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We apologize

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Re: We apologize

#161

Post by celticninja »

rspeer wrote: post #153
celticninja wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think you are comparing the reddit CEO to some bluechip company like Apple or IBM. It isnt anything like them, they produce no goods, their users are their product and more so their moderators. They are a social media company, if you cant deal qwith social media on your own site how are you supposed to be trusted with a social media site? If the CEO was some boring old white man and he had done the same thing then…

Reddit has had several CEOs, which the typical user rarely knew by name. The idea that the CEO of Reddit has anything to do with the average user's experience has come about very recently, and I believe it's being propagated by the fatpeoplehate crowd (she sure affected their experience). The mishandling of IAmA seems to have been done by Alexei Ohanian, but he's not being photoshopped onto Hitler.

> Reddit has had several CEOs, which the typical user rarely knew by name.

I have to say that is wrong. Yishan Wong was the CEO before Ellen Pao. He posted on the site often, he made a bunch of announcements on the site as CEO. Users were well aware of who he was. Prior to that reddit was under CondeNast publications and whilst the CEO of conde nast may not have been well know the admins such as kn0thing, spex, jedberg etc were all well know active users on the site from its inception. There has always been communication between admins with the users through the site.

>The idea that the CEO of Reddit has anything to do with the average user's experience has come about very recently

Again this is wrong. In terms of CEOs Yishan Wong engaged users this when he joined. This was not something that has come about in the last 6 weeks as a result of r/fph being banned.

>The mishandling of IAmA seems to have been done by Alexei Ohanian, but he's not being photoshopped onto Hitler.

Again this is wrong. Ohanian (kn0thing) certainly got involved in the immediate aftermath. I presume because they thought it would be accepted more easily by users if he said it rather than Ellen Pao saying it. He made a faux pas at one point and took some flak for it, but he understands reddit and he had some serious goodwill in the bank so he leveraged that and things are looking peachy for him now. But there is no indication that he was to blame for the AMA mishandling at all, his role appears to be cleanup.

Re: We apologize

#162

Post by iaw »

innguest wrote: post #139
iaw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met a lot of people I'd consider 'success' focused individuals in the Ivies, I suspect if I met her I'd consider her in the same group. There is a focus on a narrow definition of success that is more important than anything else. How that success is accomplished doesn't matter, just that it is. The behavior is surprisingly irrespective of traditional intellect or competence, it's pure focus and drive. It also is…

It's called Narcissism.

I don't know if it maps perfectly to narcissism because there is a huge effort component that is not requisite to being a narcissist but is ever-present in the group I'm trying to describe.

Re: We apologize

#163

Post by Domenic_S »

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…

They recently closed a $50MM round. If that's a "shoestring budget" then we really are in a bubble.

Re: We apologize

#164

Post by [deleted] »

celticninja wrote: post #136
McGlockenshire wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? No, it isn't. Ellen Pao being at fault for everything is a meme spawned by the Gamergate/MRW/anti-SJW crowd. The recent mishandling of the fatpeoplehate ban and then the lack of communication about letting Victoria go have just fanned those existing flames. If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like…

i think you are comparing the reddit CEO to some bluechip company like Apple or IBM. It isnt anything like them, they produce no goods, their users are their product and more so their moderators. They are a social media company, if you cant deal qwith social media on your own site how are you supposed to be trusted with a social media site? If the CEO was some boring old white man and he had done the same thing then…

[deleted]

Re: We apologize

#165

Post by celticninja »

x0x0 wrote: post #151
celticninja wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They have no real reason to dislike her. I dont think that is true. I have used reddit for quite some time, probably since 2006. I have no personal animosity toward her however I dont think she is the right leader for reddit. And I say that as a user, not an owner, shareholder, employee etc. My reasons are because I like they way the old reddit operated. The reason that I say that is because when I started using red…

You're making this far too personal. Reddit is and was a shitty business; afaik, they lost money every year at least through 2012 (Yishan released not raw numbers but a graph showing expenses > revenue). Reddit has to change: at some point, they will either make money, become a billionaire's hobby or vanish. That's completely separate from the fact that certain people were happy to host jailbait and stolen celebrity…

Yes it is not a profitable business, that is not my concern or that of its users. If reddit went under tomorrow and disappeared from the web, users would find a new site (voat.co, some other reddit clone, it doesnt matter) and congregate there.

Are they allowed to monetise their site? Yes of course they are. However there is a fine line between monestising a social media site and killing it. Just look at Digg, they tried to give to much power to superusers and sites that gained traffic from them. Result the users left in droves so that they werent spoon fed corporate shit. It went from a valuation of $150m to being sold for under half a million. It will never regain what it was, diggs are no longer even measure don the site.

The same thing could happen to reddit. The CEOs job is to monetise the site, but if you kill the site you can not monetise it. This is why reddit needs a CEO that the users like. If ellen pao fucks up the monetisation in such a way that it alienates users they will not be forgiving. If the users like a CEO and the CEO fucked up then they are more likely to forgive and remain redditors than if they hate the CEO and the fuckup is the straw that breaks the camels back.

Re: We apologize

#166

Post by [deleted] »

x0x0 wrote: post #151
celticninja wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They have no real reason to dislike her. I dont think that is true. I have used reddit for quite some time, probably since 2006. I have no personal animosity toward her however I dont think she is the right leader for reddit. And I say that as a user, not an owner, shareholder, employee etc. My reasons are because I like they way the old reddit operated. The reason that I say that is because when I started using red…

You're making this far too personal. Reddit is and was a shitty business; afaik, they lost money every year at least through 2012 (Yishan released not raw numbers but a graph showing expenses > revenue). Reddit has to change: at some point, they will either make money, become a billionaire's hobby or vanish. That's completely separate from the fact that certain people were happy to host jailbait and stolen celebrity…

[deleted]

Re: We apologize

#167

Post by chr »

Maybe it was laziness, but till now I've been expecting good things from companies backed by YCombinator. Ekjp and kn0thing are eroding the brand value of YC.

MY 2 cents, seen from far away.

Re: We apologize

#168

Post by rspeer »

celticninja wrote: post #161
rspeer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has had several CEOs, which the typical user rarely knew by name. The idea that the CEO of Reddit has anything to do with the average user's experience has come about very recently, and I believe it's being propagated by the fatpeoplehate crowd (she sure affected their experience). The mishandling of IAmA seems to have been done by Alexei Ohanian, but he's not being photoshopped onto Hitler.

> Reddit has had several CEOs, which the typical user rarely knew by name. I have to say that is wrong. Yishan Wong was the CEO before Ellen Pao. He posted on the site often, he made a bunch of announcements on the site as CEO. Users were well aware of who he was. Prior to that reddit was under CondeNast publications and whilst the CEO of conde nast may not have been well know the admins such as kn0thing, spex, jedbe…

"Several" was the wrong word, I guess, because they weren't CEOs before Yishan. Anyway, I still dispute that the typical user knew Yishan Wong by name.

As for Ohanian (kn0thing), I'm thinking of a screenshot of modmail I saw, which was the main primary source I've seen about how admins screwed this all up. Not sure how to find it again, as it was deep in a thread and Reddit's search is not great, but the gist of it seemed to be that (a) he personally had plans for big changes in how AMA would work, and (b) he was oblivious about how these changes would affect moderators, particularly those organizing an r/science AMA with Stephen Hawking.

Re: We apologize

#169

Post by celticninja »

7Z7 wrote: post #160
celticninja wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes but since his mea culpa the community is not holding it against him. One of the mig issues people have with Ellen Pao is that her first responses on the issue were to the NYT, Buzzfeed etc and not directly to her own users.

>One of the mig issues people have with Ellen Pao.. Bullshit, that's just the newest thing they've loaded their blunderbusses with - and is less than days old. It isn't why they've been calling her a cunt and hitler, and asking for her to be fired or killed for months.

yes it is a recent thing however look at the "we apologise" thread and it is the topic of the top voted comment. People care about it.

The cunt/hitler thing all relates to the banning of r/fph and the reasoning behind it. Her statement to the effect that reddit was not a free-speech site but a safe place was the originator of most of the hatred. Reddit always championed itself as a free-speech site and it was the users that came and stayed for that reason that felt betrayed by her personally.

Re: We apologize

#170

Post by jessedhillon »

jordigh wrote: post #58
shock-value wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the price that's paid to have a site that encourages anonymity. You can't deny that there are benefits to said anonymity at the same time though.

I don't think so. I don't see this kind of behaviour widely upvoted in HN or in Lobsters, and we're no less anonymous here or there.

Could I ask you for an invitation to lobsters?
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