#RedditRevolt

[kirottu]

What happened:

 

Today, we learned that Victoria was unexpectedly let go from her position with Reddt. We all had the rug ripped out from under us and feel betrayed.

 

Before doing that, the admins really should have at least talked to us (and all the other subs that host AMAs, like /r/Books, /r/Science, /r/Music, etc.) (Edit: not to suggest that we expect to know about Reddit's inner workings. Just that there should have been a transition in place or something worked out to ensure that Victoria's duties would be adequately handled, which they are not) We had a number of AMAs scheduled for today that Victoria was supposed to help with, and they are all left absolutely high and dry (hence taking IAMA private to figure out the situation) She was still willing to help them today (before the sub was shut down, of course) even without being paid or required to do so. Just a sign of how much she is committed to what she does.

 

The admins didn't realize how much we rely on Victoria. Part of it is proof, of course: we know it's legitimate when she's sitting right there next to the person and can make them provide proof. We've had situations where agents or others have tried to do an AMA as their client, and Victoria shut that **** down immediately. We can't do that anymore.

Part of it is also that Victoria is an essential lifeline of communication. When something goes wrong in an AMA, we can call and get it fixed immediately. Otherwise, we have to resort to desperately try messaging the person via Reddit (and they may not know to check their messages or even to look for these notifications). Sometimes we have to resort to **** like this (now with a screenshot because I can't link to that anymore for you) where we have to nuke an entire submission just so that the person is aware of the problem.

 

Part of it is also organization. The vast majority of scheduling requests go through her and she ensures that we have all of the standard information that we need ahead of time (date, time, proof, description, etc.) and makes it easier for the teams that set up AMAs on both ends. She ensures that things will go well and that the person understands what /r/IAMA is and what is expected of them. Without her filling this role, we will be utterly overwhelmed. We might need to scrap the calendar altogether, or somehow limit AMAs from those that would need help with the process.

 

We have been really blindsided by all of this. As a result, we will need to go through our processes and see what can be done without her.

 

Tl;dr: for /r/IAMA to work the way it currently does, we need Victoria. Without her, we need to figure out a different way for it to work.

/r/IAMA went private and this was reddit admins "kn0thing" response yesterday: https://archive.is/Sak3J

 

In surprise to no one with actual functioning brain this didn't go well with reddit mods. Lots of other subreddits have gone private as well with the latests and biggest being /r/funny.

 

Today kn0thing gave a new response filled with corporate talk without actually doing anything:

 

There's still no official word why Victoria was fired, but these are the two leading speculations:

1. She was against commercializing AMAs.

2. Moderator sacked the day after a disastrous Jesse Jackson AMA.

 

KiA megathread about the issue.

[Blarghagh]

As somebody who does not visit Reddit, I have no idea what most of that means. Who is Victoria? What's r/IAMA? Why is the support almost entirely centralized to specific people? Why does anyone go to Reddit in the first place?

[Meshugger]

Reddit is pretty much the front page of the internet.

 

If that site implodes, it means that there is suddenly millions of users without an online "hangout". Suffice to say, the main competitor Voat went down due to traffic increase and 4chan/8chan is veery slow at the moment.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Meshugger

[kirottu]

As somebody who does not visit Reddit, I have no idea what most of that means. Who is Victoria? What's r/IAMA? Why is the support almost entirely centralized to specific people? Why does anyone go to Reddit in the first place?

This is probably better explanation than my first post.

 

Reddit is the self proclaimed "Frontpage of the Internet". Many of the subreddits gone private have millions of subcribers.

Edited July 3, 2015 by kirottu

[Meshugger]

Another batch of ModTalk @Reddit has been leaked: http://pastebin.com/akunryxY

[Blarghagh]

Really? I had no idea so many people used Reddit.

 

"Two of the site’s most popular posts ever are AMAs: the one with Barack Obama and a conversation with a man with two penises. The AMA subreddit became such a popular section of the site that Reddit eventually spun it out into its own app."

 

... What a strange selection.

[Bartimaeus]

As somebody who does not visit Reddit, I have no idea what most of that means. Who is Victoria? What's r/IAMA? Why is the support almost entirely centralized to specific people? Why does anyone go to Reddit in the first place?

 

Victoria was a community liaison, I guess you could say. In particular, she served as a go between for celebrities or other persons of interest and the reddit platform and community, specifically for the "IAmA" subreddit (as well as any other subreddits doing anything similar), which stands for...uh, I think stands for simply I Am [blank] or I Am A [blank], which combines with "AMA", which stands for Ask Me Anything. Basically, in forum terms, it's one of the biggest "sections" (subreddits) on reddit, and the IAMA threads are huge, particularly when you get celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Morgan Freeman or whomever answering random questions upvoted by the community to be answered by them. It was essentially her job to set this stuff up and be there to communicate for them if necessary (as well as make sure the "correct" questions were being asked of them: she would ask them the frivolous questions like "what's your favorite movie(s)", but also throw in the harder questions when asked appropriately, like "explain your flip-flopping on this one political issue" or whatever), and without her, the entire system of things broke down.

 

The current reddit administration stinks so bad, they didn't even bother telling anybody she had been fired until they were actually trying to do the AMAs, by which point it was clear that yeah, it's now pretty much impossible to do it. This, combined with some other stuff, has culminated with subreddit moderators basically going, "screw the current administrators, their lack of communication, and what's been going on lately with reddit", and proceeding to shut themselves down temporarily as a form of complaint: this hides/restricts content and destroys traffic. Essentially, the message is "fix/clean this crap up". Nearly a thousand different "subreddits" (community-moderated sections that have a particular focus, essentially...like the aforementioned IAMA or others like /r/jokes or /r/news or /r/gaming, etc.) have shut themselves down at this time.

 

(edit): Oh yeah, and the President, too, I guess. There have been many, many, many different celebrities over the years. *shrug* And yeah, reddit is...extremely popular. Very likely the most popular "forum"-type website on the internet: I certainly can't think of any websites like this that are more notable...besides maybe 4chan? I would think reddit has outstripped 4chan at this point, but maybe not.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Meshugger]

Now the theories are starting to fly around. While the original protest might have been genuine, it has now turned into a power struggle between the mods and the admins, as a way to "clean the site out" from "toxic content".

Edited July 3, 2015 by Meshugger

[Bartimaeus]

Now the theories are starting to fly around. While the original protest might have been genuine, it has now turned into a power struggle between the mods and the admins, as a way to "clean the site out" from "toxic content".

 

Clarification? I haven't heard anything about this. This sounds more related to the subreddit bannings earlier...uh...last month or so. I'm sure that particular bit of business taking place so recently hasn't helped this situation either, but the current protest still seems to be more about Victoria and issues with the current administration in general rather than that.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Meshugger]

Oh, it's just uncle /pol/ talking again. But on the other hand, whenever there's chaos in a hierarchy, there's always at least one oppurtunist around.

[Bartimaeus]

Hah. To be fair, that IS/was part of the problem...in my opinion, such contentious subreddits should've been simply restricted from being seen on /r/all as a sort of test trial, to see if that would ease the image problem some. Certainly would've been a better first step than outright banning, anyways. The administrators refused to back down from that, though...however, this current "revolt" seems much more widely supported and clean cut than that one was, which I am glad for, since the current administration really does suck and needs a change.

 

To be completely honest, I think the majority of the "defaults" (essentially, for anyone who doesn't use reddit, the biggest subreddits on the site that everyone is, by "default", subscribed to when they sign up to reddit) are pretty bad. The biggest subreddit I'm subscribed to is the NFL subreddit, which only has like 500k subscribers...paltry compared to the millions and millions for the defaults, and it still has some pretty serious issues. Still better than most any other football-dedicated forum you can go to, though...so that's where I go!

 

(edit): BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33379571

 

Funny: "about 100 [...] subreddits [...] are believed to have been shut [down]". Last I saw, the number was almost at 10x that...which was a few hours ago.

 

More: http://www.businessinsider.sg/reddit-in-chaos-hundreds-subreddits-go-private-after-victoria-leaves-iama-2015-7/#.VZZn0_lK35o & http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2015/07/03/ask-me-anything-except-why-victoria-taylor-was-fired-from-reddit/2/

Edited July 3, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Ineth]

What's r/IAMA?

 

It's a subreddit that has become a popular platform for famous or interesting people to let themselves "be interviewed" by the social media public.

 

Most gaming kickstarters I followed have held an "Ask Me Anything" session there, for example. As have many celebrity and political figures, including the president.

 

I.e. it's well known and visited far beyond the usual reddit target audience, and for reddit the company it's probably an important source of prestige and advertising income.

 

As I understand it from the stuff kirottu linked, this little online drama is about the fact that the admin in charge of that subreddit was fired without notice (whereas the community respected her a lot and thought she was doing a great job), and the whole subreddit temporarily closed down, leaving in-progress and planned AMA sessions hanging out to dry.

 

Which seems like a very strange and unprofessional course of action by reddit, and thus conspiracy theories abound.

[Malcador]

Seems Reddit is run by my company. Ah well, a new site shall arise if things get too bad.

[Barothmuk]

Really? I had no idea so many people used Reddit.

Yeah, me neither.

[Gorgon]

They should start over. Reddit was cool back in the day (I make it sound like I was part of the good old days) Now it's all corporate man. 

 

My point being that it's a pretty simple concept and anyone could do it. Anyone could do it without a getting big headed about things like censorship and whatnot as well. Some kind of multi forum search function with a common interface migth even be bigger than Reddit. 

[Meshugger]

Seems Reddit is run by my company. Ah well, a new site shall arise if things get too bad.

 

Oh, hi there Mr. Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr., chairman of Advance Publications.

[Blarghagh]

 

What's r/IAMA?

 

It's a subreddit that has become a popular platform for famous or interesting people to let themselves "be interviewed" by the social media public.

 

Most gaming kickstarters I followed have held an "Ask Me Anything" session there, for example. As have many celebrity and political figures, including the president.

 

Yeah, I knew what an Ask Me Anything session was, I just didn't know it was specifically a Reddit thing and I didn't know the AMA in r/iAMA stood for that.

[HoonDing]

Reddit, isn't that like Craigslist for libtards?

[213374U]

#firstworldproblems

 

 

Really? I had no idea so many people used Reddit.

 

There is interesting stuff to be found, but it's due to sheer size; snr is pretty bad, a fact that is that is acknowledged beforehand as evidenced by the board layout and the amount of posts that are hidden by default.

 

I skim a few subreddits from time to time (r/fitness and r/science mostly) but I burn out pretty fast. I'm not even registered.

[Malcador]

Fun place to troll. Read the soccer, some programming ones mainly - even if it is just to treat it as a glorified RSS feed.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

... What a strange selection.

 

Welcome to the internet...

[Enoch]

There's a scale beyond which a forum run largely by volunteer mods becomes unstable, and the default subs passed that point a good while ago.  Something will set them off sooner or later and bork up the system.  In this case, it happened to be the unexplained departure of a popular admin. 

[Monte Carlo]

Reddit is pretty much the front page of the internet.

 

Not really. It's simply a humongous waste of bandwidth, digital mediocrity of the most egregious sort.

[Malcador]

 

 

Reddit is pretty much the front page of the internet.

Not really. It's simply a humongous waste of bandwidth, digital mediocrity of the most egregious sort.

Hm, why do you say that?

[Bartimaeus]

 

Reddit is pretty much the front page of the internet.

 

Not really. It's simply a humongous waste of bandwidth, digital mediocrity of the most egregious sort.

 

 

The same could be said of everywhere.