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We apologize

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Re: We apologize

#181

Post by psychometry »

evan_ wrote: post #142
vonklaus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Let's not forget the genius of not wanting someone who will "sue her way to the top". To the top of what...reddit? She's already the CEO. Whoever wrote that pretty much explicitly dislikes her for the gender discrimination lawsuit and has little to say about her job performance.

Really, it's right out of the men's rights playbook: Pretend everyone always gets by on merit alone and anyone disputing that fantasy must be trying to cheat their way through life.

Re: We apologize

#182

Post by arfliw »

westernmostcoy wrote: post #104
iaw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that's the case. I just wanted to highlight that she's actually addressing these questions (which is an excellent step forward from a few days ago).

Totally agreed. She's even responding to the more aggressive posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap... Not a fun job, but definitely a fantastic step forward.

I would say it's a good start. Where she goes from here will be what matters. If she goes silent in the weeks and months ahead it will be clear this was just damage control. If she regularly engages the community, as she should, then she'll be on the right track.

See Zuck and his regular 'town hall meetings' on his public news feed. She does nothing like that. The only times we hear from her are when she has an announcement or is forced to respond to heavy criticism.

Re: We apologize

#183

Post by unmagnet »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #12
westernmostcoy wrote: post #9

Why 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…

I had the same experience with my account https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pain, where we essentially force you to pay for ads, to (add) justify your voice time and space, if you are unpopular.∫

Does anyone else find it interesting, if not as a legal-rational process, that a community-builder and or er community-leader is unable to be heard and read because of that lack of logy?

Re: We apologize

#184

Post by psychometry »

serve_yay wrote: post #131
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…

If they're the problem, why is she apologizing to them for doing wrong by them? Why is a supposedly community-based website run by someone the community hates? You don't have to love reddit's community to smell a rat here. It's a complete shitshow.

She's apologizing for the firing, not her existence. Reddit would seem to prefer having her apologize for an irrelevant lawsuit and then resign because the lawsuit conflicts with the personal beliefs of an ever-growing contingent of bitter, young males.

Re: We apologize

#185

Post by bmm6o »

calcol wrote: post #145
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.

Yeah, I've heard that, and that's crazy too. The community actually has a veto on communications from the CEO? Absolutely nuts. They couldn't just hack the backend to give her a billion upvotes?

Re: We apologize

#186

Post by celticninja »

x0x0 wrote: post #171
celticninja wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

my contention -- perhaps not clear enough -- is a ceo the users like will be unable to monetize reddit. After all, ceos the users liked failed for what, 9 years running: 2005 to 2014?

A successful CEO would, if it is possible be able to monetise the site without destroying it. Yes the standard box of tricks could not be applied, so a good CEO would work out how to do it without using examples from their MBA classes.

The management of reddit means they have only really had 2 CEOs, prior to that they were a subsidiary of CondeNast. The previous one leaving rather unexpectedly although by his own volition.

Re: We apologize

#187

Post by arfliw »

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…

With regard to Victoria, she ran the AMA's and was very popular with redditors. Think of it like a sports team cutting a really popular player, without offering an explanation. The fanbase would be really unhappy about that. And this is what reddit does when it's unhappy about something.

The Ellen Pao stuff is complicated, she does have some fault for being the one who made unpopular decisions and the way she managed the process (particularly extremely poor communication) but in general I agree that she gets way too much criticism from the community. She's very unpopular for a bunch of things that are not actually her fault (like people who incorrectly think she censors reddit).

Re: We apologize

#188

Post by psychometry »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #172
psychometry wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say there is no apparent cause, but you're not privy to the details and have no right to be unless you were a reddit employee working closely with her. It would be bad form to publicize the details of anyone's firing, regardless of the position and company. The only legitimately complaint in all of this is that there wasn't any notice to people who depending on the fired person. That doesn't even begin to explain…

>but you're not privy to the details That's why I said there is no apparent cause. >not privy to the details and have no right to be Strictly speaking that's correct. Here in the real world, Reddit might weigh more carefully how their operational decisions have affected actual operations, as opposed to continuing to operate as if they have total control of every aspect of Reddit. >It would be bad form to publicize th…

What was the pent-up discontent about? Removing awful subreddits? I still can't come up with any good reasons why people are so angry. Some moderators should be mildly peeved, but that's about it.

Re: We apologize

#189

Post by jacobtracey »

mybloop wrote: post #175
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…

> Alexis Male. > Yishan Male. > PG Male. > SamA Male. I don't know about you, but I'm starting to see a pattern here.

The outcry was over a female employee being fired. The pattern you're seeing is more likely than not sheer coincidence.

Re: We apologize

#190

Post by jacobtracey »

TarpitCarnivore wrote: post #20
Frenchgeek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The entire userbase doesn't matter that much. The majority of reddit users don't contribute any decent content.

Keeping the minority of users that are actually producing content happy is what they have failed to do and is the real risk - if there's nothing to look at, the rest of the userbase will follow the content somewhere else.

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