Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#201

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

jonlucc wrote: post #177

keithpeter wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, $FamousPerson shows up at reception asking for an employee who has recently been escorted off the premises with their possessions in a black plastic bag (been there, got the video and t-shirt). You sort of know that random $FamousPeople showing up is part of $BusinessAsUsual. You have just realised that you have apparently no procedures whatsoever for booking appointments for personal visits to the building (e.g.…

OT, but is there somewhere I can read your story of having been told to to F$$k off by Royalty?

[deleted]

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#202

Post by makomk » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

saboot wrote: post #183

derptron wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're a fat SJW that advocates censorship of entire subs because of a few rule breakers. Gotcha. Hope you realize that there are many more "hate" subs that continue to operate unabated. I am picturing you frothing at the mouth while messaging admins begging any remaining subs that you disagree with to be banned. That's what you do, right? Picking and choosing what subs to censor is the disturbing part here. And n…

| So you're a fat SJW Really? That's the level of thinking that those who claim censorship on reddit are operating on? It wasn't about views people disagree with (hence why the chimpire subreddits are still active). FPH actively engaged in harassment of individuals by both subscribers and moderators. And speaking of censorship the FPH mods would ban any "sympathetic views" of ridiculed individuals.

That's basically how /r/fatpeoplehate thought - anyone who disagreed with them was obviously just a fatty, and therefore subhuman. (The moderators literally banned anyone who showed any empathy to a fat person - it was even in the rules - and this seems to have resulted in about the culture you'd expect.)

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#203

Post by byuu » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:48 PM UTC

darkstar999 wrote: post #98

theklub wrote: post #82

I can't believe people take reddit so seriously. Its amazing to me.

Some people have been on that site for 10 years.

I've been there five years, and really have no attachment to it whatsoever. You can say, "why go back?", but I'd just say, "why not?" It's pretty much because it's there.

Either way, I imagine a lot of people feel the same about it as I do. And when your product is that dispassionate, you risk everyone leaving for the "next big thing."

It's certainly happened many times before: Digg, Livejournal, Myspace, etc.

I'm not sure how you can really build a lot of commitment and loyalty from a community that basically just submits links and comments on them. Moderators, absolutely. But regular users?

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#204

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #49

Stefan-H wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The censorship is not happening by the community, it is coming from the admins that are on the reddit payroll. There are some posts that are auto-deleted based off of keywords during some of the more turbulent times in reddit.

> There are some posts that are auto-deleted based off of keywords during some of the more turbulent times in reddit. You got a source for that?

[deleted]

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#205

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #160

VonGuard wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree that Reddit is an old boys club. But this is how all online communities seem to work: age = power and respect. How would you solve this problem? It's been like that since newsgroups. It seems to be just a human tendency.

slashdot randomly assigned the task of moderation to logged in users. that moderation was then metamoderated. it was just part of your duty as a logged in user to contribute a little metadata about content. http://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml

The Reddit equivalent to this is voting, and then the Reddit equivalent to meta-moderation is moderation.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#206

Post by vonklaus » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #193

basch wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you clipped the second half of the sentence ... "people who thought they were above being replaced"

They are certainly replaceable, but they just as certainly not fungible. Reddit management clearly made a mistake here, not because it annoyed some moderators, but because they showed poor understanding of a fundamental part of their business (i.e. this is a lot of avoidable bad press, if nothing else) They seem to have realized this, and are working on amending process. Nothing wrong with that, this is how things ca…

I agree with this. Many social networks (friendster, myspace, Digg, etc) die of community collapse. If someone funded voat.co so they could keep their servers up and the mods and community jumped ship reddit's business would take a serious hit.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#207

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

joshie_woshie wrote: post #71

amyjess wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the shutdown of /r/iama was necessary so the moderators could regroup and figure out how to do their scheduling and coördination from now on. The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong . And your claims of censorship are, quite frankly, di…

Your language is pretty strong and one-sided -- 'petulant moves...to treat their users as pawns'? Have you even been paying attention? A lot of those moderators actively sought the opinions of their subreddits before blacking out. It was often the communities, and not the moderators, instigating those decisions. The censorship claims do not just apply to the hateful subreddits that were shut down -- censorship happen…

Because the language on the other side is, what, carefully reasoned and neutral in tone?

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#208

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

saboot wrote: post #183

derptron wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're a fat SJW that advocates censorship of entire subs because of a few rule breakers. Gotcha. Hope you realize that there are many more "hate" subs that continue to operate unabated. I am picturing you frothing at the mouth while messaging admins begging any remaining subs that you disagree with to be banned. That's what you do, right? Picking and choosing what subs to censor is the disturbing part here. And n…

| So you're a fat SJW Really? That's the level of thinking that those who claim censorship on reddit are operating on? It wasn't about views people disagree with (hence why the chimpire subreddits are still active). FPH actively engaged in harassment of individuals by both subscribers and moderators. And speaking of censorship the FPH mods would ban any "sympathetic views" of ridiculed individuals.

Just flag. Don't reply. Replying makes the troll comment more prominent (as, obviously, does quoting it!). In cases as clear-cut as this, you can trust that the flag button will quickly and reliably do its job.

(Happy to delete this comment when you delete yours.)

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#209

Post by peeters » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

dguaraglia wrote: post #181

luso_brazilian wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it was the opposite, people got outraged because they got the exact meaning of the joke. People were expressing loud and clear their grievances and one admin response was in the lines of "we know about it, let's do nothing and watch the drama unfold, it will die down".

And, to be fair, it did die down. Even though there's still some aftershocks to the initial revolution, reddit seems to be mostly back to normal now.

Except, you know, Reddit moderators having editorials run in the New York Times.

Re: Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum

#210

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #132

munificent wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your managers don't know what you do all day If your managers can't tell what you do all day when they merely need to go to reddit.com/r/IamA and see dozens of upvoted posts from celebrities whose top comment says, "Victoria is here helping me...", then I don't think you can really blame her for that.

I don't expect my boss to dive into my commit logs to figure out what I am doing. I instead tell him.

So I did the same when I was an employee, but I'll point out that this introduces a pretty strong adverse-selection effect. Time spent managing up is time not spent doing your job or building value for users. If managers rely simply on what their reports tell them, they select for people that can navigate internal politics well, not ones who do their job well. Over time the organization is filled with people whose attention is always focused upwards, not outwards, and then the company becomes bait for a startup.

A skilled executive makes sure they have a pulse on what's going on inside their organization beyond what they're told. Relatively few executives are that skilled.