have no protection against brigading at all is a serious design flaw with reddit[1].

Second is some way to require subscription for some period of time for votes to appear or to count. The CSS-hack stuff was silly, and as someone who has been on reddit since its first year, I have never seen the CSS-side of reddit because I never turned it on.

One of the big complaints from the blackout was the complete lack of tool support and this is an example. Reddit tried to paper over the technical shortcoming with rules and social hacks but once different reddit communities who didn't like each other realized there was a way to attack each other they did so.

[1] to be fair I wouldn't have realized it either if I was in charge of the subreddit design

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#465

Post by scrollaway » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:14 AM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #257

michaelmrose wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She had a affair with a married senior partner who was also a lecherous jerk at her prior job, betraying both her spouse and her fellow cheaters spouse. Then when he, the lecher, was under fire for his treatment of another female subordinate she defended him.

I know the story. What I want to know is how this is relevant to her tenure as CEO. Which you've failed to specify.

You asked, verbatim, "What the fuck is this?". Parent answered. But somehow, parent is to blame for not answering the rest of your very rhetorical-looking post.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#466

Post by danielweber » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:15 AM UTC

city41 wrote: post #320

colinbartlett wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a heavy reddit user for 8 years and I did not know about this until I read about it in the New York Times. It's really a small subset of the reddits that were touched by the entire ordeal.

It completely and totally dominated /r/all for days, even weeks. /r/all is an aggregate of the most popular posts for the entire site, so I disagree only a small subset were affected. Maybe in number of subreddits, but the subreddits that were affected are absolutely gigantic.

Most people are completely unaware of /r/all

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#467

Post by istvan__ » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:17 AM UTC

prawn wrote: post #80

istvan__ wrote: post #31

I am opening a bottle of champagne and at the same time answer my own question: it took 3 weeks for the community to get rid off a tyrant. Well done Reddit! Friendly reminder that if you are using downvotes for disagreement than you are doing it wrong.

PG has posted on HN saying that downvoting for disagreement is fine.

Any link or should I just believe you? I really like to believe everything I read on the internet btw. :)

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#468

Post by danielweber » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:17 AM UTC

sbilstein wrote: post #222

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an occasional user of reddit, this whole ordeal has confirmed the reason why I prefer not to hang out in its forums. I have no idea whether Ellen was a capable CEO, but the vitriol which I kept seeing peripherally (through other news articles and here on HN) was absolutely appalling.

Honestly I'm so disappointed that Reddit's management allowed such a crappy culture to evolve in their forums for so long. I remember signing on in 2010 and just feeling really uncomfortable browsing any of the major subreddits. Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez?

> Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez?

The admins asked violentacrez to help with the /r/creepshots. Later history got rewritten to say that he had created it, maybe to throw him under the bus.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#469

Post by axlprose » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:20 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #441

axlprose wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So questioning ethics in any kind of journalism anywhere is automatically BS now because of some random highly-opinionated internet drama? Way to discourage critical thinking. Orwell and Huxley would be proud.

The irony in this comment about not discouraging critical thinking whilst shaming someone drawing a parallel... first overstating the GP's case to extremes, then doing a form of Reductio ad Hitlerum... ... it's just delicious.

There's no reason why my comments shouldn't be analyzed critically either. So if you feel up to it, please do so. But the comment I responded to did not exhibit any logical analyses, nor any reminders to remain analytical.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#470

Post by azernik » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 12:20 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #299

azernik wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Reddit is that politics.vitriol.hate.anger has a very large presence in the default subreddits.

I strongly believe causality runs the other way... becoming a default reddit puts you into an Eternal September that no community could possibly survive. But in the end, the result is the same.

I think you are very correct.

Maybe one of the nice things about UseNet was that you could only be signed up for a forum that you explicitly looked for? That at least forces the trolls to go out of their way to interfere with general-interest sections, not just go after them out of laziness.