by nahiluhmot on 7/6/15, 5:39 PM with 214 comments
by westernmostcoy on 7/6/15, 6:26 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit-moderato... http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/05/420...
by jeletonskelly on 7/6/15, 6:41 PM
by jonjenk on 7/6/15, 6:40 PM
"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 it.
A good apology would have started with something like, "I am sorry." Everything that happens at a company is ultimately the CEO's responsibility. The language used in ekjp's apology does little to reassure me that she actually feels like she owns the failures.
by emehrkay on 7/6/15, 6:28 PM
As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired. But the hive have decided those are the things that the community should do (and dislike Justin Beiber and Kanye West and whatever else), and the community does it. I can't even get a straight answer as to why they're upset.
Children are emotional.
by anthony_romeo on 7/6/15, 7:44 PM
- Earlier that week, reddit modified the search function which (though I don't know the details as I am not a mod and really don't care) apparently affected or limited the moderators' abilities is some negative manner.
- The banning of harassing subreddits, though none of the lurkers cared at all and the majority of active users did not care, left a sour taste in many users' mouths.
- The firing of that employee apparently greatly affected the ability to facilitate the most popular subreddit on the website, as well as a few others.
When the mods of IAMA closed shop for a while due to the third issue, the powder keg exploded, leading others who disliked the treatment of mods and those who irrationally hate the reddit CEO to make a hullabaloo for eight hours.
Frankly, I deleted my reddit account due to this. Not for any dislike the CEO or a desire to stand up for mods' rights, but rather because I genuinely do not care about the drama anymore and would rather focus my attention on more important things[1] and more interesting topics[2].
[1] Such as commenting on Hacker News.
[2] Such as discussions about Reddit.
:-)
by bmm6o on 7/6/15, 8:25 PM
I've cut Pao a lot of slack in the past, but this makes her look like she has no idea what she's doing. No communication for days? Speaking to outside reporters before speaking to her community? It makes no sense to me.
by vonklaus on 7/6/15, 7:16 PM
> Prove it -Reddit Community
There is no point in analyzing the apology, only the actions that occur over the next month.
by rdtsc on 7/6/15, 6:31 PM
Yeah it came late. But better late than never.
by iaw on 7/6/15, 7:04 PM
Regardless of my personal opinions about her lawsuit it's really unfortunate that the simple act of bringing the lawsuit has bled so much into her interactions with the reddit community.
by Jerry2 on 7/6/15, 6:57 PM
by jgrowl on 7/6/15, 7:38 PM
I think mainly this underscores the need for the internet to evolve. Sites like reddit and twitter are too important to be controlled by a single for-profit entity.
We need distributed systems that respect anonymity and privacy that prevent censorship. We also need the ability for groups to form where content can be curated.
I think there are a number of projects in development that have potential. It will be interesting to see where things go.
by oldmanjay on 7/6/15, 7:05 PM
also, a decade+ of "terrorism" has left me feeling that fear-based policies are a serious mistake.
on the other hand, I don't and likely never will use reddit, so this is all popcorn-munching entertainment to me.
by joeevans1000 on 7/6/15, 5:56 PM
by GuiA on 7/6/15, 7:20 PM
The success of Reddit is directly attributable to high profile subs (/r/AskScience, /r/AskHistorians, /r/AMA, /r/ListenToThis, etc.) and less visible but still well run subs that cater to more niche interests/topics (/r/MakeupAddiction, /r/PersonalFinance, etc.). Those subreddits would not exist without the thousands of man hours put in by moderators who are volunteers (modulo a few exceptions, such as Victoria). Anyone who has moderated an internet community knows how much sweat, effort, time, and pain go into maintaining a high quality community, and how crucial it is to keep your moderators happy and make them feel like their effort is valued.
The fact that the people running Reddit do not seem to realize that is a perfectly valid reason for the user base to be angry. A lot of Silicon Valley executives like to think of their company+product as some neat little money making machine that sits in a vacuum and that they can tweak and modify as they like. But the reality is that building a community platform like Reddit is very different from running a sausage factory. You can run your sausage factory in to the ground, and the sausages won't complain (the workers might, but the US does a pretty good job at avoiding that through strict control on labor unions). But when you start shitting on Reddit, the users will complain and protest - after all, you might control the code and the servers, but the community as a whole has contributed much more than you have to the end product.
You can't separate "reddit" and "the community" like some commenters here are doing. This dualism makes no sense - reddit and its community are the same thing. You can't have the thoughtful, well run threads on /r/AskScience without the dumb jokes on /r/funny.
Ellen Pao and friends do not seem to grasp those subtleties (this apology is just damage control), and it lead to the complete disaster we are seeing right now. This isn't rocket science - in fact the Reddit community is quite predictable. Any Reddit user would have been able to tell you how the community was going to react to these actions. The fact that Ellen Pao has some shady connections (her husband not being in jail because he has enough money is a good first example) is just more fuel on top of the fire. This was extremely easy to predict, and the fact that the Reddit leadership seems to be completely clueless about it is a very bad sign for things to come. The reddit community didn't have a problem with kn0thing, yishan, and others because they were first and foremost reddit users and know how to interact with the community. It's not the case for the current people in charge.
The community has every right to be up in arms. And if you think that the Reddit community is shit and don't spend time there, like some commenters here state, then what makes you feel like your input has any sort of relevance?
This isn't a technology or management fiasco - it's a political debacle. At a community interaction level, it's not very different from taking someone with arbitrary credentials and putting them in charge of a country they're completely unfamiliar with in the hope that they're going to make that country a peaceful democracy. It just doesn't work - you need the leadership to come from the community for it to have any lasting chance.
by calcol on 7/6/15, 9:35 PM
I think that the admins should have handled it better, for sure -- they could have at least given the moderators that relied on Victoria's help the heads up of, "hey, we are going to transition to a new community manager, for the time being X, Y, and Z are going to occur," but the backlash from the community and that the moderators are effectively using the community for their own gains instead of trying to handle it internally is a pretty bad reflection on how the community is structured as a whole. All I can think of is that this is basically 4chan and social media combined.
by noarchy on 7/6/15, 7:50 PM
by paulpauper on 7/6/15, 7:37 PM
For all we know, it may not have been Ellen's fault...a lot of people jumping the gun
by lno on 7/6/15, 9:43 PM
Recently, it's become increasingly apparent that drama around and within reddit is ruining this - all I want to do is learn and engage - it's impossible now to avoid it. Any alternative that keeps the quality high and the format similar without all the ugly dramatics?
by chr on 7/6/15, 10:00 PM
MY 2 cents, seen from far away.
by glorien on 7/6/15, 6:52 PM
"fuck you, pay me"
by sergiotapia on 7/6/15, 7:35 PM
by dgcoffman on 7/6/15, 6:45 PM
