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.
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.