That was actually a decent apology not the typical corporate "We are sorry you feel this way non-apology apology".
Yeah it came late. But better late than never.
We apologize
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Re: We apologize
#12Why did this apology come out today and not before Pao spoke to news outlets about this topic? Why wouldn't you try to talk to your upset users quickly and directly? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit-moderato... http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/05/420...
If you note her account's history, you might notice that every single one of her contributions has been mass-downvoted, including earlier responses on the matter. Downvoted content gets hidden. There's an ongoing voting war over the submission itself, with only 61% upvoting. That's way, way low for reddit.
Speculation: It's very possible that they decided to do press work first so that the message would not be muted by downvote brigading. That's a stupid thing to have to do, and has only served to upset even more people.
Re: We apologize
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not really a logical reason to be upset since we don't know the reasons behind her termination. Even if it was a heartless business move, that's still not a very good reason for all the crazy levels of anger directed at Pao. She might be bad at her job, but a lot of it was way over the top.
What are Ellen Pao's qualifications for running a site like Reddit? edit: what's up HN, this is a genuine question. I see that she's made a couple of mistakes that I'd qualify as 'tone deaf' but on the whole she could do a lot worse. What I am wondering about is how a position such as CEO of Reddit (which is first and foremost a community effort) is picked, it would seem to me that you would make a short-list of peop…
What were Terry Semel's qualifications for running a site like Yahoo? Or John Sculley's for running Apple? There are routine examples in tech of people without domain experience being asked to bring themselves up to speed on the job.
The level of abuse being directed at Pao seems disproportionate to her deficiencies as CEO. I can't avoid the niggling thought that this is really still about ethics in game journalism.
Re: We apologize
#14Why did this apology come out today and not before Pao spoke to news outlets about this topic? Why wouldn't you try to talk to your upset users quickly and directly? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit-moderato... http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/05/420...
Reddit co-founder and executive chairman Alexis Ohanian (kn0thing) had something to say about that yesterday:
> Monday is the start of a new week and I wanted to be sure everyone will be online (not on US holiday weekend) for a post.
-- https://www.reddit.com/r/ideasfortheadmins/comments/3c1m67/c...
Re: We apologize
#15I like Reddit, a lot, but the community is shit. I read this apology and then Ellen's reply and that has negative 55 hundred votes. They have no real reason to dislike her. They have no real reason to be mad at the one woman being fired. They're just coming off as a bunch of upset kids with some "authority" in the form of votes or moderation. As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the wo…
Now, imagine what's going to happen as these angry users leave for somewhere else. They're going to take their attitude with them, and the admins of that future site are going to have to deal with the same exact mentality.
Communities that suffer schisms like the one reddit is working itself into don't fare well. You can't build a healthy community out of a mindset like "well, we aren't THEM". This has happened time after time, and I've been on both sides of the problem, sometimes as a user, sometimes as the admin.
Re: We apologize
#16Why did this apology come out today and not before Pao spoke to news outlets about this topic? Why wouldn't you try to talk to your upset users quickly and directly? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit-moderato... http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/05/420...
[deleted]
Re: We apologize
#17They are trying to reframe the discussion around the idea that they failed in communicating. What they failed in, actually, was keeping an astounding and dedicated employee their users loved.
No, I think they're dead on. They're allowed to fire people even if the community likes them.
But they did fail to communicate. They failed to communicate it was going to happen (no public transition). They failed to communicate it DID happen (people found out via side-channels), they failed to communicate a plan to keep things going smoothly (seems they didn't have one, which is amazing).
This applies to other incidents as well. They failed to clearly communicate the rules when they banned a few subreddits a few months ago. There are TONS of subs that are in clear violations of various rules but nothing happens to them and no one has every clearly explained why. Just "We're doing something" statements and guessing.
Quite a few of their recent makes were made SO MUCH WORSE by their lack of clear and timely communication. They would still be issues, but at least people could understand what was going on instead of rapid-rumor-mill-tea-leaf-interpreting.
Re: We apologize
#18I like Reddit, a lot, but the community is shit. I read this apology and then Ellen's reply and that has negative 55 hundred votes. They have no real reason to dislike her. They have no real reason to be mad at the one woman being fired. They're just coming off as a bunch of upset kids with some "authority" in the form of votes or moderation. As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the wo…
Victoria being let off ruined a lot of currently planned AMA's - because she played such a huge part in it all.
It's like firing the person who wrote a language your company uses internally with little to no documentation: absolutely everything is going to go to hell until someone comes in, learns what and how things were done, and can replace that person.
With no word as to why she left or was fired - it screams something political or a massive disconnect with the userbase. AMA's on Reddit are a pretty huge deal. It's a large part of Reddit's popularity - such that even the POTUS has had an "AMA" on Reddit. So when you disrupt how they work and give absolutely no word as to why the person who played such a large part in many AMA's being scheduled, planned, and hosted: you're going to step on a lot of toes.
I read one story of a person flying to New York for an AMA. He had to change his plans and work with the person planning the AMA to schedule different interviews or sightseeing on his time because the AMA was cancelled due to Victoria being let off. That's a loss of a person's time and money with no explanation being given for why someone who was performing their job suddenly wasn't tasked with the job. I'd be pretty peeved myself. Luckily the man was very understanding it was outside of the moderator's control with Victoria being let off, but I imagine some mods aren't as lucky with their scheduled AMA's.
Re: We apologize
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are Ellen Pao's qualifications for running a site like Reddit? edit: what's up HN, this is a genuine question. I see that she's made a couple of mistakes that I'd qualify as 'tone deaf' but on the whole she could do a lot worse. What I am wondering about is how a position such as CEO of Reddit (which is first and foremost a community effort) is picked, it would seem to me that you would make a short-list of peop…
What were Terry Semel's qualifications for running a site like Yahoo? Or John Sculley's for running Apple? There are routine examples in tech of people without domain experience being asked to bring themselves up to speed on the job. The level of abuse being directed at Pao seems disproportionate to her deficiencies as CEO. I can't avoid the niggling thought that this is really still about ethics in game journalism.
> I can't avoid the niggling thought that this is really still about ethics in game journalism.
Hey, there's that convenient boogeyman again that you guys continue to use to drive your narrative!
Edit: Hahaha oh wow -2. We're letting our ridiculous bias show now.
Since moderators and a whole community are expressing their dislike of poor communication and misconduct by admins (http://imgur.com/ICSz7Xp & http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama...) and CEO of Reddit, by protesting via closing down their subreddits over the poor communication and firing of a beloved AMA coordinator, Victoria Taylor, it must be the work of a massive "misogynist harassment campaign", r-right guys?
I cannot imagine the mental gymnastics one has to perform to draw that conclusion. Smart people being stupid or just willfully ignorant?
Re: We apologize
#20They are trying to reframe the discussion around the idea that they failed in communicating. What they failed in, actually, was keeping an astounding and dedicated employee their users loved.
Not exactly : that employee was the sole line of communication for the most popular part of the site. The firing by it self would have had some people grumbling a bit, but it wouldn't have become the newsworthy shitstorm it became. The problem was that the moderators weren't warned and were left without any other means of dealing with the needs of the many events planned and happening. They were already asking for ye…
> Redditors may be the product, but a farm doesn't last long if you don't care for the cows.
But out of Reddit's entire user base how many are actually pissed off enough to go someplace else? Let alone how many are actually pissed off over this or other politics around Reddit and mods. I'd have to imagine the number is very small.