8 years ago
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Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum
We are moderators for the website reddit.com, a place where, on a typical day, millions of users read and share content in self-contained communities called “subreddits.” We volunteer our time to help manage the subsection called IamA — a popular part of the site where thousands of interviews, known as “ask me anythings,” take place.
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http://www.nytimes.com
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This whole thing is an unbelievable clusterfuck on Reddit's part. How in God's name did they get so disorganized and detached from their userbase?
Same way it happens at any company. More manager/executive positions, most of which are focused on profits rather than caring about/understanding the underlying business.
Which I've never understood. If your profits are based on how many people come to the site, don't the most profits come from keeping the lowest line happy? Focusing on profits and focusing on the user's experience, in this case, are pretty much the same thing.
Plenty of companies like Reddit can do and have done many things that aren't in the best interest of the userbase but make TONS of money. It just depends on how you make the change.
You're leaving out the angle of "spin." Say you have a new idea that would increase revenue for your company but your user base will never go for it. Spin it. Call it something entirely different like "Mod Tools" and conveniently leave out the part where you eventually monetize celebrity accounts with the new "Mod Tools." Let everyone get on board with "Mod Tools," no one will fight "Mod Tools." And then, under the nose of the user base, tell celebrities that they can pay your company for a "Celebrity Account" with necessary "PR Tools" that will allow them to have multiple people use their account (like PR reps), they can ban and hide people in their threads, and censor out inappropriate questions or content that hurts their brand. Now, your user base would never go for this idea if you marketed it as "We are moving forward with a plan that will allow celebrities to censor content on our website for our company's financial gain."
You're assuming the managers have common sense. When people start talking about "adding value" and "moving forward", they have gone beyond common sense.
You think they'd have taken precautions after seeing how badly Digg crashed and burned which resulted in the exodus that caused Reddit to finally be worth a damn.
Usually you give people two week's notice in the US? Here in Norway, you normally have three months before you change your job. That is to ensure that clusterfucks like this don't happen.
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The thing is, the protesting from the users has no justification such as this. Many regular Redditors are jumping on the bandwagon because they believe that the entire movement is to be blamed on Ellen Pao, when in reality, the moderators of the subs that blacked out set them to private because they want tools that they don't have otherwise. Askreddit put a timer in their sidebar to show when they expect new and better moderation tools by, but users continued to complain about the subreddit not staying blacked out - even when the original purpose of the blackout was simply to ask for better communication and tools. In the meantime, regular Redditors who seem to believe themselves to be a part of some great movement continue to mindlessly downvote Pao's comments that actually support what the vast majority of Redditors are asking for.
That's why I disagree with the last line of the article.
Sadly, a majority of the users are actually behaving like a screaming mindless mob.
The problem is that this came really close time wise to the banning of FatPeopleHate and similar subreddits, a vocal minority of users are still upset about that and are using this issue to further vent their anger at Reddit.
Also some users just want to see the world burn regardless and will use any excuse to do so.
I don't want to speak for anyone else, but there are other grievances with Reddit that I think at least some of the "protest" for lack of a better term stems from. Along with the leadership came a focus on profit that detracted from Reddit's original ethos. On top of that, having hoards of people come from Digg, 9gag et al, and even 4chan also started that old Eternal September feeling. I used to enjoy seeing my orangered, but eventually came to dread it. Oh great, who wants to swear at and argue with me now?!?
As far as that particular subreddit, the IamA/AMAs had already turned sour in my mouth. I can only imagine how bad it is poised to get now that the key employee that at least kept it organized is canned. I see video AMAs on the horizon (AKA commercials).
I guess my particular case is different though, since I opted to just stop going rather than stay and 'fight'. I have been tired of that place for a long time, and it had nothing to do with 'free speech'. I have started tending to my RSS feed again, and Snapzu is proving to be a very nice social-eque time waster! :)
I agree that users are behaving like a screaming mob, and also that they are more than that in aggregate. What this all points to, for me, is the question of who can, or should, claim ownership of reddit's success and potential.
It's hard to argue that the users and mods have no stake in the site, but they often don't behave (especially lately) as owners, and instead substitute entitlement and witch hunting for stewardship. And, I would argue, the on-paper ownership (the money) doesn't seem to realize that, mob-mentality or not, the volunteer labor and contributions of users and mods are their primary asset - not an impediment to success or a blank slate that can be reconfigured for greater profit. Neither side seems to have a sense of what their (contested) 'ownership' of reddit's future means.
To make matters worse, I see the communication breakdown around the subject of ownership and its responsibilities as the animating force behind reddit's form over the last few years - which a good many people consider inviolable despite its ad hoc and difficult to define nature. In other words, in the absence of good communication between "ownership" parties, a system emerged organically, without significant top-down guidance, that could define and claim ownership over itself without external challenges to its identity, and thus thrive on a lack of communication.
Now, forced to communicate - even to demand better communication - the unpaid 'owners' in that system have to confront the ownership issue in conversation with investors whose idea of reddit's future is unclear, but seemingly not founded on its current reality. Instead of bridging that gap, the unpaid have chosen to either: 1) try to continue as if nothing has changed, or 2) hope that lashing out and emphatically agreeing with one another will bring the change they want - whatever that is. Or maybe no change at all is the goal. Meanwhile, the on-paper owners of reddit have released placating statements and generally assumed that some tweaks, reassurances, and time are all that is needed to make the changes they want while giving the appearance that nothing has changed.
I think something has to change, and it has to start with the paid and unpaid acknowledging the unpleasant but real validities of each other's ownership claims, and by ditching the assumptions they've formed about reddit in the absence of such honest communication. I don't think that will happen, honestly, and anyway - maybe none of the parties involved really want it to happen. It's practically anathema to what reddit has become.
(Holy huge post! Sorry about that. I'll try to edit it down later.)
Any website lives and dies by their guests. And if they're unhappy, it's something that needs to be fixed because they can move on. Websites are entertainment, and therefore they either please the users or fail. You can't sell ads if no one visits.
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Cough... /t/IAMA Cough... There's no reason we can't build something here! Seriously!
That would be pretty cool! But how much pull does Snapzu have? Of course I think it would start out like Reddit....regular people doing AMA's and then while this site gets bigger we can possibly have some bigger names start doing AMA's.
I completely agree. Let's just have some fun stories and interesting people. I would actually really like to start having some AMA's on here because there is more of a likelihood of my questions being answered.
Edit: I looked at the /t/ama and there are no posts and six users. Is it dead? Because I would be willing to be the first guinea pig with the AMA's on this site- my grandfather (now deceased) was the communications officer on a ship that was present at the first hydrogen bomb. I did a paper on him in grade school and we would talk about his service in the Navy when he was alive. Would anybody be interested?
I would gladly do an AMA as well. I do think it is a great idea. It will let other Snapzu users have fun and get to know each other. Believe it or not, a lot of cool and useful info can be learned from AMA's.
And we have two! Let's get this rolling everyone!
And my axe!
Edit: I just visited and posted comments on /t/iama. Am currently rounding up some proof of employment so I can snap my own post there as well, to help get the ball rolling!
Ah, I was just visiting the wrong tribe. Well cool. Let's start this shit.
As a Reddit refugee seeing IAMAs brought here would be awesome. Definitely second that motion.
Did someone send an invite to Victoria? :)
Doesn't reddit have a trademark on IAMA? We would probably have to find a different name if we wanted to emulate its success.
Technically my second comment on snapzu but I'm from reddit. More than 5 years on that site. I just want to say. I'm not going back. I did like Victoria a lot but my reasoning is simple. It doesn't work anymore. The subs got to expansive and it spiraled out of control. I just feel like the thousands of hours spent were fun and I'm moving on. I'm not a free mod anymore. I'll be one again either here or somewhere else but I didn't feel appreciated. I was a free tool to make them more money. They learned nothing from the AMA with Woody (whom I like). Trying to make as much money as possible is something businesses try to do. However when your site can be profitable and is well received you should not make a huge grab for money. It's why MySpace died and why Facebook is struggling. I could of gone on but I won't bore you. I'm just glad I'm here.
Your not boring us. Would you do an AMA here?
It's not just Victoria. Almost all the admins I thought were awesome are gone.
Most of the new ones, I have no idea who they are.
You can check the list of present and past admins here: https://www.reddit.com/about/team
I love the "Just don't screw it up. " message under Ellen Pao (ekjp).
Lol. This is why I'm here. It's too late for me. They say they will change but I highly doubt it. I think the only thing they've learned what they needed to. This site is way better too. Once it's user base goes up reddit will seem pointless.
While I'm still sad this happened to Reddit, this was a very clear, concise and professional way to explain what happened.
Its one of the few pieces that got out after the whole thing went tits up. From my POV, everyone mostly reacted badly to the entire situation. Yes, I want to know what happened that got Victoria fired. But its none of my business. What I'm more concerned over is the insane amount of work that the mod teams were dumped with and told to deal with it. Online companies that foster its users for content are getting more and more dickish with how they treat the volunteers. More and more they treat them like paid employees, but dont have to pay them one cent.
Sweat Shop 2.0
I feel like all these Reddit people are just using snapzu to get back at reddit, like you guys broke up and picked the first girl you saw to make your lover jealous. Snapzu is awesome, way more so than reddit. I hate seeing snapzu become a talk shit about reddit site. Why cant everyone just move on from reddit and talk about snapzu! Instead of talking about how much reddit sucks you guys should tall about ways to improve snapzu.
It was like this on Reddit 8 years ago too. It was all "why Reddit is better than Digg" etc, after a while people stopped giving a damn about Digg and then Digg collapsed.
I think reddit was about the same size as Digg when that migration occurred, so it was able to absorb the influx of new users without a huge disruption. Snapzu is essentially a blank slate at this point. Since (I assume) almost all its users are reddit refugees, it makes sense that the first thing we do on arrival is talk about why we're here.
This was long before the Digg migration though. Hopefully the juvenile users that followed from Digg to Reddit stay at Reddit. Reddit had traffic problems a while after the Digg migration which I think they blamed on the load bearing servers. I remember it took quite some time before it was improved.
I'm wondering when these guys take their subreddit to their own site or some competitor.
Needing a "warm voice" ..really? The vote system was "democratic" and worked really well -really? Mods were nt protesting-really? I'm not buying this at all. I don't doubt the mods pour time in and felt they weren't consulted about the change or supported enough in the termination of an employee who supported them. I think this is more complex and has many facts not made public. I've seen mods in action and this innocent victim mentality does not fit with what I've experienced. There was so much hate a negativity-all on their watch.