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Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

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Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#481
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG has posted on HN saying that downvoting for disagreement is fine.

Any link or should I just believe you? I really like to believe everything I read on the internet btw. :)

I found PG's comment[1] from over 7 years ago. Granted, HN has undergone subtle voting changes since then.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

edit: yeah, the downvote threshold system was bumped up ~1 year after PG's comment.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#482
post #362
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This? https://i.imgur.com/nrYiK5M.png I find it telling it was negative a majority of the time. Usually "mods" get +1'd just for being mods (common on many forums). It shows, to me at least, that what she said rarely was supported by the community.

I completely and utterly disagree with this opinion, and furthermore find it dangerous for what it suggests - specifically, the idea that a large group of anonymous people can do anything but fall prey to their collective impulse. I would argue that decisions of large bodies of anonymous people are historically and demonstrably inaccurate, misleading, nearsighted, and wholly terrible for not only the decision they're…

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. We have decided that no one is more trustworthy to pick our leaders than large bodies of anonymous people.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#483

The knife cuts both ways. The clickbait media and various groups are trying to paint the now predictable narrative of '50 white male racist misogynist neck beards' who want to chase women out of tech again. Over 200,000 people with legitimate concerns sign a petition to have Pao step down yet they still carry on with there charade. People are sick and tired of the media and a small group of militant activists trying…

Is there a larger red flag for the aggrieved tech male to wave these days than whinging about "ethics" in the media?

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#485
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you make the unfavorable comparisons worse is by taking them seriously. I wouldn't suggest taking those co-workers too seriously either - it probably won't help. Ellen Pao wasn't awful, but all-in-all, it's probably a good thing she stepped down. Hopefully, next time there's a huge community changeover or staff change in reddit, everyone will talk through it and about it reasonably, and everyone will be able…

What takeaway should we have about those drunken coworkers? I see roughly three possibilities: * Their comments were funny / reasonable / etc.; there was nothing wrong with them. GP was wrong to find it disgusting. * Their comments were bad, but there's nothing we can do about them. Our society involves it being socially acceptable to tell jokes about how people should die because of their inability to articulate cle…

The 4th option would be to just not assign a moral value to their comments, and chose for yourself as an individual to not let yourself be offended by them. It doesn't mean the co-workers were right, but it doesn't penalize them if the didn't intend to be bad (because doing so would be a slippery slope to thought policing). Unless OP thinks his/her co-workers would face Pao in person and tell her those things, or worse, act on them, then is there any reason to let their silly actions cause you any distress?

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#486
post #256

“Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said. What exactly "phenomenal" has she done? Reddit works pretty much the same as it worked several years ago, but in the meantime she managed to piss off the majority of community, which is the only reason Reddit exists

She walked in to a hot mess of a situation after the previous CEO resigned on the spot and kept the company from falling apart (which I thought was a live concern at the time). You try doing that some day.

Reddit is a simple crud app that runs on amazon for scale. What could a CEO possible do?

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were modded down, but I don't know why. On what planet does it make sense to ban /r/fatpeoplehate while permitting /r/CoonTown? If you don't have a coherent content policy -- and no sane person could argue that Reddit does -- then you're better off with none at all.

What? Clearly both should be banned, but banning one is much better than banning neither.

No, because it leads to an incoherent policy.

Reddit's original policy, for better or for worse, was "anything that isn't illegal." They had to add one or two things to that over the years but they stuck to that.

Reddit's policy then became, unofficially, "trust us to get rid of the crap." That sounds fine, but it has problems:

1. it's not the original policy. HN has a "trust us" policy and it works great but it's always had that. HN has never been billed as "come say what you want." Changing the policy is a bait and switch to the old community.

2. It was never admitted to. While switching to the new policy, the official line was that the old policy was still in place.

3. It requires positive social capital. Remember Philip Greenspun's infamous article describing the VCs at ArsDigita as "a group of nursery school children who've stolen a Boeing 747 and are now flipping all the switches trying to get it to take off"[1]? That's what the reddit admin has been like for months, and it leads to negative social capital. Some guy was shadowbanned but didn't know it for years, patiently posting in subreddits all along. The CEO didn't use the company's only product.

If you've ever experienced a dysfunctional internet community -- and who hasn't -- you recognize the patterns of decisions made in a hurry to stop whomever is immediately yelling at you and then trying to justify it with whatever they can cobble together afterwards, and that explanation will be completely unsuitable for the next crisis which will require yet another made up explanation.

[1] http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#488
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony in this comment about not discouraging critical thinking whilst shaming someone drawing a parallel... first overstating the GP's case to extremes, then doing a form of Reductio ad Hitlerum... ... it's just delicious.

There's no reason why my comments shouldn't be analyzed critically either. So if you feel up to it, please do so. But the comment I responded to did not exhibit any logical analyses, nor any reminders to remain analytical.

> So if you feel up to it, please do so.

Uh, I just did.

Reductio Ad Hitlerum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

Overstating the case to extremes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

My point is that you're being a hypocrite, demanding someone else not discourage critical thinking, while exhibiting logical fallacies yourself. Shaming someone about 'discouraging critical thinking' through the use of a strawman is particularly egregious.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me the other CONTENT in this post besides that rape and death threats are appalling. Patrick_Devine 2 hours ago | parent | flag As an occasional user of reddit, this whole ordeal has confirmed the reason why I prefer not to hang out in its forums. I have no idea whether Ellen was a capable CEO, but the vitriol which I kept seeing peripherally (through other news articles and here on HN) was absolutely appalling.

I'm not seeing any mention of rape of death threats in the post you pasted. You're projecting your own assumption that the peripheral vitriol the comment is talking about consisted of only rape and death threats. Take a step back and try look at it with a clear head. Criticism can take many other forms, you know...

So by being aware of the actual vitriol that this person publicly received, which very much did include rape and death threats. I am wrong to think when that post mentions the vitriol being appalling, they are referring to the the rape and death threats which were said? Alright my bad, next time I will assume they mean that well mannered posts about the person's inability to manage a company, which also very much existed and probably in greater number, were in fact appalling.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#490
post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's jarring -- that is, newsworthy -- to see overt sexist or racist remarks with hundreds of upvotes, suggesting at least widespread if not majority support. So, yeah, that fact is going to find its way into many articles. What is the argument against Pao anyway? It seems like the only non-personal complaints I've heard are that FatPeopleHate was banned and a well-liked moderator was fired on her watch. Is there mor…

Victoria's firing was the final straw. The general complaint is that moderators are in an abusive unpaid relationship with reddit and are treated like crap, that she is/was completely out of touch with the reddit userbase (going so far as posting a link to her own inbox in /r/self in a grandma-emailing-c:\\paths.jpg fashion; something she later explained as an administrative mishap), that she got rid of well-liked pr…

redditgifts seems to be online... are they not affiliated with reddit anymore?
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