9 years ago
12
Ellen Pao talks to the NYT before Reddit
Apparently, despite 83k people signing a petition asking her to step down, its only a "vocal minority" that has a problem with how reddit is run.
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http://www.nytimes.com
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We'll see how long that view lasts if people continue to migrate to other platforms. I was mostly a lurker on reddit, but I can't get behind the poor management and lack of transparency any more, and I think a lot of people feel the same way.
What I still don't understand is, what exactly is the problem with the management? All I hear is that mods aren't happy with the way admins communicate with them, but that is very vague. What exactly is the problem? And please don't even mention Victoria, we don't know anything about her firing.
By management I just mean the way they handled the situation. Yeah I don't have much of an opinion on her actual firing, that's their call to make, but instead of addressing the issue and complaints to the community itself they allowed things to snowball until the site turned into a disaster. A good management call would have been to make sure the mods (of the relevant subs) were informed and able to seamlessly transition to her successor, or even if they hadn't been able to do that, then to at least promptly recognize the complaints and offer assistance in getting things back on track. It just feels like most of the problems could have been avoided with better planning and communication.
Reddit has around 15,000,000 unique visitors per month. 83,000 visitors is barely above 0.5% of the user base.
So yes, definitely a vocal minority.
Except it is the vocal minority that create and comment on content.
But I still think it's a vocal minority of the content-creating minority. It's true that the moderator blackout has been driven by reddit's "power users," though, so that should definitely be a cause for concern for the reddit administrators. The power users and moderators are reddit's "one percent," and the users so happen to generally be favorable to their cause.
Gotta keep in mind the 25% rule of the internet though.
You mean the rule that states that less than 25% of a website's user base create the content? If we apply this rule to people who are willing to sign a petition, that makes roughly 2.2% of users who actively wish for Pao to leave, with only 25% of them willing to go out and create "content" in the form of a signature.
I'd say it's still a very vocal minority.
Frankly, I was just done with the drama and the vocal hordes of internet vigilantes the site seems to groom. I come onto news aggregate and social media platforms for a community. A lot of the subreddits - even the smaller ones I frequented - were bogged down with petty arguments and misdirected heroics. I am much happier being on a smaller and more polite site.
I agree also. It's like it collapsed under the weight of its nasty side. Happy to be here now. What went on to get us here is just history now.
Water under the bridge, as they say :-)
Agreed.