Someone on Reddit explained this very well: The same vast majority that doesn't care about the drama is the one that doesn't contribute anything; they're just lurkers.
It's mainly the minority of perhaps 10-15% of people who make posts, comment and moderate who are providing entertainment so that your site makes money.
I have come here with you and many others. I hope that our continued support of various communities that cherish level-headed, rational conversations over circle jerks will help enlighten those who deny the truth behind the internet; the consumers will always follow the producers. Otherwise you're just staring at an empty stage!
Circle jerks. I hated how almost all the major subs comments were filled with the same tired inside jokes. I want interesting content and meaningful discussions! Hopefully with the way Snapzu is set up we'll get just that.
I actually quit back in January because of all the regurgitated in-jokes (only to get sucked in again by the recent drama). It got to a point where I could guess the top comment for any given thread with decent accuracy about 3/4 of the time, which is not something I'm proud of. So, yeah, here's hoping this system holds that back a bit.
I think any similar thread-based system will lend itself eventually to that kind of in-joke circlejerk when it's popular enough. If snapzu becomes as "mainstream" as reddit was, then I feel like it would be an issue here too. I kind of hope not though. It'll be interesting to watch and see.
It's sort of difficult because on one hand I'd like to have lots of content, but I also want thoughtful discussions; often you need a lot of people for the former, but a more exclusive group for the latter. (I'm grossly generalizing here but you get the picture)
Well, yeah, but I'm fearful that that's an exclusive thing, like either you can have consistently good quality content or a massive user base, but not both. Reddit's problem was that it's so big that it's in eternal september, where there's so many new users that they overwhelm the existing culture before getting assimilated.
And yeah, if Snapzu sticks around and grows the culture will eventually form its own inside jokes - honestly I think that's part of the fun of having a community. Reddit totally went too far with it, though, once people saw there was acres of karma to be had parroting the same used-to-be-funny bs back at each other.
Thanks for the wiki article, I hadn't heard of that before.
Yeah I agree. I'm hoping that, in its interactions and general user feeling, snapzu ends up becoming more like a forum than.. well, reddit. I like the reddit style of letting the community decide what gets promoted or demoted, but I also like the more close-knit, forum-like environment. In my experience, people tend to put more thought into their posts when it's in a forum context. And if it's a small forum -- kind of like how the smaller subreddits ended up becoming -- users actually get to know each other and recognize each other. Which is also a very nice thing.
I know reddit technically is a kind of forum but I can't for the life of me find words to make my meaning clearer.
I'm also curious to see how the gamified karma system on snapzu works out. I don't know if it will just be a fun thing to encourage thoughtful discussion, or if it'll become this.. major contest, like reddit. Even though reddit's karma was totally meaningless. I don't know if snapzu's karma will end up encouraging or discouraging thoughtless doing-it-for-the-upvotes comments.
At the end of the day, in-jokes are great if and ONLY if you're part of the in-group making them. The main problem with memification (is that a word?) on the internet is that it's a lot harder to be part of the "in-group" unless said group is both relatively small (>150 people) and includes a fairly regular communication setup. Diluted amongst tens of thousands, memes turn into "small talk," where instead of actual inside jokes and jargon, they're just the way we know how to talk to strangers without having serious discussion.
There's a few groups I used to belong to on reddit- I left most of them due to time constraints over the last year - that have private Skype rooms and IRC chats, and while they're as circle-jerk-ish as the rest to an outsider, the vibe I wound up with at the time was that of a group of friends just hanging out. We've all done that in real life, where our clique has old stories and references and buzzwords that make no sense to anybody else. It's a form of bonding. But that doesn't seem to scale on Reddit.
Except they're not going to lose all the content providers. They're going to lose some of them, yes, but not enough that they'll care. I've seen this happen before on reddit several times, sometimes because of a problem with the overall site and sometimes just with specific subs. A small but dedicated group of content providers would leave and the rest would pick up the slack. The people in charge -- moderators and admins alike -- just ignored the ones who left.
I don't doubt that even the people who left will not make a dent in Reddit's activity; but her statement is completely ignorant of the fact that some users provide more value than others. She just treats them all as a whole, further proving that she lacks the basic knowledge as to how the cogs that make her site run work.
Reddit is a business driven by ad revenue and to a lesser extent user donations. If the activity doesn't drop appreciably then they really won't notice. Focus will shift to safer, less controversial subreddits like /r/catpictures and /r/earthporn. The character of reddit will change but that won't prompt any soul searching as long as the revenue keeps up.
This is the reason why I'm glad that I left. Years back it was a place created by people who wanted to share ideas, where the principle of getting along.
Look at the complains from the users and the admin response. Would you see this happening now?
Of course not, because the emphasis has become, as you say, on the fact that "Reddit is a business". I'm not saying it's not natural to have money-making in mind, but leaving the user behind for monetary gain deserves to be punished.
I have this feeling that they have almost as many sysadmins and programmers with the same amount of budget, but more of their profit is getting greedily absorbed by their shareholders. Because why bother spending more money on infrastructure and customer support when you can just pocket all of that fat cash?
As far as I know, reddit's never really been that profitable, and in fact has been operating at a loss for several years... see this article from 2013 as an example. Also, it's a private company, so in order to have shareholders to be beholden to profit-wise they'd have to go public first, which also means that they'd have to have proof that they can be profitable... which is quite likely why Pao was brought in. That said, they do have a board of directors, but it's pretty much just Alexis Ohanian and maybe one other dude.
I dunno -- I moderated (moderate?) two highly niche subreddits (one had about 15k subscribers, the other 7.5k), and while I wasn't that put off by the drama, it gets to the point where "community" is just more valuable. Have I left Reddit permanently? Not by any means, but I've vastly reduced my usage of the site. We've been seeing a little less activity in those "niche" subs, too.
If anything, those who stay behind will slowly see a drop in content 'quality,' while the 'quantity' of reposts and less engaging content will increase.
The loss of support, I think, will be gradual rather than sudden. This is just the beginning of unrest within the community. Is it a huge deal, in a real-world perspective? No. But within Reddit, people will fall away and move on.
I don't think this is the end for reddit, but it is one of many events which will dent its content aggregation monopoly. After the fatpeoplehate rigmarole and then this recent event, a large number of users who wouldn't have previously looked elsewhere are finding alternatives.
The number isn't high enough to destroy reddit and a lot of users aren't strictly moving per se, but signing up to other similar sites alongside reddit for the first time. As reddit hits more small bumps in the road (which is likely over time) I think the playing field will become wider and reddit will be seen more as 'one of the front pages of the internet'.
Yeah, it's going to take a long while before reddit actually dies - heck, some people still use AOL and Myspace. But, like how Facebook is starting to phase out in favor of Snapchat / Twitter / Instagram / Tumblr / etc, eventually the formerly invincible content aggregator juggernaut that is reddit will give way to whatever random content aggregator(s) next reach a critical mass of users.
But in this case, the moderators are also part of that small but dedicated group of people. And if they pack up & leave, that can spell big trouble for Reddit, since they do a monumental amount of work for the website.
Not unless in doing they can make a significant impact in the revenue coming into the site. See my other comment here. Frankly, I see the exodus of the semi-professional moderators of reddit as a good thing for the site. I would like to see the users regain some of their power within their own communities.
It might be beneficial for some subs. A lot of subs would suffer though. Foremost Iama I guess because with nobody organising amas from people that are not redditors it's going to be pretty hard. That will make a dent as amas are one if not the biggest magnet for new users. Other subs would have problems too, mainly those that are heavily moderated such as /r/science or /r/askhistorians (although I doubt they will leave).
I think it's something that could go either way. Getting some fresh new "power moderators" (ones moderating the major defaults) has the potential to swing reddit for better or worse. Some subreddits require a lot of work for mods, and many have been doing it for years. I suppose over time new mods would adjust.
There are also many communities that are moderated by users who seem to have no interest whatsoever in the subject matter of the subreddit. So actually interested users gaining control could be beneficial to them.
Yeah. Their management of subs (especially the default ones) is crucial for keeping people (lurkers and content providers) engaged in the communities. If they leave in droves, Reddit's going to face an upward battle of having to replace these lest their risk harming their profit margins.
Yeah, I think people underestimate just how important good moderators are. Not only do enforce the rules of the board, they're really instrumental in creating and maintaining a community... that's why I'm wary of Voat's focus on minimal moderation, in my experience that laissez faire mentality just ends up creating worse communities.
I thought Voat's goal was hands-off administration (barring illegal material of course). Moderation levels of the various subverses is up the individual mods to decide.
Oh, my mistake, I wasn't aware of that. I was under the impression that their 'no censorship' stance extended to lighter or nonexistent moderation as well.
I'll be interested to see if there are any entire community migrations from reddit to other competitor sites. I wouldn't have thought that would be a breach of Ts&Cs. I can imagine mods telling their community they're moving to snapzu and to use an affiliate link to sign up. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the invite system is dropped.
I think you're underestimating the backlash on firing Victoria. See reddit is currently trying to find a way to make money for it's investors. It needs to both grow larger and return more money per user in order to accomplish this. Current rumor on the firing is that Victoria was pressing back on a lot of these monetization strategies so they got rid of her. The simple fact is that Snapzu and Voat can exist being smaller than reddit, but reddit can't exist being smaller than what it is.
If reddit continues to hemorage users to other sites, investors will pull out and reddit will be sold all the same as Digg was. Afterall the primary reason Digg went down was the community's distaste in efforts to regulate power users, and it's monetization strategies. reddit was the promise land of a more equal impact of user contribution, and a more fair monetization strategy than what Digg delivered. Victoria was a band-aid on reddit's current functional deficiencies and a liaison between the community and delivering content which generated money. They just ripped off that band-aid w/o fixing the underlying issues.
It's possible that the backlash will grow into something that will have an effect on reddit's revenue stream. However, that still remains to be seen. I don't think people really appreciate just how many contributors there are and how diverse the demographics are. We look at the bigger ones like /r/politics and /r/atheism that have a strong liberal demographic and judge the whole site by them, but that's a mistake. There's a CNN article posted on reddit about over 150,000 names being posted to a petition to remove Ellen Pao as CEO, but what people don't realize is that 200,000 users isn't even a tenth of the biggest subreddits. The number of users, both active and lurkers, number in the millions.
Yes, this could grow into a real problem for reddit in general and Ellen specifically. But that doesn't mean it's guaranteed.
She's the interim CEO. I'm getting the feeling they're just keeping Pao around because she already had a bad rep, so it's really easy to blame problems on her. They let her be "in charge" for a little while, implement some unpopular changes that they've wanted to do for a while, and let Pao take the negative hit for it. Then once they've implemented all the changes they want to make, they can let Pao go and seem like the "good guys" for it.
Maybe a little bit conspiracy theorist, but it's not entirely unheard of. We'll just have to wait and see.
As conspiracy theories go, that's not a terrible one. There are a lot of variables in play, though, so it'll be interesting to see which way the winds blow over the next few weeks going into months.
And the British conservative party. Look at what Michael Gove has been tasked with over the past few years. they keep the nastiest work for him to limit the character damage to their party.
She comes with a background as investment analyst, this kind of people hardly ever cares about what makes a company great, what creates user loyalty or anything else WE care about. They only care about growing numbers. For her, if there's a mass exodus, like Digg's one, she'll sell Reddit to the highest bidder and claim victory for having "returned the investors money with profit".
Exactly this. I don't think this event will cause much change, but it sent me looking for other sites. I think it will go downhill from here, and someother site will pick up the slack. It will certainly be gradual rather than sudden, but I see Reddit becoming the next Digg Downfall unless they change something quick....and that change should be removing Pao.
Someone on Reddit explained this very well: The same vast majority that doesn't care about the drama is the one that doesn't contribute anything; they're just lurkers.
It's mainly the minority of perhaps 10-15% of people who make posts, comment and moderate who are providing entertainment so that your site makes money.
This woman is beyond dense.
I was definitely a longtime lurker on Reddit who ended up coming here because I was sick of it.
So there. You can't get me Ellen! Ha!
I have come here with you and many others. I hope that our continued support of various communities that cherish level-headed, rational conversations over circle jerks will help enlighten those who deny the truth behind the internet; the consumers will always follow the producers. Otherwise you're just staring at an empty stage!
Circle jerks. I hated how almost all the major subs comments were filled with the same tired inside jokes. I want interesting content and meaningful discussions! Hopefully with the way Snapzu is set up we'll get just that.
I actually quit back in January because of all the regurgitated in-jokes (only to get sucked in again by the recent drama). It got to a point where I could guess the top comment for any given thread with decent accuracy about 3/4 of the time, which is not something I'm proud of. So, yeah, here's hoping this system holds that back a bit.
I know exactly what you mean about guessing the top comment before looking. At first it's fun, but then it gets old quickly.
I think any similar thread-based system will lend itself eventually to that kind of in-joke circlejerk when it's popular enough. If snapzu becomes as "mainstream" as reddit was, then I feel like it would be an issue here too. I kind of hope not though. It'll be interesting to watch and see.
It's sort of difficult because on one hand I'd like to have lots of content, but I also want thoughtful discussions; often you need a lot of people for the former, but a more exclusive group for the latter. (I'm grossly generalizing here but you get the picture)
Well, yeah, but I'm fearful that that's an exclusive thing, like either you can have consistently good quality content or a massive user base, but not both. Reddit's problem was that it's so big that it's in eternal september, where there's so many new users that they overwhelm the existing culture before getting assimilated.
And yeah, if Snapzu sticks around and grows the culture will eventually form its own inside jokes - honestly I think that's part of the fun of having a community. Reddit totally went too far with it, though, once people saw there was acres of karma to be had parroting the same used-to-be-funny bs back at each other.
Thanks for the wiki article, I hadn't heard of that before.
Yeah I agree. I'm hoping that, in its interactions and general user feeling, snapzu ends up becoming more like a forum than.. well, reddit. I like the reddit style of letting the community decide what gets promoted or demoted, but I also like the more close-knit, forum-like environment. In my experience, people tend to put more thought into their posts when it's in a forum context. And if it's a small forum -- kind of like how the smaller subreddits ended up becoming -- users actually get to know each other and recognize each other. Which is also a very nice thing.
I know reddit technically is a kind of forum but I can't for the life of me find words to make my meaning clearer.
I'm also curious to see how the gamified karma system on snapzu works out. I don't know if it will just be a fun thing to encourage thoughtful discussion, or if it'll become this.. major contest, like reddit. Even though reddit's karma was totally meaningless. I don't know if snapzu's karma will end up encouraging or discouraging thoughtless doing-it-for-the-upvotes comments.
Should be interesting.
At the end of the day, in-jokes are great if and ONLY if you're part of the in-group making them. The main problem with memification (is that a word?) on the internet is that it's a lot harder to be part of the "in-group" unless said group is both relatively small (>150 people) and includes a fairly regular communication setup. Diluted amongst tens of thousands, memes turn into "small talk," where instead of actual inside jokes and jargon, they're just the way we know how to talk to strangers without having serious discussion.
There's a few groups I used to belong to on reddit- I left most of them due to time constraints over the last year - that have private Skype rooms and IRC chats, and while they're as circle-jerk-ish as the rest to an outsider, the vibe I wound up with at the time was that of a group of friends just hanging out. We've all done that in real life, where our clique has old stories and references and buzzwords that make no sense to anybody else. It's a form of bonding. But that doesn't seem to scale on Reddit.
I stopped lurking on digg for the same reason I'm now here: I am not (that) interested in controversy, I'm interested in reading cool stuff.
We'll see how this goes.
Except they're not going to lose all the content providers. They're going to lose some of them, yes, but not enough that they'll care. I've seen this happen before on reddit several times, sometimes because of a problem with the overall site and sometimes just with specific subs. A small but dedicated group of content providers would leave and the rest would pick up the slack. The people in charge -- moderators and admins alike -- just ignored the ones who left.
I don't doubt that even the people who left will not make a dent in Reddit's activity; but her statement is completely ignorant of the fact that some users provide more value than others. She just treats them all as a whole, further proving that she lacks the basic knowledge as to how the cogs that make her site run work.
All users are valuable, but some are more valuable than others.
Reddit is a business driven by ad revenue and to a lesser extent user donations. If the activity doesn't drop appreciably then they really won't notice. Focus will shift to safer, less controversial subreddits like /r/catpictures and /r/earthporn. The character of reddit will change but that won't prompt any soul searching as long as the revenue keeps up.
This is the reason why I'm glad that I left. Years back it was a place created by people who wanted to share ideas, where the principle of getting along.
I actually went back and searched for an example of the past: https://www.reddit.com/comments/bexqj/
Look at the complains from the users and the admin response. Would you see this happening now?
Of course not, because the emphasis has become, as you say, on the fact that "Reddit is a business". I'm not saying it's not natural to have money-making in mind, but leaving the user behind for monetary gain deserves to be punished.
I have this feeling that they have almost as many sysadmins and programmers with the same amount of budget, but more of their profit is getting greedily absorbed by their shareholders. Because why bother spending more money on infrastructure and customer support when you can just pocket all of that fat cash?
As far as I know, reddit's never really been that profitable, and in fact has been operating at a loss for several years... see this article from 2013 as an example. Also, it's a private company, so in order to have shareholders to be beholden to profit-wise they'd have to go public first, which also means that they'd have to have proof that they can be profitable... which is quite likely why Pao was brought in. That said, they do have a board of directors, but it's pretty much just Alexis Ohanian and maybe one other dude.
Not to mention there are highly niche subreddits that don't care about all the drama. Those people will probably stay and be business as usual.
I dunno -- I moderated (moderate?) two highly niche subreddits (one had about 15k subscribers, the other 7.5k), and while I wasn't that put off by the drama, it gets to the point where "community" is just more valuable. Have I left Reddit permanently? Not by any means, but I've vastly reduced my usage of the site. We've been seeing a little less activity in those "niche" subs, too.
If anything, those who stay behind will slowly see a drop in content 'quality,' while the 'quantity' of reposts and less engaging content will increase.
The loss of support, I think, will be gradual rather than sudden. This is just the beginning of unrest within the community. Is it a huge deal, in a real-world perspective? No. But within Reddit, people will fall away and move on.
this! They'll probably become what they hated the most, some buzzfeed or 9gag replicator.
I don't think this is the end for reddit, but it is one of many events which will dent its content aggregation monopoly. After the fatpeoplehate rigmarole and then this recent event, a large number of users who wouldn't have previously looked elsewhere are finding alternatives.
The number isn't high enough to destroy reddit and a lot of users aren't strictly moving per se, but signing up to other similar sites alongside reddit for the first time. As reddit hits more small bumps in the road (which is likely over time) I think the playing field will become wider and reddit will be seen more as 'one of the front pages of the internet'.
Yeah, it's going to take a long while before reddit actually dies - heck, some people still use AOL and Myspace. But, like how Facebook is starting to phase out in favor of Snapchat / Twitter / Instagram / Tumblr / etc, eventually the formerly invincible content aggregator juggernaut that is reddit will give way to whatever random content aggregator(s) next reach a critical mass of users.
But in this case, the moderators are also part of that small but dedicated group of people. And if they pack up & leave, that can spell big trouble for Reddit, since they do a monumental amount of work for the website.
Not unless in doing they can make a significant impact in the revenue coming into the site. See my other comment here. Frankly, I see the exodus of the semi-professional moderators of reddit as a good thing for the site. I would like to see the users regain some of their power within their own communities.
It might be beneficial for some subs. A lot of subs would suffer though. Foremost Iama I guess because with nobody organising amas from people that are not redditors it's going to be pretty hard. That will make a dent as amas are one if not the biggest magnet for new users. Other subs would have problems too, mainly those that are heavily moderated such as /r/science or /r/askhistorians (although I doubt they will leave).
I think it's something that could go either way. Getting some fresh new "power moderators" (ones moderating the major defaults) has the potential to swing reddit for better or worse. Some subreddits require a lot of work for mods, and many have been doing it for years. I suppose over time new mods would adjust.
There are also many communities that are moderated by users who seem to have no interest whatsoever in the subject matter of the subreddit. So actually interested users gaining control could be beneficial to them.
Yeah. Their management of subs (especially the default ones) is crucial for keeping people (lurkers and content providers) engaged in the communities. If they leave in droves, Reddit's going to face an upward battle of having to replace these lest their risk harming their profit margins.
Yeah, I think people underestimate just how important good moderators are. Not only do enforce the rules of the board, they're really instrumental in creating and maintaining a community... that's why I'm wary of Voat's focus on minimal moderation, in my experience that laissez faire mentality just ends up creating worse communities.
I thought Voat's goal was hands-off administration (barring illegal material of course). Moderation levels of the various subverses is up the individual mods to decide.
Oh, my mistake, I wasn't aware of that. I was under the impression that their 'no censorship' stance extended to lighter or nonexistent moderation as well.
I'll be interested to see if there are any entire community migrations from reddit to other competitor sites. I wouldn't have thought that would be a breach of Ts&Cs. I can imagine mods telling their community they're moving to snapzu and to use an affiliate link to sign up. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the invite system is dropped.
I think you're underestimating the backlash on firing Victoria. See reddit is currently trying to find a way to make money for it's investors. It needs to both grow larger and return more money per user in order to accomplish this. Current rumor on the firing is that Victoria was pressing back on a lot of these monetization strategies so they got rid of her. The simple fact is that Snapzu and Voat can exist being smaller than reddit, but reddit can't exist being smaller than what it is.
If reddit continues to hemorage users to other sites, investors will pull out and reddit will be sold all the same as Digg was. Afterall the primary reason Digg went down was the community's distaste in efforts to regulate power users, and it's monetization strategies. reddit was the promise land of a more equal impact of user contribution, and a more fair monetization strategy than what Digg delivered. Victoria was a band-aid on reddit's current functional deficiencies and a liaison between the community and delivering content which generated money. They just ripped off that band-aid w/o fixing the underlying issues.
It's possible that the backlash will grow into something that will have an effect on reddit's revenue stream. However, that still remains to be seen. I don't think people really appreciate just how many contributors there are and how diverse the demographics are. We look at the bigger ones like /r/politics and /r/atheism that have a strong liberal demographic and judge the whole site by them, but that's a mistake. There's a CNN article posted on reddit about over 150,000 names being posted to a petition to remove Ellen Pao as CEO, but what people don't realize is that 200,000 users isn't even a tenth of the biggest subreddits. The number of users, both active and lurkers, number in the millions.
Yes, this could grow into a real problem for reddit in general and Ellen specifically. But that doesn't mean it's guaranteed.
Having visited Reddit since 2006, I have to say those groups leaving always led to a drop in quality submissions and comments.
I don't doubt it. But it doesn't have to be quality for it to drive revenue.
She's the interim CEO. I'm getting the feeling they're just keeping Pao around because she already had a bad rep, so it's really easy to blame problems on her. They let her be "in charge" for a little while, implement some unpopular changes that they've wanted to do for a while, and let Pao take the negative hit for it. Then once they've implemented all the changes they want to make, they can let Pao go and seem like the "good guys" for it.
Maybe a little bit conspiracy theorist, but it's not entirely unheard of. We'll just have to wait and see.
As conspiracy theories go, that's not a terrible one. There are a lot of variables in play, though, so it'll be interesting to see which way the winds blow over the next few weeks going into months.
All I know for sure is whatever happens on Reddit, I'm going to be watching from over here on Snapzu. It's nicer here.
Taking lessons in political strategy from Baron Harkonnen, I see.
And the British conservative party. Look at what Michael Gove has been tasked with over the past few years. they keep the nastiest work for him to limit the character damage to their party.
She comes with a background as investment analyst, this kind of people hardly ever cares about what makes a company great, what creates user loyalty or anything else WE care about. They only care about growing numbers. For her, if there's a mass exodus, like Digg's one, she'll sell Reddit to the highest bidder and claim victory for having "returned the investors money with profit".
Exactly this. I don't think this event will cause much change, but it sent me looking for other sites. I think it will go downhill from here, and someother site will pick up the slack. It will certainly be gradual rather than sudden, but I see Reddit becoming the next Digg Downfall unless they change something quick....and that change should be removing Pao.