A lot of people left Reddit because moderators attempted to use blocking millions of users from content as a 'show of force' bargaining tool and the constant tantrums grabbing for attention. The site was getting bloated with members and that creates a lot of toxicity. Reddit has been going downhill fast for a year or so because the userbase turned itself into the lowest common denominator. Repetitive conversation where any reasoned and reasonable thought that went against the current meta was downvoted into oblivion. That was much more disturbing than the new owners cleaning up a few useless subreddits or deciding to remove a loved employee. Reddit has slowly been burning itself and the original crew that ran it cashed out at the perfect time.
Different people left reddit for different reasons. The censorship issue is just one that I find interesting and I didn't know what Snapzu users thought about it. I agree with you about the repetitive banal conversation, but I don't agree about the constant tantrums from the mods. I sympathize with them way more than the admins in the blackout.
Personally I left reddit because there was no serious back and forth between the admins and the users. No new mod tools, despite mods clamoring for years. Most of the developments the admins pursued were just weird and not really what the users wanted (as far as I can tell). Victoria being fired is fine, she was an at-will employee, so reddit inc. can fire her whenever they want, but not telling the /r/iama mods that she had been fired, and not having a backup plan is just ridiculous. Here's one concrete example of the administration not understanding the website; Ellen Pao attempted to link to a private message in her own inbox. Obviously no one could see it, and yet the post got gold, presumably from Pao. This final example by itself is not really a problem at all, it's just funny. However, I think it is indicative of how little the people running reddit understand the site.
Of course people are free to disagree with my opinion, but the lack of communication was what really irked me. What I like about Snapzu is that I've made literally 2 posts and I've already had interaction with an admin.
Blackout was the first organized moderator tantrum and I can hardly sympathize with someone that can walkaway with zero repercussion. The users on the other hand do it regularly, and you better hope you aren't the person they are directing petty attacks at. They have attacked everything from rape victims to innocent families over the years. It is only getting worse.
The website was bought by Wired, of course it was going to get pushed in a new direction. What did anyone think was going to happen? It is a marketing wet dream and will probably be run into the ground as such. I've tried to stay as far away from the popular subs for a long time and still learn about all the drama, it is a cancer. Each outburst is getting bigger, going away faster, and becoming more frequent.
It's nice to see some web communities don't overreact to every little thing. I would like to be a part of that again.
I think that infantalizing the moderators by labeling their actions a "tantrum" is unnecessary and ignores a lot of the nuance behind the issue. It wasn't an issue of moderators being angry just because their buddy was fired, but rather the last in a long history of issues between mods and admins. Admins are utterly dependent on volunteer moderators, yet the relationship has been poor due to the minuscule effort on behalf of the admins. Despite this the admins push ahead with gimmicks and pet-projects rather than practical solutions to community problems, like expanded moderation tools.
This post here by mrmojorisingi details the issues between moderators and admins, and in it, he explains the lack of support and uses AutoModeratorBot as an example of problems that volunteer moderators have fixed for reddit admins. With this context of abysmal support between admins and moderators in mind, the firing of Victoria (who was integral to the AMA process on reddit) without even alerting the affected subs is a clear sign of the ongiong dysfunctional relationship between Reddit's admins and the userbase.
1) The invite system will artificially slow the rate of growth, allowing new members to acclimate to the cultural climate here without drastically changing it. Since reddit-digg comparisons are so popular, I would not be surprised if reddit's open door policy let a lot of the toxic elements of the old digg community through far too rapidly etc etc.
It seems like such a minor detail, but it might be the most telling factor in preventing the bloat described by BlankWIndow
2) One would hope that since so much of this recent drama is from a perceived lack of communication between the reddit admins and moderators (I was never a mod over at reddit so I can't say one way or the other what the actual situation was) that the snapzu team would take extra care to keep the lines of communication as open as possible.
3) At least for right now, there is a great reluctance from many of the migrants to radically change the inherent culture here. I think this is also at least partially owing to part one, but as long as the mentality can be maintained that redditors are welcome here, but this is not reddit and the toxicity that came to define reddit will be discouraged here, things won't go too far south.
That seems to be the big question with any social media platform. Every major forum site I have seen starts as a small friendly group of like minded people and evolves into an unruly mess. Takes a few years for one to go through the cycle. Maybe Snapzu will figure it out. I myself think it will take structure and regulation, just like a society of people living under a government. Real problem is getting money and paying all the people needed make that structure system work. People want free and without ads to be perfectly run, but that just doesn't happen. Everything has hit a breaking point.
Snapzu has a lot of restrictions in place for new users that keep the power in the hands of veterans that are well liked by the community. I think these systems can prevent a lot of the damage that was done by moderators in the days of olde.
One feature that does this is new users can only downvote 5 times a day, so people can't launch massive downvote raids because they can only downvote so few things per day.
A lot of people left Reddit because moderators attempted to use blocking millions of users from content as a 'show of force' bargaining tool and the constant tantrums grabbing for attention. The site was getting bloated with members and that creates a lot of toxicity. Reddit has been going downhill fast for a year or so because the userbase turned itself into the lowest common denominator. Repetitive conversation where any reasoned and reasonable thought that went against the current meta was downvoted into oblivion. That was much more disturbing than the new owners cleaning up a few useless subreddits or deciding to remove a loved employee. Reddit has slowly been burning itself and the original crew that ran it cashed out at the perfect time.
Different people left reddit for different reasons. The censorship issue is just one that I find interesting and I didn't know what Snapzu users thought about it. I agree with you about the repetitive banal conversation, but I don't agree about the constant tantrums from the mods. I sympathize with them way more than the admins in the blackout.
Personally I left reddit because there was no serious back and forth between the admins and the users. No new mod tools, despite mods clamoring for years. Most of the developments the admins pursued were just weird and not really what the users wanted (as far as I can tell). Victoria being fired is fine, she was an at-will employee, so reddit inc. can fire her whenever they want, but not telling the /r/iama mods that she had been fired, and not having a backup plan is just ridiculous. Here's one concrete example of the administration not understanding the website; Ellen Pao attempted to link to a private message in her own inbox. Obviously no one could see it, and yet the post got gold, presumably from Pao. This final example by itself is not really a problem at all, it's just funny. However, I think it is indicative of how little the people running reddit understand the site.
Of course people are free to disagree with my opinion, but the lack of communication was what really irked me. What I like about Snapzu is that I've made literally 2 posts and I've already had interaction with an admin.
Blackout was the first organized moderator tantrum and I can hardly sympathize with someone that can walkaway with zero repercussion. The users on the other hand do it regularly, and you better hope you aren't the person they are directing petty attacks at. They have attacked everything from rape victims to innocent families over the years. It is only getting worse.
The website was bought by Wired, of course it was going to get pushed in a new direction. What did anyone think was going to happen? It is a marketing wet dream and will probably be run into the ground as such. I've tried to stay as far away from the popular subs for a long time and still learn about all the drama, it is a cancer. Each outburst is getting bigger, going away faster, and becoming more frequent.
It's nice to see some web communities don't overreact to every little thing. I would like to be a part of that again.
I think that infantalizing the moderators by labeling their actions a "tantrum" is unnecessary and ignores a lot of the nuance behind the issue. It wasn't an issue of moderators being angry just because their buddy was fired, but rather the last in a long history of issues between mods and admins. Admins are utterly dependent on volunteer moderators, yet the relationship has been poor due to the minuscule effort on behalf of the admins. Despite this the admins push ahead with gimmicks and pet-projects rather than practical solutions to community problems, like expanded moderation tools.
This post here by mrmojorisingi details the issues between moderators and admins, and in it, he explains the lack of support and uses AutoModeratorBot as an example of problems that volunteer moderators have fixed for reddit admins. With this context of abysmal support between admins and moderators in mind, the firing of Victoria (who was integral to the AMA process on reddit) without even alerting the affected subs is a clear sign of the ongiong dysfunctional relationship between Reddit's admins and the userbase.
What would keep Snapzu from going down the same road, though? It has the same upvote / downvote mechanism. (Or, at least, it's similar enough.)
1) The invite system will artificially slow the rate of growth, allowing new members to acclimate to the cultural climate here without drastically changing it. Since reddit-digg comparisons are so popular, I would not be surprised if reddit's open door policy let a lot of the toxic elements of the old digg community through far too rapidly etc etc.
It seems like such a minor detail, but it might be the most telling factor in preventing the bloat described by BlankWIndow
2) One would hope that since so much of this recent drama is from a perceived lack of communication between the reddit admins and moderators (I was never a mod over at reddit so I can't say one way or the other what the actual situation was) that the snapzu team would take extra care to keep the lines of communication as open as possible.
3) At least for right now, there is a great reluctance from many of the migrants to radically change the inherent culture here. I think this is also at least partially owing to part one, but as long as the mentality can be maintained that redditors are welcome here, but this is not reddit and the toxicity that came to define reddit will be discouraged here, things won't go too far south.
That seems to be the big question with any social media platform. Every major forum site I have seen starts as a small friendly group of like minded people and evolves into an unruly mess. Takes a few years for one to go through the cycle. Maybe Snapzu will figure it out. I myself think it will take structure and regulation, just like a society of people living under a government. Real problem is getting money and paying all the people needed make that structure system work. People want free and without ads to be perfectly run, but that just doesn't happen. Everything has hit a breaking point.
Snapzu has a lot of restrictions in place for new users that keep the power in the hands of veterans that are well liked by the community. I think these systems can prevent a lot of the damage that was done by moderators in the days of olde.
What kind?
One feature that does this is new users can only downvote 5 times a day, so people can't launch massive downvote raids because they can only downvote so few things per day.
Active moderation and a stable reputation system also aid in this as well as what /u/Victarion said.