We apologize • Hacker News Board

Re: We apologize

#31

Post by psychometry » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:46 PM UTC

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…

One look at the completely irrelevant second sentence of the petition to remove her [1] should tell you everything to know about why users are actually angry at her. This outcry would've been minor if reddit had a male CEO without the failed lawsuit in the rear view mirror.

Reddit has harbored toxic subreddits for long enough that they've nurtured a huge user base of racists and misogynists. It's a demographic crisis and it apparently doesn't take much to incite these mobs. These vocal and active users hated Pao before she became reddit CEO and these events were entirely predictable.

[1] https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of-red...

Re: We apologize

#32

Post by jeletonskelly » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:46 PM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #18

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…

Victoria being let off ruined a lot of currently planned AMA's - because she played such a huge part in it all. It's like firing the person who wrote a language your company uses internally with little to no documentation: absolutely everything is going to go to hell until someone comes in, learns what and how things were done, and can replace that person. With no word as to why she left or was fired - it screams som…

AMA worked fine before all the organization and planning of celebrity appearances. If you're a celebrity or politician or whatever, just hop on, make a post, message a mod for verification or post something to twitter and have at it. The only reason it became so ridiculous is because the mods themselves wanted to feel important, like they were "running" AMA. If some "important" person can't use the internet, then don't do an AMA or find someone to help you. Why there needs to be an employee and all this formality is beyond me...

Re: We apologize

#33

Post by x0x0 » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:47 PM UTC

jonjenk wrote: post #22

This is a pretty shitty apology. The key problem is that ekjp isn't owning the failures directly. Just look at the language in the post... "We screwed up." "We haven’t communicated well..." "we acknowledge this long history of mistakes..." This type of language shows a lack of ownership and accountability of the author. It's a huge red flag. If one of my employees wrote something like this I would never have accepted…

Whatever you think of Ellen, she's been ceo since Nov 14. How exactly does that makes her personally responsible for ongoing failures from multiple years beforehand? Did she borrow a DeLorean and order the team around during Yishan's tenure?

Re: We apologize

#34

Post by emehrkay » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:47 PM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #18

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…

Victoria being let off ruined a lot of currently planned AMA's - because she played such a huge part in it all. It's like firing the person who wrote a language your company uses internally with little to no documentation: absolutely everything is going to go to hell until someone comes in, learns what and how things were done, and can replace that person. With no word as to why she left or was fired - it screams som…

To me it seems clear that they've decided to dislike Ellen ( they have sub dedicated to portraying her as Hitler, for fucks sake). So whenever her administration makes a mistake their reaction is going to be bloody murder.

Yeah firing the woman without a backup plan for the scheduled AMAs or whatever else was going on was a mistake. But what does someone have to do in order to be fired in that manor? Are we to assume that Reddit didn't understand the woman's daily duties and what affect her immediate/un-planned absence from the company would be? We don't know why the woman was let go, could had been worth the potential of missing a few scheduled AMAs (or even this backlash).

Re: We apologize

#35

Post by omouse » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

jonjenk wrote: post #22

This is a pretty shitty apology. The key problem is that ekjp isn't owning the failures directly. Just look at the language in the post... "We screwed up." "We haven’t communicated well..." "we acknowledge this long history of mistakes..." This type of language shows a lack of ownership and accountability of the author. It's a huge red flag. If one of my employees wrote something like this I would never have accepted…

If one of my employees wrote something like this I would never have accepted it.

Actually that's the typical corporate apology. The whole team gets the blame when you're playing the blame game! However CEOs and executives like pushing shit downward.

Employee vs CEO is a big difference in status and the type of apology to write.

Re: We apologize

#36

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

uxcn wrote: post #26

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…

I'm not sure this is accurate. Aside from the protest over the weekend, over 150k people (non-moderators) signed a petition to have Ellen Pao removed as CEO. That doesn't seem like a tools issue.

That is a mob justice issue.

Re: We apologize

#37

Post by westernmostcoy » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

fjarlq wrote: post #14

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...

Reddit co-founder and executive chairman Alexis Ohanian (kn0thing) had something to say about that yesterday: > Monday is the start of a new week and I wanted to be sure everyone will be online (not on US holiday weekend) for a post. -- https://www.reddit.com/r/ideasfortheadmins/comments/3c1m67/c...

Given the concerns over lack of communication, I wonder if that was the right move. I can see how hard this would be to manage on-site communications with everyone mass-downvoting anything from /u/kn0thing or /u/ekjp though, so I certainly don't have any better ideas.

Re: We apologize

#38

Post by Lawtonfogle » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

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…

>As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired.

Supposedly she helped with setting up a lot of IAMAs as well as fighting to keep their integrity up (i.e. identifying when an actor's agent was posing as that actor as part of a marketing ploy). Even if you really liked IAMAs and what I've heard is completely true, these are benefits you wouldn't directly notice. It is like the average computer user feeling slighted by the Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish or the average voter feeling slighted by the TPP. These have nasty effects, but they are not at all direct in the harm they cause, and as such people do not feel slighted even when they have been.

Re: We apologize

#39

Post by glorien » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:52 PM UTC

Why do people moderate large subreddits? They don't get paid... what are they actually getting out of it? Why continue to do it?

"fuck you, pay me"

Re: We apologize

#40

Post by JeffKilborn » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:52 PM UTC

That woman has single-handedly killed Reddit. I've never seen so much incompetence in a CEO of a major internet site.

However, the true blame should also go to Reddit's Board of Directors who have installed her and are still supporting her. They're clearly destroying shareholders' value.