

Reddit Moderators Shut Down Parts of Site Over Employee’s Dismissal - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit-moderators-shut-down-parts-of-site-over-executives-dismissal.html

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Johnie
When a company is so dependent on community created content or work, the
company needs to nurture and be in touch with that community. What seems to
have happened with Reddit in recent times is that the company has drawn
further away from the community and taken it for granted as they seek to
monetize the content.

Take for example r/IAMA. It was a community created subreddit that became
quite popular. Once it became successful, the company seemed to try to take
greater ownership of it by directing the process themselves. After the recent
scandal, they created a dedicated AMA@reddit.com account to coordinate AMAs.
The mods have instead created AMAVerify@gmail.com to own the process separate
from the company.

The current leadership of Reddit really does not understand the community and
the fine implicit agreement between the community and the host.

This is going to make a great case study in the future on how to manage the
relationship with user generated content sites.

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slimsag
Totally agree. From what I gather thus far it seems like Reddit wants control
of their main content base provided _by the users_ so that they can monetize
it and push e.g. ask-me-anythings as ads (AMAs as a service?).

Reddit has literally tried to rip control of the mods right out from
underneath them, it's ludicrous.

See e.g. /r/IAMA mod /u/firedrops asking:

> Can you share the contact info with us? At this point it might simplify
> things if we handle it.

Reddit admin /u/kn0thing responding with:

> There's nothing to simplify, we have the relationship and we'll let you know
> the next steps.

From:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked_conversation_from_kn0thing_and_the/)

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mmanfrin
Reddit uproar over the past few weeks has been pretty maddening. The closure
of some hateful subreddits was a long time coming, and yet a _very_ vocal
contingent of the community took it upon themselves to brigade the entire
site, and to spawn a racist 'Chairman Pao' meme.

This uproar has a bit more legitimacy, and I think a lot of mods have right to
be mad over not being told about Victoria's firing/layoff/whatever it was (we
don't actually know) -- but the response has been a grab bag of assumptions
and conspiracy theories. Anonymous Quora posts were taken as gospel;
assumptions about what decisions leaders at Reddit made were rampant and then
soon themselves became the defacto explanations of what was going on --
without any shred of evidence.

I sympathize with the mods, and think that Victoria's departure hurts mightily
the entire IAmA community; but I cannot support the response so far. Go to
reddit and click on 'All', and then 'Rising' at the top (warning, some stuff
will be NSFW) -- look at the unbelievable vile the 'community' is spewing.

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edgyswingset
Reddit under Ellen Pao simply feels _different_. The site often times feels a
hell of a lot more like a cute puppy picture aggregator than anything else.

The more niche subreddits (especially programming-related) are just as they
always have been, but it's gotten to the point where I barely ever look at
what's happening under /r/all anymore.

~~~
agildehaus
I only became a Redditor during the Great Digg Migration, and my account is 3x
older than /u/ekjp. I think the problem is that they hired someone who had
never really used or cared about the site.

~~~
Johnie
This is exactly it. You can't have someone lead an organization that doesn't
embody the product.

Ellen needs to read the Southwest case study on how the ceo made southwest
focus on both the employees as well as the consumer.

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twoodfin
Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't it more likely than not at this
point that the AMA admin was dismissed for some markedly embarrassing cause?
Otherwise, why wouldn't we have heard a full story?

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chernevik
Guess the Jackson AMA is one for the memory hole.

