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Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

nytimes.com

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

#161

Post by dbpokorny »

return0 wrote: post #54

Isn't it already too late? How can a new captain save the sinking ship? The new CEO would be standing on a double edged sword. If he reverses course immediately claiming reddit an absolute free-speech enviromnent, the people who wanted a safe-space will be disillusioned, if he doesn't the rest of the users will keep seeking for another platform.

Pushing hard on moderator tools. In the short term, Reddit should watch its moderators, look for usage patterns, and build systems to reduce moderation effort. In the long term, Reddit should develop artificial moderation (AM).

Reddit is the natural place for the discipline of artificial moderation (using AI / ML to help moderate public forums) to develop. For example, an automated "argument detection" bot could intervene when two participants start going down the warpath, acting like a janitor who pushes two rowdy students apart when they start fighting. Or, a bot could detect when a post consists entirely of one participant insulting another and take appropriate action.

These are difficult problems, but Reddit is sitting on a goldmine of training data in the form of the human-generated moderation logs. Reddit should either hire the talent to develop such systems or partner with those who already have (Google / IBM / ...).

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

#162

Post by trhway »

Seems like Reddit hired Ellen without checking up her references at the previous job, ie. Kleiner, and now they harvest the same results - insufficient performance and high scandals.

(note: there is nothing about her sex here - just read the case materials and you'll see that she behaved just like a jerk at Kleiner - for God sake she complained there that some assistant was using company fax to send brain scans of dying from cancer mother)

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

#163

Post by [deleted] »

minimaxir wrote: post #36

Ellen Pao gives the reason for leaving on /r/self: http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3cudi0/resignation_tha... > So why am I leaving? Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles. This is believable because there have been odd business decisions under her watch, not just policy decisions. RedditMade,…

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by return0 »

minimaxir wrote: post #36

Ellen Pao gives the reason for leaving on /r/self: http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3cudi0/resignation_tha... > So why am I leaving? Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles. This is believable because there have been odd business decisions under her watch, not just policy decisions. RedditMade,…

Whoa Ms. Pao went on the defensive there to present herself as the victim. And she already paints the next guy as the uncaring bastard who will only care for user growth. What's left, a lawsuit to follow soon? In any case a pretty bad way to end an admittedly fruitless employment.

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

#166

Post by haroldtootany »

sharkweek wrote: post #70
revelation wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You applaud them on a PR strategy that is akin to dictatorships all over the world denouncing opposition as "terrorists" and criminals? The community is not a coherent block. To give the impression that the criticism stems from an organized group of people that applaud and tolerate death threats is the equivalent of binding it to a strawman and lighting it on fire with gasoline.

The first rule of reddit is unsubscribing from all the default subs and searching for the ones most relevant to your interests. The day I discovered I could do that quickly made Reddit my favorite site on the web (/r/NFL, /r/homeimprovement, /r/television, etc). I'd love to see a discovery feature similar to that of Pinterest built into the signup process that algorithmically signs new users up for subreddits most re…

You'd list 'television' as an interest? Yeesh...

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

#167

Post by edkennedy »

ljk wrote: post #98

It's interesting how fast people go from hating[1] /u/kn0thing to love[2] him again [1]: https://np.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama... [2]: https://pay.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_ol...

And then Ellen echoed his statement: https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3cudi0/resignation_th...

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

#168

Post by moskie »

oldmanjay wrote: post #148
justizin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman. It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman, since a lot of the vitriol predates the past few days.

As someone who has only watched this popcorn feast, I have the sense that she was the subject of vitriol primarily for taking actions that people didn't like. Many of the insults may well have targeted her gender, but that is not the same thing at all. I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.

> I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.

Well, the litmus test can't be simply whether the harassment solely targeted her gender and nothing else. Sexism (and other forms of bigotry) have a more insidious nature to them.

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

#169

Post by redthrowaway »

dummy7953 wrote: post #94
revelation wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You applaud them on a PR strategy that is akin to dictatorships all over the world denouncing opposition as "terrorists" and criminals? The community is not a coherent block. To give the impression that the criticism stems from an organized group of people that applaud and tolerate death threats is the equivalent of binding it to a strawman and lighting it on fire with gasoline.

Well, somebody frickin' wrote those threats. It did happen. And people who should have had the sense to see there were vile pighumpers in their midst did not moderate their nastiness .

>Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#170

Post by unchocked »

GhotiFish wrote: post #110
unchocked wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ellen Pao has been CEO of Reddit for 8 months. A month or so ago, Reddit banned several subreddits for organized harassment behavior. Since Pao had recently lost a gender discrimination lawsuit, aspects of the reddit community pattern-matched the occurances as "Social Justice Warrioring" and engaged in an organized hate-fest on Pao. About a week ago, Victoria, the admin who coordinated Reddit's "ask me anything" subr…

> this second backlash revealed her to be politically compromised could you elaborate on this?

The community turned against her. To illustrate, her apology thread appears to have no further comments from her (making Pao appear aloof), but in reality she did make several mature and understanding comments in the thread, but they each accumulated thousands of downvoted and were buried. Simply put, she became a lightning rod and people's animosity toward her meant that she could no longer be effective as the executive of a community-driven organization.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...

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