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We apologize

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Re: We apologize

#201

Post by uxcn »

joeevans1000 wrote: post #87
MBCook wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 incid…

> No, I think they're dead on. They're allowed to fire people even if the community likes them. Well, this is true, because as owners can do whatever they want. But Reddit's 'product' is community, plain and simple. So firing a loved admin is essentially taking away a bit of the reason for being on the site for many of the users. I think at the heart of the discontent is the tension between a grass roots community an…

Social sites really aren't easy to monetize without pissing off your users. MySpace imploded, Twitter still isn't profitable, Google backed off'ish from Plus, etc... I think Facebook is one of the few that seemed to successfully monetize a free social site.

I think the issue is that Pao (et al.) genuinely don't understand their community. That's the major source of the friction. Consequently, they can't figure out a realistic plan to build a healthy business around it. They seem to manage to piss a large percentage of their community off with every minor change they try to make. It's a bit sad because it's a huge community.

Possibly Aether (http://getaether.net/) might be something like what you have in mind.

Re: We apologize

#202

Post by girvo »

steveklabnik wrote: post #199
001sky wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't they just 'pin' the CEO's post to the top? This reeks of lack of imagination.

Given the way this discussion has gone so far, then people will trash the admins for "pushing content they want to the top of the page" or similar.

While I think the entire furore is completely misguided and utterly childish, I doubt that would've been the case. Besides, they have a blog.

Re: We apologize

#203

Post by lookbothways »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #125
sanderjd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? I can envision a configuration of reddit corporate structure where there is a responsive, deeply involved, and powerful "head of community" position who would respond to the community in these situations, while the CEO does more traditional CEO stuff like talking to investors and press (among other things). The problem seems to me to be that…

> 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…

>If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like this, nor would they be the best person to be publishing apologies.

You mean like Brendan Eich? (CTO, but still)

Or, as long as we're talking about online megacommunities, how about moot of 4chan? He stepped down as the owner of 4chan half a year ago and people are still mad at him.

Re: We apologize

#204

Post by brymaster »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #125
sanderjd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? I can envision a configuration of reddit corporate structure where there is a responsive, deeply involved, and powerful "head of community" position who would respond to the community in these situations, while the CEO does more traditional CEO stuff like talking to investors and press (among other things). The problem seems to me to be that…

> 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…

> Ellen Pao being at fault for everything is a meme spawned by the Gamergate/MRW/anti-SJW crowd.

No, it wasn't.

> If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like this

Nice meme. Let's address both the race and sex parts:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+brendan+eich

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+tim+armstrong

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+satya+nadella

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+mark+pincus

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+yishan+wong

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=boycott+papa+johns

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=hobby+lobby+scotus

and extra special: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=cancelcolbert

Re: We apologize

#205

Post by sanderjd »

dredmorbius wrote: post #197
sanderjd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? I can envision a configuration of reddit corporate structure where there is a responsive, deeply involved, and powerful "head of community" position who would respond to the community in these situations, while the CEO does more traditional CEO stuff like talking to investors and press (among other things). The problem seems to me to be that…

A key role of the CEO is in addressing key constituencies and stakeholders: investors, business partners, customers, employees. And in Reddit's case, the people who do much of the heavy lifting in managing the forums, and in participating in discussions on the site. There are limits to how much time you want to dedicate to any one constituency. But yes, when you've got a problem with your mods and users on a mod-and-…

I would say that the CEO's key role is more to make sure that key constituencies and stakeholders are addressed as effectively as possible, not necessarily to address them directly themselves. Sometimes it is actually more effective to delegate that job. Having said that, it certainly seems to be the case that the closer a constituency is to the core competency of the business, the more likely it is that they should be addressed directly by the CEO, and I buy the argument that moderators and heavy contributors should be the core competency or reddit.

Re: We apologize

#206

Post by McGlockenshire »

lookbothways wrote: post #203
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…

>If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like this, nor would they be the best person to be publishing apologies. You mean like Brendan Eich? (CTO, but still) Or, as long as we're talking about online megacommunities, how about moot of 4chan? He stepped down as the owner of 4chan half a year ago and people are still mad at him.

Go listen to the live Q&A moot did at the end. Yes, all eight hours of it. All community managers should strive to be at peace with the world as moot was. He truly understood his community and understood that no matter what he did, there'd still be people hating him.

Re: We apologize

#207

Post by nailer »

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…

According to the trial, Pao slept with a married colleague and then tried using it as leverage for the next few years. It's ugly but certainly a relevant aspect of Pao's character.

Re: We apologize

#208

Post by DanBC »

unmagnet wrote: post #183
McGlockenshire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Your pain account got downvotes because the posts were incoherent.

You may want to include stuff in your profile about your communication style. Your posts frequently seem to have Markov-chain like fragments.

Re: We apologize

#209

Post by unmagnet »

DanBC wrote: post #208
unmagnet wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Your pain account got downvotes because the posts were incoherent. You may want to include stuff in your profile about your communication style. Your posts frequently seem to have Markov-chain like fragments.

Thlog thear thrauma trauma-chain fragments often face bitcism before bitwism∫ #emosec( #infosec(( #emoinfosec( ((

~~Literacy and biteracy are beaten by apathological amemerroriolate volitanguage systems.~~

Re: We apologize

#210

Post by Niten »

bmm6o wrote: post #185
calcol wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Much of this controversy is driven by the community's loss of trust in the site's administration. Do you think the tactic you suggest would be constructive toward rebuilding that trust?
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