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For what it's worth, I can vouch for what ghani is saying. It matches up with my memory of the events of Mediacrush on Reddit. I was actually going to compose

For what it's worth, I can vouch for what ghani is saying. It matches up with my memory of the events of Mediacrush on Reddit. I was actually going to compose a similar comment. That said, the way ghani is phrasing the comments is upsetting. They're very rude. There's no reason to be rude even if you're right. Also, the mods of Reddit are a huge problem. They are both the source of Reddit's strength and its greatest weakness. Having those kinds of moderators is the best solution anyone's thought of so far, but it's still horrible (at times). I'm getting the feeling that you're defending the mods so vigorously because you're either a mod or friends with one, but from the perspective of someone who just wants to see good content, they are at times the exact opposite of what Reddit needs. And since they have so much power, the few bad apples make a really big splash. But, yeah... Cmpwn may want to consider being more transparent about their aggressive promotion of Mediacrush on Reddit. For what it's worth, I think it was just a miscommunication issue. People don't understand new things, and you can't blame them for not thinking that your new service is the best thing ever. It takes time, patience, and calmness to get your message through. Dismissing hoverzoom as a non-issue was a very unfortunate decision. It was one of the most damning things you could have done. If I remember correctly, it happened before the recent hoverzoom controversy, and back then everyone on Reddit (me included) was in love with it. Dismissing the inability to link directly to the mediacrush'd gif was also not a good move. If it's impossible to link directly to it, then you have to explain what can be done in order to give users something that simulates a direct link. And, We don't remove any posts where we get negative press. It's disingenuous of you to be deleting your posts on Reddit that reflect poorly on you, and then claiming that you haven't ever done so. Here's an example: http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creators_of_mediacrush_versus_the_moderation/cblyabf?context=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creat... I know how tempting it is to do that. I used to do it on HN. But trust me, letting your words stand and then pointing out what you've learned since then is way better than trying to censor yourself.

mahranch 13y ago
> Also, the mods of Reddit are a huge problem. I hold the exact opposite opinion. And I believe reddit's growth over the last 6 years is affirmation of my opinion. Before reddit had subreddits and mods, it was a virtual clone of this website. It was roughly the same size (possibly smaller) and had similar content. Then in 2007/2008 (can't remember, it's been a while) Reddit made the big change and added the new subreddit feature, each with its own set of mods. Mods who became responsible for the growth and health of their own communities. Immediately after this change, reddit exploded in growth, and it still continues to see exponential growth today. One can easily correlate it's explosive growth directly due to subreddits and their mods. Mods who put in a lot of work and basically do the admins job for them (promotion, community outreach, fighting spam, etc). Sure, you occasionally hear about a few bad apples here and there, but those cases are rare when you factor in the thousands of mods (150+ just for the defaults) that you don't hear about. I think risk and trade-off is more than fair and if I was an admin on reddit, I'd do it every single time. Reddit's biggest asset is its mods, that I guarantee. I wonder how many man hours the mods put in collectively that reddit doesn't have to pay a dime for? I bet it's a large number. It's unfortunate because the admins don't seem to give a shit about their mods despite being the very engine that keeps their site tolerable. They've let them languish for years now with subpar mod tools. > Having those kinds of moderators is the best solution anyone's thought of so far, but it's still horrible (at times). Seems to work for wikipedia. I think it works for reddit too. It's just the users and mods over on reddit have more of a community platform so the dirty laundry is more visible. Everyone loves drama... > but from the perspective of someone who just wants to see good content, they are at times the exact opposite of what Reddit needs. Making exceptions to rules is a problem in of itself. Just because it's something "you" want to see, doesn't mean someone down the road isn't going to bring it up and throw it in your face a week, a month even years down the road. "You let this guy do that, why not me! Censorship! Censorship! Witch-hunt!" There are drawbacks to making exceptions to rules which were laid down for (usually) very good reasons. It's easy to ignore them when you're not the one who has to look and deal with the bigger picture every day.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  Now that this conversation has developed a bit, I'll leave my response. >Your bot's account is gone, so there is little evidence to cite. However, I remember how present and obnoxious it was. Promotions for MediaCrush definitely did not appear solely when a user mentioned MediaCrush. It was enough of a problem that an admin on reddit asked you to stop: > >http://i.imgur.com/CDykpWp.png http://i.imgur.com/CDykpWp.png "Promotions" did appear only when asked. There were two occasions where we used the bot ourselves to introduce it to the public - you can't use a bot you don't know about, we had to do it ourselves. From that point out, it was never manually triggered. >> Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out. > >Many other domains have been blocked from reddit for the same behavior (e.g. http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg.. http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg.... ), but you consistently portray reddit's admins as people who had it in for your site in particular, which is dishonest. Automated vote gaming and bad-faith use is what got those domains banned. I do agree that the admins weren't entirely wrong in that, but I maintain that much better communication should have been in place. We weren't promoting things in bad faith, no matter how you spin it. The actions of the admins beyond this point are more nails in the coffin, though - it's not _just_ that they shadowbanned the bot. >> We don't remove any posts where we get negative press. > >Yes, you do. They cannot be found from your user page anymore, but I've personally watched you delete your comments in threads where you promote yourself and get bad press. The bot was shadowbanned, and its comments and posts deleted by moderators. Not by us. >You've said things that are explicitly untrue about reddit's mods and admins. Mainly that they were big, bad, imgur-partial bullies. Here is the supposedly hostile, anti-user stance that moderators took towards MediaCrush: The majority of Reddit users (not including moderators) supported us. I lost my temper, but I believe I was in the right when criticising the moderators for their choices. The KarmaCourt thing was a mistake, but it was at someone else's suggestion and seemed like a good idea at the time. The moderators were clearly in the wrong - their own userbase overwhelmingly supported us. >The bot that you ran promoted your site obnoxiously in many subreddits, and there are plenty of accounts banned via /r/reportthespammers that do exactly the same thing. I don't feel that you can argue it was not spam. It _only came when asked for_. This is a _very_ important distinction. Do not spread misinformation by claiming that it spammed Reddit without being asked after - it did not do that. >> there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services > >This is a tu-quoque, and doesn't justify you in any way. Meaning that the status-quo was set, and other bots were on Reddit doing similar things and not being punished for it. We had role models. >[sillysaurus3:] I'm getting the feeling that you're defending the mods so vigorously because you're either a mod or friends with one, but from the perspective of someone who just wants to see good content, they are at times the exact opposite of what Reddit needs. And since they have so much power, the few bad apples make a really big splash. I get a simliar feeling myself. >Dismissing hoverzoom as a non-issue was a very unfortunate decision. It was one of the most damning things you could have done. If I remember correctly, it happened before the recent hoverzoom controversy, and back then everyone on Reddit (me included) was in love with it. This was after the Hoverzoom ad controversy. I don't think this was a major contributor to slow adoption. >Dismissing the inability to link directly to the mediacrush'd gif was also not a good move. If it's impossible to link directly to it, then you have to explain what can be done in order to give users something that simulates a direct link. I did, on a few occasions. Keep in mind that these screenshots ghani posted are out of context, don't represent the full extent of our communication with moderators, and are intentionally chosen to paint us in a bad light (not that they aren't valid criticisms - they're just not the whole story). >It's disingenuous of you to be deleting your posts on Reddit that reflect poorly on you, and then claiming that you haven't ever done so. Here's an example: http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creat.. http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creat.... That was deleted by moderators and admins, and the account it was posted from has been shadowbanned. We had nothing to do with that. I will admit to deleting some of my own posts - ones that happen to use MediaCrush as a drop-in Imgur replacement, but not as a promotion - when they don't do so well. I think that covers all the points here. The message to take away from this is that MediaCrush participated in some activity that might be considered a bit spammy, but that there was a precedent we followed, and the response from Reddit's admins and moderators was unwarranted - especially in the months later.

mahranch 13y ago

> Also, the mods of Reddit are a huge problem. I hold the exact opposite opinion. And I believe reddit's growth over the last 6 years is affirmation of my opinion. Before reddit had subreddits and mods, it was a virtual clone of this website. It was roughly the same size (possibly smaller) and had similar content. Then in 2007/2008 (can't remember, it's been a while) Reddit made the big change and added the new subreddit feature, each with its own set of mods. Mods who became responsible for the growth and health of their own communities. Immediately after this change, reddit exploded in growth, and it still continues to see exponential growth today. One can easily correlate it's explosive growth directly due to subreddits and their mods. Mods who put in a lot of work and basically do the admins job for them (promotion, community outreach, fighting spam, etc). Sure, you occasionally hear about a few bad apples here and there, but those cases are rare when you factor in the thousands of mods (150+ just for the defaults) that you don't hear about. I think risk and trade-off is more than fair and if I was an admin on reddit, I'd do it every single time. Reddit's biggest asset is its mods, that I guarantee. I wonder how many man hours the mods put in collectively that reddit doesn't have to pay a dime for? I bet it's a large number. It's unfortunate because the admins don't seem to give a shit about their mods despite being the very engine that keeps their site tolerable. They've let them languish for years now with subpar mod tools. > Having those kinds of moderators is the best solution anyone's thought of so far, but it's still horrible (at times). Seems to work for wikipedia. I think it works for reddit too. It's just the users and mods over on reddit have more of a community platform so the dirty laundry is more visible. Everyone loves drama... > but from the perspective of someone who just wants to see good content, they are at times the exact opposite of what Reddit needs. Making exceptions to rules is a problem in of itself. Just because it's something "you" want to see, doesn't mean someone down the road isn't going to bring it up and throw it in your face a week, a month even years down the road. "You let this guy do that, why not me! Censorship! Censorship! Witch-hunt!" There are drawbacks to making exceptions to rules which were laid down for (usually) very good reasons. It's easy to ignore them when you're not the one who has to look and deal with the bigger picture every day.

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
Now that this conversation has developed a bit, I'll leave my response. >Your bot's account is gone, so there is little evidence to cite. However, I remember how present and obnoxious it was. Promotions for MediaCrush definitely did not appear solely when a user mentioned MediaCrush. It was enough of a problem that an admin on reddit asked you to stop: > >http://i.imgur.com/CDykpWp.png http://i.imgur.com/CDykpWp.png "Promotions" did appear only when asked. There were two occasions where we used the bot ourselves to introduce it to the public - you can't use a bot you don't know about, we had to do it ourselves. From that point out, it was never manually triggered. >> Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out. > >Many other domains have been blocked from reddit for the same behavior (e.g. http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg.. http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg.... ), but you consistently portray reddit's admins as people who had it in for your site in particular, which is dishonest. Automated vote gaming and bad-faith use is what got those domains banned. I do agree that the admins weren't entirely wrong in that, but I maintain that much better communication should have been in place. We weren't promoting things in bad faith, no matter how you spin it. The actions of the admins beyond this point are more nails in the coffin, though - it's not _just_ that they shadowbanned the bot. >> We don't remove any posts where we get negative press. > >Yes, you do. They cannot be found from your user page anymore, but I've personally watched you delete your comments in threads where you promote yourself and get bad press. The bot was shadowbanned, and its comments and posts deleted by moderators. Not by us. >You've said things that are explicitly untrue about reddit's mods and admins. Mainly that they were big, bad, imgur-partial bullies. Here is the supposedly hostile, anti-user stance that moderators took towards MediaCrush: The majority of Reddit users (not including moderators) supported us. I lost my temper, but I believe I was in the right when criticising the moderators for their choices. The KarmaCourt thing was a mistake, but it was at someone else's suggestion and seemed like a good idea at the time. The moderators were clearly in the wrong - their own userbase overwhelmingly supported us. >The bot that you ran promoted your site obnoxiously in many subreddits, and there are plenty of accounts banned via /r/reportthespammers that do exactly the same thing. I don't feel that you can argue it was not spam. It _only came when asked for_. This is a _very_ important distinction. Do not spread misinformation by claiming that it spammed Reddit without being asked after - it did not do that. >> there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services > >This is a tu-quoque, and doesn't justify you in any way. Meaning that the status-quo was set, and other bots were on Reddit doing similar things and not being punished for it. We had role models. >[sillysaurus3:] I'm getting the feeling that you're defending the mods so vigorously because you're either a mod or friends with one, but from the perspective of someone who just wants to see good content, they are at times the exact opposite of what Reddit needs. And since they have so much power, the few bad apples make a really big splash. I get a simliar feeling myself. >Dismissing hoverzoom as a non-issue was a very unfortunate decision. It was one of the most damning things you could have done. If I remember correctly, it happened before the recent hoverzoom controversy, and back then everyone on Reddit (me included) was in love with it. This was after the Hoverzoom ad controversy. I don't think this was a major contributor to slow adoption. >Dismissing the inability to link directly to the mediacrush'd gif was also not a good move. If it's impossible to link directly to it, then you have to explain what can be done in order to give users something that simulates a direct link. I did, on a few occasions. Keep in mind that these screenshots ghani posted are out of context, don't represent the full extent of our communication with moderators, and are intentionally chosen to paint us in a bad light (not that they aren't valid criticisms - they're just not the whole story). >It's disingenuous of you to be deleting your posts on Reddit that reflect poorly on you, and then claiming that you haven't ever done so. Here's an example: http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creat.. http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creat.... That was deleted by moderators and admins, and the account it was posted from has been shadowbanned. We had nothing to do with that. I will admit to deleting some of my own posts - ones that happen to use MediaCrush as a drop-in Imgur replacement, but not as a promotion - when they don't do so well. I think that covers all the points here. The message to take away from this is that MediaCrush participated in some activity that might be considered a bit spammy, but that there was a precedent we followed, and the response from Reddit's admins and moderators was unwarranted - especially in the months later.