
Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum - uptown
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/opinion/why-we-shut-down-reddits-ask-me-anything-forum.html
======
imjk
"We feel strongly that this incident is more part of a reckless disregard for
the company’s own business and for the work the moderators and users put into
the site. Dismissing Victoria Taylor was part of a long pattern of insisting
the community and the moderators do more with less."

I think this really gets to the heart of it. The moderators of the site only
learned of the termination after a celebrity flew out to NY to meet with
Victoria and was told that the meeting was cancelled. As expected, panic
ensued among the subreddit's moderators. Whether the firing was justified or
not, the fact that Reddit's leadership didn't immediately see the consequences
of their action on one of their most popular communities just shows their
disregard. Or even worse, they realized the consequences and just didn't
bother to help facilitate them. I mean these are real people with real
meetings spending real dollars for the community, which is all run but
volunteers, and Reddit's leadership didn't feel it was important enough to
communicate with them to help avoid unnecessary consequences. I understand the
frustration.

~~~
basch
This article is falling on me as tone deaf. Most people who frequent the site
dont care at all about the plight of the moderators. Moderators are not
elected, they arent forcefully drafted, they dont step down when the community
dislikes them. They are landowners who got there first, followed by a lot of
cronyism/nepotism. It's an old boys club. They do a lot of hard work for the
site, but they would be easily replaceable if the site rules didnt protect
them. The moderators think they are special, the admins see them as
interchangeable. Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. It is a
task that could be crowdsourced better so more people are doing less work.
Slashdot had better moderation tools than reddit. When I see the moderators
throw tantrums demanding more respect, it reminds me of Reagan firing every
air traffic controller who went on strike, people who thought they were above
being replaced. The reddit admins should fear the power they have given the
moderators, and are probably brainstorming ways to reduce it.

The "woe is me" cry of the moderators doesnt resonate with the majority of the
userbase, because the moderators volunteered. The apathetic majority doesnt
comment in situations like this, so you wont hear their voices. In the
immortal words of southpark, if you dont like America, then you can get out.
But everyone knows they wont actually step down, because they crave the power
they have accumulated, and are using the veneer of "we do this because we love
the community" to generate a populous outcry that they know will gain them
even more power. Theyre not fooling me.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/csu119e)

~~~
munificent
> 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 lot more than spam filtering. 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.

> When I see the moderators throw tantrums demanding more respect, it reminds
> me of Reagan firing every air traffic controller who went on strike, people
> who thought they were above being replaced.

I'm not saying they couldn't be replaced. But if you do that, those subreddits
will fundamentally change. And, in many cases, the userbase may go elsewhere
before the subreddit finds its feet again.

> In the immortal words of southpark, if you dont like America, then you can
> get out.

I don't think reddit needs to worry much about moderators leaving. But they
should _really_ worry about content contributors leaving. The Digg v4 exodus
happened virtually overnight. There's nothing magical about reddit that
ensures that can't happen to them.

~~~
basch
>they really care about the plight of the moderators

no they dont. its like henchmen in a movie. if some fall more will take their
place. its a thankless task. they dont care at all about the individual, they
just care that the group functions. the group will function without the
individual as long as there are reenforcements.

>in many cases, the userbase may go elsewhere before the subreddit finds its
feet again.

probably to another subreddit, like when /r/trees replaced /r/marijuana (thats
still a win for reddit corp)

~~~
iaw
There was a post on reddit by a user emphasizing your reasoning but reaching a
different conclusion. The user argued that he didn't not care about the plight
of the moderators or content creators in one bit, he just wanted to selfishly
consume his content.

He recognized the importance of the people that do care in creating the
community that provides the quality of experience he desires and he was quick
to emphasize that the second the quality drops he will find a new community.

The quality in subreddits are a direct function of the capabilities of their
moderation staff.

~~~
basch
thats the post i linked to at the bottom of my comment

------
zedpm
Maybe this will be enough to silence the folks on here who insist that nothing
is wrong with Reddit management and that it's just a bunch of angry children
complaining without cause. The mods in question are adults and professionals,
and they've clearly and succinctly explained their grievances with Reddit
management.

This piece doesn't touch on some of the other issues that have angered users,
particularly the matter of heavy-handed censorship that appears to be applied
inconsistently. That too is a legitimate complaint, one that shouldn't be
shouted down or conflated with shameful behavior on the part of relatively few
individuals in the community.

~~~
amyjess
No, the shutdown of /r/iama was necessary so the moderators could regroup and
figure out how to do their scheduling and coördination from now on.

The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to
treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users
because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's _wrong_.

And your claims of censorship are, quite frankly, disturbing. The subreddits
shut down last month were all hate groups that were targeting individuals for
harassment and posting their photographs without permission in order to attack
them. I've personally seen my pictures posted by one of these groups _twice_ ,
and the day before those subs got banned, there was a very upset mother asking
what recourse she had because these hate groups were posting pictures of her
_underage child_ and refused to take them down (and I distinctly remember this
because I was one of a handful of people who helped teach her how to message
the admins).

~~~
flatline
I laugh when people complain about removal of /r/fatpeoplehate being
censorship. The only reason that subreddit was such a problem is because of
aggressive moderation and banning of users - i.e. censorship at the moderator
level rather than the admin level.

~~~
bduerst
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.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
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 because I like the First Amendment'
from 'wrong because I like the ideals behind the First Amendment'.

~~~
bduerst
Yes it does. If you banned vandals and violent people from your private
property for their malicious behavior, people would not band against you or
cry about first amendment "ideals". Ignoring select information, such as the
reasoning behind the bans, is exactly what cognitive bias is.

If you honestly think that what Reddit did is the equivalent of racism, then
that is very clear proof that you have a bias.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>If you banned vandals and violent people from your private property for their
malicious behavior, people would not band against you or cry about first
amendment "ideals".

The government is allowed to ban such people from its premises as well. You
choose a poor example.

As for the reasoning behind the bans, you are ignoring the unequal application
of those bans which shows such claimed reasons to have been lies.

>If you honestly think that what Reddit did is the equivalent of racism

I never called it the equivalent of racism. I used racism as an example of
where the ideals that ban the government, while not banning the individual,
can be used to cast moral judgment upon the individual. That you could confuse
these gives evidence to your own strong bias.

~~~
bduerst
It's a perfect good example because it's analagous to what Reddit did, and
you're splitting hairs because it doesn't fit your own narrative on racism and
moral judgement that you crafted for your own personal reality.

You even admit that you don't think that what reddit did is the equivalent of
racism, so you admit your analogy isn't even relevant to the situation. Just
as if you gave the analogy of "people judge a bar that doesn't let you bear
arms because of second amendment ideals!", it's still moot, because while yes,
they do pass moral judgement, it's completely irrelevant from people
selectively ignoring safety reasons behind the firearm ban.

Passing moral judgement that resulted from a bias _is still a bias_.

------
spodek
Never surprise your team.

This incident looks like it comes from inexperienced, counterproductive
leadership, as do the several incidents leading up to it and that will follow.
Or maybe authoritarian. Several days after a firing, people are complaining in
the NY Times that they are still surprised.

Not surprising your team is one of the top principles I've learned in
teamwork. If, as a manager, your firing someone surprises them or their team,
you almost certainly mismanaged the process. If you have a reason for firing
someone, you should be able to create a process everyone understands even if
they don't agree to it. The people left should certainly not be surprised,
especially after the firing.

If your team is surprised by your strategy, if your customers are surprised by
your product, and so on, you probably managed poorly. You should only surprise
your competition.

At least the rest of us can learn from Reddit's management what not to do:
motivating competitors to satisfy their users and customers while they're
alienating them.

~~~
dublinben
>Never surprise your team.

It's never been more clear that the managers of Reddit Inc. do not consider
the moderators of their most popular subreddits to be part of their team.

------
embik
What really baffles me is the way reddit management handled this situation.
There were many things they simply fucked up - They did not install the new
AMA team properly (hell, the subreddit mods did not know about it), they
reacted childish to the shutdown (something along the lines of "popcorn tastes
good" \- one of your biggest communities just shut down because you failed to
do basic management, in what universe is this a proper response?) and they
won't address the real issues, it's all PR speech (take a look at the "we'
sorry" post, a lot of important questions raised are not answered).

This is just horrible - You cannot anger your community in such a "business
model". reddit depends 100% on their users and especially the content creators
and moderators. They do very little by themselves, and most of it is stuff
around the core functionality only a small percentage is even using.

~~~
steve-howard
"Popcorn" as a metaphor for drama is a daily in-joke at SubredditDrama, where
that comment was posted. What kn0thing didn't count on was that a lot of
readers had never been there before and instead took it at face value.

~~~
luso_brazilian
I believe it was the opposite, people got outraged because they got the exact
meaning of the joke.

People were expressing loud and clear their grievances and one admin response
was in the lines of "we know about it, let's do nothing and watch the drama
unfold, it will die down".

~~~
dguaraglia
And, to be fair, it did die down. Even though there's still some aftershocks
to the initial revolution, reddit seems to be mostly back to normal now.

~~~
peeters
Except, you know, Reddit moderators having editorials run in the New York
Times.

~~~
dguaraglia
That's a fair point, but if you read the article, it reads like a post-mortem:
"this is what happened, this is why it sucked, life goes on, let's try to not
do this again."

Maybe competing websites (Voat in particular) got a bump because of what
happened, but at the end of the day redditors aren't an activist crowd (or
rather, they are a slacktivist crowd.) I doubt this will have any big
consequences.

------
nanny
When you consider exactly how much information we have to go on, I think
people are overreacting by immense proportions.

Do we even know why Victoria was fired yet? Maybe she was about to blow the
lid off a vast internet conspiracy. Or maybe she's actually the bad guy, and
she went crazy and tried to destroy the office. We just don't know, and we
might never know.

Besides, what is reddit corporate supposed to do when they want to fire an
employee? Message the mods and say, "Oh, btw, we're going to fire Victoria in
a couple days and Xyz will take over her duties, just thought you'd like to
know."? That's simply out of the question, and not enough people even thought
about this scenario.

The responses to this event are entirely unjustified, because there is no
information at all to base a reaction on.

~~~
joosters
As the article explains, the issues aren't to do with Victoria herself. In
that respect, why she was fired doesn't matter. Note that the story is _not_ a
campaign to bring her back personally.

Corporate Reddit should have had a plan in place when they got rid of her, but
as it became clear, they hadn't thought about it at all. That's what the mods
were complaining about.

~~~
nanny
>Corporate Reddit should have had a plan in place when they got rid of her,
but as it became clear, they hadn't thought about it at all.

What if she did something really bad and was fired on the spot? How could they
"have a plan in place" for a situation like that?

~~~
BurningFrog
You should always have some kind of plan for what to do if key employees get
run over by a bus.

~~~
jonknee
The problem seems to be that reddit didn't have a plan for when the users
started believing it wasn't a bus at all, but a conspiracy.

------
gesman
>> ...We are disheartened by the dismissal of Victoria Taylor, who was one of
the most high-profile women at the company — and in the technology field. We
hope Reddit recruits someone with the talent and necessary background to fill
her position in a similar capacity...

May I propose a good candidate? Victoria Taylor.

~~~
splitbrain
Does anyone know why she was fired? Few things get you fired immediately, so I
guess it's something quite bad. As much as I agree with the IamA moderators
about shitty decisions at Reddit, their owners might deserve credit for not
disclosing whatever Victoria did to get fired.

~~~
Zikes
Rumors abound. The most prominent rumor is that it was because of a bad public
reaction to a Jesse Jackson AMA. Some leaked info from a supposed disgruntled
Reddit admin says it's because Ellen Pao pressured Victoria into pushing an
NDA + promise of a cut of future sales resulting from AMAs on the AMA
subjects, which Victoria disagreed with a little too loudly.

~~~
nightpool
The moderators of IAmA have said that they believe the decision was made to
fire her before the Jesse Jackson AMA happened.

EDIT: whoops, didn't mean to downvote you. mobile misclick :(

~~~
Zikes
Which is still speculation.

~~~
nightpool
Sorry, I was a little vague. The mods of r/IAmA have been in contact with
reddit admins about the situation, and from how the timeline was explained to
them by reddit staff, the decision was made before the Jesse Jackson AMA even
happened.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/3bw7ms/top_mod_of_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/3bw7ms/top_mod_of_riama_explains_why_its_been_set_to/csqa8bj)

------
mildweed
People often say that the users of a site like Reddit are the product, not the
customers. In the case of Reddit moderators, they are also essentially
employees. Employees who need to be treated more as customers, due to the fact
they're volunteers.

Anger the masses of Reddit all you want, but don't piss off the volunteers
that hold your product together.

------
jonknee
The problem with volunteers is that you can't easily fire them. It's great
that reddit gets a lot of free labor from moderators, but their sense of
entitlement is a huge drag. Regardless of why Victoria was let go, it's very
difficult to run a business when you can't make staffing changes without
threat of open revolt.

I would hire a replacement for Victoria and swap out every moderator of
/r/IAmA who was part of this coup. It's not their property, it's reddit's. It
will be ugly (not that it isn't already), but in the end there are a few
moderators and millions of users who literally could not care less and just
want to read interesting stories.

------
xaa
Apparently Reddit has exactly 2 board members: Alexis and Sam Altman [1]. Why
would Sam Altman, and by extension YC, have thought that Ellen Pao would make
a good ("interim") CEO for Reddit?

This scenario should really be causing shareholders/board members to think
about how dependent Reddit really is on moderator goodwill [2]. There needs to
be a CEO and leadership team that can at least create a credible perception,
if not the reality, that Reddit values moderators who donate their time to
make the business viable.

For this purpose, it would seem you want a CEO who is going to be non-
inflammatory (i.e., not Pao) and perceived as a relatively neutral arbitrator
between the needs of shareholders for monetization and the needs of moderators
for adequate support (i.e., probably not someone from a VC background).
Considering how little it should actually cost the company to provide a
reliable support network for mods, including honest, non-HR-speak
communication, this hardly seems like a demanding task, but somehow they
continue to manage it very poorly.

Does anyone know if there have been public comments by YC about any of these
issues?

[1]
[http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/board.asp?p...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/board.asp?privcapId=29927936)

[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/csu119e)

------
hoopd
A discussion between an admin and the science mods leaked:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked_conversation_from_kn0thing_and_the/)

~~~
tmuir
Not just an admin. YC alum and cofounder Alexis Ohanian. This conversation
tells you everything you need to know. They aren't sorry. This wasn't bungled.
They are doubling down on their lack of communication.

~~~
hoopd
I feel bad posting it because it's a leak but it informs the conversation.

------
jmount
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.

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

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

~~~
Frenchgeek
They didn't claim they didn't want to protest, they claim they didn't expect
their protest to have followers.

------
robrenaud
How hard would it be to fork reddit AMA on a third party site? I'd imagine if
you got Victoria on board, a lot of the mods/community would follow.

Certainly some custom support for the AMA would be nice, like getting cleanly
summarized final outputs and highlighting direct conversation with the askee,
and making it easy to find highly upvoted non-answered questions.

~~~
joosters
I imagine it'd be extremely difficult. It's the users that give reddit its
power. You can set up another site but if it hasn't got the readership, fewer
people are going to do AMAs there. There are already several reddit clones but
they are nowhere near as successful.

~~~
hoopd
When Barbara Walters switches networks viewers and celebrities follow her
because they like and trust her, people feel the same way about Victoria.

------
sparkzilla
Article>The issue goes beyond Reddit. We are concerned with what a move like
this means for for-profit companies that depend on the free labor of
volunteers — and whether they truly understand what makes an online community
vibrant.

It's time for companies to stop treating the free work of contributors as a
given, and pay them for their contributions:
[http://newslines.org/blog/reddit-and-wikipedia-share-the-
sam...](http://newslines.org/blog/reddit-and-wikipedia-share-the-same-
disease/)

------
pasbesoin
Based upon the facts if and as described here, I would have to consider Pao
entirely incompetent in her current role. Regardless of how one feels about
her as a person.

I regret a bit jumping on the bandwagon, here, but if things occurred as
described, the facts alone are damning.

P.S. I also have to question what the hell Alexis is up to. I've read
elsewhere that he conducted the actual termination. Is he really so clueless
at this point about his own site? (Even if he agreed with the termination, for
whatever reason, its manner and fallout is just simply unacceptable.)

There has to be some serious dollar play behind this. Which does not speak
well for the future of reddit; it may make it to the other side, but only
based upon the gigantic momentum it has built that may sustain it through to
some better policy -- if Management has the brains to see the light.

P.P.S. Is voat back up, now?

~~~
theklub
Yes voat is back up.

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

~~~
darkstar999
Some people have been on that site for 10 years.

~~~
secstate
That's fine, but it's effectively a giant forum with volunteer moderators. I
feel like it can best be described as the social equivalent of trying to steer
a boat that's really 30,000 small boats all tied together.

They have volunteers with the ability to simply turn off huge traffic parts of
their site? How is this a for-profit company?

~~~
MichaelGG
I'm guessing they will take that power back from the community, under
"responsibilities for default subreddits".

But if they would update their site (vs relying on 3rd parties) and update
stuff and actually talk to these volunteers, they wouldn't be in this
position. It's pretty impressive how they've managed to give an appearance of
not caring.

------
zxcvcxz
Why is it okay for a corporation to do it, but when mods do it everyone
accuses them of pushing their own agenda?

------
paulhauggis
This article makes it seems like the moderators actually work for Reddit,
which isn't the case. This is the problem, actually. Because it's not a paid
position, the company can't use that as leverage in situations like this. The
moderators essentially have nothing to lose.

Even in the article, it states that it was shutdown because of the abrupt
termination of Ms. Taylor. Anybody that makes these sort of emotional
decisions shouldn't be anywhere near a position of power.

If I were the CEO of Reddit, I would be making it my next goal to slowly take
away the power away from these moderators.

~~~
lmartel
If you were the CEO of Reddit it would go the way of Digg.

The community is what makes the site successful, and the moderators shape the
community, in addition to being the chief content creators. Developing an
adversarial relationship with the community or the moderators is the absolute
__fastest __way to torpedo the site.

In addition, as a few other comments on this article have pointed out, the
shutdown was not a reaction to the (sudden) firing of a (vital) employee, but
to _years_ of serious issues and mismanagement.

The first subreddit to shut down did so because it literally couldn't keep
functioning without Victoria, and the rest saw an opportunity to finally voice
their complaints and be heard.

~~~
DanBC
> moderators shape the community, in addition to being the chief content
> creators.

Moderators create very little content. Most of the content is taken from other
places, and most content is posted by people who are not mods.

~~~
lmartel
You're right, I phrased that poorly. I'm aware that most posts are links to
other sites, what I meant was:

\- Some of the "flagship" subreddits, and AMA in particular, only work because
of constant effort from admins/mods, with the bulk of community contributions
ranging from useless to toxic.

\- What differentiates Reddit from, say, 4chan is having some semblance of
community, coherence and civility. This is partly due to the karma system, but
mods play a big part in this too. "Content" was the wrong word to use, but
good moderation is (IMO) as important as good submissions in many cases.

------
throwaway_97
I think the management is doing the right thing for the long term. They will
try to make it more and more social and maybe even try to act as a news
portal; things that bring in profits. It should attract a lot of new people.
It won't be the reddit you remember but it will be a more profitable reddit.
On a personal note I feel nothing as I find reddit to be quite a distraction
to my productivity and many subreddits of my interests are dead.

------
kjs3
There seems to be an incredulous "we gave our time to a for profit company for
free and got fucked" attitude that I can't help, undoubtedly because I'm a bad
person, but think 'duh!'.

------
throwaway_97
[http://str8c.me/](http://str8c.me/)

~~~
dredmorbius
Could you provide some details on this rather than just a naked link?

------
alecco
An article critical of reddit? Let's see how fast this is taken out of HN
frontpage.

Edit: Same as top post (NYSE) 1h and same votes, and it's at 9th position...
Bring me your downvotes. Truth hurts?

~~~
DanBC
These threads are pretty toxic, so it's not surprising they get flagged.

Also, your comment got downvotes for baiting.

