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We apologize

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Re: We apologize

#141

Post by innguest »

psychometry wrote: post #31
emehrkay wrote: post #10

I 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…

One look at the completely irrelevant second sentence of the petition to remove her [1] should tell you everything to know about why users are actually angry at her. This outcry would've been minor if reddit had a male CEO without the failed lawsuit in the rear view mirror. Reddit has harbored toxic subreddits for long enough that they've nurtured a huge user base of racists and misogynists. It's a demographic crisis…

> This outcry would've been minor if reddit had a male CEO without the failed lawsuit in the rear view mirror.

If the Reddit CEO were male AND their "failed lawsuit" were also about a dishonest attempt at smearing the name of innocent companies and people - like cowards and people without principles do - then I bet you the outcry would be the same.

Good people hate liars, and there's no coming back from playing the victim and seeking compensation unjustifiably.

I won't quote here but search for the points made by celticninja. It's incredible that we allow women to get away with so much that we even forget to acknowledge that liars and unprincipled narcissists come in all shapes and colors. Don't hate the gender, hate the (lack of) principles.

Re: We apologize

#142

Post by evan_ »

vonklaus wrote: post #108
psychometry wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think you're being a bit premature in your assessment of Pao? She's an interim CEO who's been on the job mere months. Shutting down the subreddits she did needed to happen in order for reddit to be viable long-term. This latest issue is just about disaffected male teenagers looking for a reason to get mad at the new female CEO. It's so transparent and so pathetic.

> This latest issue is just about disaffected male teenagers looking for a reason to get mad at the new female CEO > It's so transparent and so pathetic. I just don't find it obvious that it is because she is a woman. I also didn't realize it was only socially mal-adjusted male teenagers who are calling for her ouster. 200K people signed the petition to find a new CEO. Why do you think this is just angsty women hatin…

You mean this petition:

https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of-red...

Which doesn't list any actual specific grievances, but does mention the completely irrelevant gender discrimination lawsuit she was involved with? The one that supporters are signing with openly misogynistic and racist slogans and nicknames? The one that's full of duplicate signatures and obviously fake names? That's the petition you're talking about?

Re: We apologize

#143

Post by pbreit »

snowwrestler wrote: post #80
pbreit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's not very likable. You don't see down voting like this for Alexis, Yishan or, elsewhere, PG and SamA. She still speaks more in MBA-ease like "providing tools" and "listening to users" and "communicated poorly", etc. And the person fired was by most accounts a well-liked, very visible, performing employee. Dismissing someone like that with very little care was horrific management. Edit: I don't know why I include…

When I looked at his account during the height of the anger, Alexis's every comment was below -1,000. He got downvoted hard.

You're right. I made an edit.

Re: We apologize

#144

Post by noahlt »

GuiA wrote: post #72

This is just a testament to how most MBAs are incapable of seeing past the blinders that were put on their eyes in B school. Anyone who's been in Silicon Valley long enough will have seen this in many other forms (I know I have), although perhaps not as high profile as this one. The success of Reddit is directly attributable to high profile subs (/r/AskScience, /r/AskHistorians, /r/AMA, /r/ListenToThis, etc.) and les…

Your opening potshot at MBAs detracts from the meat of your comment, which contains at least two important insights: (1) the Reddit "product" and community are inseparable; (2) to manage a community you must understand the community, which almost always requires participation in the community.

Re: We apologize

#145

Post by calcol »

bmm6o wrote: post #121

It's crazy to me how poorly this whole recent "revolt" was handled. The only thing of value to Reddit Inc is the community, so you think they would be more proactive about everything, that they would be hiring more community managers rather than firing key ones. Is this their Digg moment? Probably not, but how many more fuckups like this can they make before the users leave for good? I've cut Pao a lot of slack in th…

She did, in fact, attempt to reply to early discussions on Reddit but she was downvoted into oblivion (e.g. -5500+ down votes) and she wasn't ever going to be heard, no matter how relevant or important her discussion was. So she probably thought it was smarter (and would get better exposure while the community cools down a little bit) to communicate with Buzzfeed et. al.

Re: We apologize

#146

Post by evan_ »

MisterWebz wrote: post #91
psychometry wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One look at the completely irrelevant second sentence of the petition to remove her [1] should tell you everything to know about why users are actually angry at her. This outcry would've been minor if reddit had a male CEO without the failed lawsuit in the rear view mirror. Reddit has harbored toxic subreddits for long enough that they've nurtured a huge user base of racists and misogynists. It's a demographic crisis…

A bunch of misogynists who are upset that a female employee was fired. Right.

No, you're right- they don't care about that at all. They're mad that the administration are cracking down on abusive subreddits like "fat people hate" and all of the revenge porn subs that got shut down last year. They're pretending to care about the Victoria thing because it's more socially acceptable.

Re: We apologize

#147

Post by vacri »

glorien wrote: post #39

Why do people moderate large subreddits? They don't get paid... what are they actually getting out of it? Why continue to do it? "fuck you, pay me"

Do you have children? Pets? Do you charge them for giving them a hug? Do you go out for a beer with friends? If so, do you charge them for your time?

"Fuck you, pay me" is about not letting people demand your professional skills for free or letting payment slide because [excuse]. It's got nothing to do with voluntary contribution.

Re: We apologize

#148

Post by psychometry »

axlprose wrote: post #134
psychometry wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use Twitter, so I have no idea. But each company, despite their freewheeling public images, has a right to dictate how their services are used. If that means adopting a stronger stance on these toxic elements in order to improve their user experience (and attractiveness to advertisers), it's probably best to do it. Reddit is not beholden to to their users to the degree that those users probably believe. Nor a…

> Reddit is not beholden to to their users to the degree that those users probably believe. Nor are they beholden to some imagined ethos about being a place where all speech is protected. You're right, but it doesn't matter whether they're "beholden" to it or not, they're the consumers and they're telling the market that they want a platform with transparency and where speech is protected. It's just supply and demand…

Reddit needs to worry about what their advertisers want, too, which I imagine does not include a place where TheRedPill and CoonTown are thriving.

Re: We apologize

#149

Post by celticninja »

snowwrestler wrote: post #110
Raphmedia wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I have been a moderator on a website of slightly less than a million registered users from 2003 to 2008 so I have my heart on the moderator's side. The moderators of Reddit actually have very legitimate issues and are bringing points that need to be addressed. Moderators of websites as big as reddit should be managed correctly and supervised. They should also have a line on communication with the administ…

I have to wonder how many of these issues are the result of poor allocation of limited resources. Reddit runs on a shoestring for an audience that big, and still loses money. As I understand Victoria's position, a full salary went to hand-hold celebrities during AMAs. That's a lot to spend for a portion of the participants in one subreddit (I don't think every AMA got that support). Given limited resources, that mean…

it was not just one subreddit though. She orgamised a lot of AMAs on a lot of subreddits. r/IAMA was the main one, but she did a lot for r/books, r/science etc. Specifically if you look at r/science AMAs these tend not to be for the people to shift their latest product or raise awareness of their charity but to impart knowledge onto the public. TO explain current news stories usually with the people that ran or worked directly on the project. So it was not spent solely on the participants of one subreddit. However it was also her work that helped provide more credibility to the format. Things like the barack obama AMA were major factors in driving people to the site. And you only have to look at how the morgan freeman or woody harrelson AMAs went to get an idea of how a poorly managed AMA could quickly become a PR car crash. Having Victoria protected both the site, its users and the AMA guests by giving them someone who knew the process, what would and what would not work.

>Since the value primarily comes from the users and mods, let them organize and run the AMAs from now on

This is not what they have proposed. They have set up a team to deal with AMA issues. So now there is a team where there was once a single point of contact with direct responsibility. They dont want to concentrate on software they want to monetize the site. AMAs are one of their best features for doing that, it brings in advertisers, page views, recognition, credibility etc so that they handled the whole thing so poorly reflects badly on management.

Re: We apologize

#150

Post by calcol »

Looking past the vitriol towards Ellen Pao, this seems to be primarily due to a history of miscommunication between moderators, who feel they should have more power and better ways to handle the communities they support, and the admins of Reddit. While I think that there are definite issues on both sides -- I'm not a moderator, especially not of a big subreddit, so I don't know how disrespectful or how much the admins ignored the moderators requests, so my perspective is of an outsider -- I really feel like this is all just a temper tantrum that the moderators handled poorly, potentially purposefully. The users by and large did not need to know that Victoria was fired, and it's a shame that the moderators 1) let that information out, and 2) by letting it out, effectively let it be used as a base for a parade against Ellen Pao. It can't be argued that the moderators didn't/couldn't know this would happen because this kind of shit happens on Reddit all the time, and the more vocal parts of the community will cling to their dislike of Pao with this.

I think that the admins should have handled it better, for sure -- they could have at least given the moderators that relied on Victoria's help the heads up of, "hey, we are going to transition to a new community manager, for the time being X, Y, and Z are going to occur," but the backlash from the community and that the moderators are effectively using the community for their own gains instead of trying to handle it internally is a pretty bad reflection on how the community is structured as a whole. All I can think of is that this is basically 4chan and social media combined.

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