Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 324 posts

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

#301

Post by Area12 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #279
munificent wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people who frequent the site dont care at all about the plight of the moderators. They care about the quality of the comment they see on the subreddits they follow. That transitively means they really care about the plight of the moderators. They just don't know it. > Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. On the well-moderated subreddits—which are increasingly the largest ones—they do a hell of a…

"Moderators at subreddits like /r/NoStupidQuestions, /r/science, or many of the "Ask ___" subreddits are responsible for instilling the voice and culture of the subreddit." I don't see how this is the case. Replace spam with 'off-topic' and you have it. It really isn't an earth-changing thing to filter spam/off-topic/rude/offensive commentary (and it could be argued that even on the larger sub-reddits, that a good jo…

As a counter-example I give /r/AskHistorians. I am not a historian and not affiliated with the site. It is very tightly moderated and it works. Questions and comments that are off-topic or low-quality are removed. Answers must meet quality standards. The repondents take more time and effort in the answers than your average university teaching assistant. If you want to tell jokes or puns there are many other subreddits to go to. The result is one of the best forums I've ever seen on the internet. I'm not even a history buff but I admire that subreddit.

I will agree that few subreddits reach this level. The moderators of AskHistorians put in the effort. The responders put in even more.

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

#302

Post by genericuser »

vidarh wrote: post #289
genericuser wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what site would they move to given the current options? Reddit might as well be the only game in town now a days pretty much.

I remember when Slashdot seemed like the only game in town. Things can reach a tipping point very quickly.

SA and Fark were both pretty big internet communities back in the prime of Slashdot. In that I remember there were quite a few friendly (and less than friendly) rivalries going between the three.

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

#303

Post by jmount »

Frenchgeek wrote: post #270
jmount wrote: post #247

Rambling and self contradictory (presumably even after editing). "We did not anticipate or intend for other communities to follow our lead as part of a protest." "The secondary purpose of shutting down was to communicate to the relatively tone-deaf company leaders that ..." Own up to one or the other.

How so? Their community shut down to regroup and protest, without anticipating others doing the same.

And "The secondary purpose" was a protest, contradicting the claim protest wasn't one of their purposes.

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

#304

Post by basch »

Area12 wrote: post #301
FireBeyond wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Moderators at subreddits like /r/NoStupidQuestions, /r/science, or many of the "Ask ___" subreddits are responsible for instilling the voice and culture of the subreddit." I don't see how this is the case. Replace spam with 'off-topic' and you have it. It really isn't an earth-changing thing to filter spam/off-topic/rude/offensive commentary (and it could be argued that even on the larger sub-reddits, that a good jo…

As a counter-example I give /r/AskHistorians. I am not a historian and not affiliated with the site. It is very tightly moderated and it works. Questions and comments that are off-topic or low-quality are removed. Answers must meet quality standards. The repondents take more time and effort in the answers than your average university teaching assistant. If you want to tell jokes or puns there are many other subreddit…

askhistorians is one of the only counter examples to my point, specifically because moderators have domain knowledge. they are nowhere near as easily replaceable. iama mods are not expert interviewers, they are trash collectors and coordinators.

something else you will notice about askhistorians is that it doesnt have the usual guard. you dont see greatyellowshark, britishenglishpolice, klyde, krispykrackers, manwithoutmodem, maxwellhill, agentlame. the same reoccurring 100 people have taken control of a large portion of reddit (measured by subscriber)

I think part of the reason askhistorians works so well is because it exists outside the influence of that cabal. They come to their own decisions instead of blanketing policies over hundreds of subreddits at once.

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

#305

Post by genericuser »

dredmorbius wrote: post #297
genericuser wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what site would they move to given the current options? Reddit might as well be the only game in town now a days pretty much.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ People have been exploring options for years. I've got a few spots / candidates myself.

I guess I was thinking of a site that the of entirety (or nearly all of) the 10/101ths of Reddit users which make up the theoretical strong feelers would move to.

As in order to attract most of them a single site would need to both be able to handle the traffic and have a broad appeal across subjects. Maintaining such a site with that much headroom for users with only their current user base to generate ad revenue I assume is problematic and I would be surprised if any single site currently could handle a mass migration like that (except maybe Tumblr which I have my doubts would appeal to this portion of the Reddit population).

So while a mass exodus could take place people would likely scatter to different sites, which might not make any single other site 'it' enough to attract the remaining masses. Or the exodus takes place over time, which I consider the likely situation, having seen the effective death of many internet communities prior to the beast which is Reddit.

If they leave over time Reddit doesn't need to ask what it should do when the 10 leaves, it needs to ask what it should do when the 10 starts to leave.( my guess would be they need to get them to stop leaving, or get others to step up and take their place as people that feel strongly about the site in its then state, or buy the site they are leaving to).

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

#306

Post by abduhl »

mcphage wrote: post #222
mason240 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They shut downs of other subs was overwhelmingly supported by the users.

> They shut downs of other subs was overwhelmingly supported by the users. r/Cooking went down. They had a vote, and 209 out of 230 people voted to go dark. That sounds like an overwhelming majority! But when you realize that the subreddit has 310,000 subscribers, it means that it went dark because less than 0.1% of the subscribers wanted it to. You can't draw any conclusion of support from that.

Given a population of 310,000 and a sample size of 230 you would have 95% confidence that 91% +/- 7% of your userbase is in support of shutting down the subreddit with your numbers.

So yes, you can draw a conclusion of support from that. This is how polling works.

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

#308

Post by [deleted] »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #299
bduerst wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cognitive bias. The assertion from the admins was pretty clear regarding the harassment of individuals and threats of violence, but rather than acknowledge their prejudice, some have tried to make it into a first amendment issue. On a privately owned website.

Just because the Amendment doesn't apply doesn't mean the ideals behind it are irrelevant. I could choose to exclude all individuals of a certain race from my home. No law could prevent me from doing that. But people would still be against me for the same reasons that there exists laws that prevent discrimination by government or businesses. It just seems most people do not articulate the difference between 'wrong be…

[deleted]

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

#309

Post by mcphage »

abduhl wrote: post #306
mcphage wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They shut downs of other subs was overwhelmingly supported by the users. r/Cooking went down. They had a vote, and 209 out of 230 people voted to go dark. That sounds like an overwhelming majority! But when you realize that the subreddit has 310,000 subscribers, it means that it went dark because less than 0.1% of the subscribers wanted it to. You can't draw any conclusion of support from that.

Given a population of 310,000 and a sample size of 230 you would have 95% confidence that 91% +/- 7% of your userbase is in support of shutting down the subreddit with your numbers. So yes, you can draw a conclusion of support from that. This is how polling works.

If it was an independent sampling, maybe. Which it absolutely was not.

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

#310

Post by nkassis »

theklub wrote: post #82

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

Reddit varies widely on quality. Some forums on reddit are the best source of info on their particular topic. I don't really care for reddit as a whole but I would miss it if some of the the subreddit communities I follow were to disappear with nothing to replace them. Albeit none of those subreddits are the type that would end up on the Reddit ban list I presume.
Post reply on HN