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There are certainly legitimate complaints to be made about how Reddit empowers the volunteer work of moderators, but that is the least of the complaints that ar

There are certainly legitimate complaints to be made about how Reddit empowers the volunteer work of moderators, but that is the least of the complaints that are clogging the site right now. There are three major objections being raised loudly and repeatedly: 1) Moderators, who provide a huge portion of the value of the site, are treated with disrespect by the organization. 2) An employee whose availability was useful to a few major subreddits was dismissed without warning, leaving those subreddits in the lurch, which is emblematic of the above disrespect. 3) Ellen Pao is CEO. These are presented in decreasing order of relevance to the actual problem, and increasing order of urgency to those driving the discussion. Pao needs to do an AMA. A small number of users is upset at her stance in favor of diversity and against sexism, and because she's historically refused to directly engage a community that's gotten used to having direct access to movie stars and presidents, those few have been able to convince many more that she's a cold bitch and doesn't deserve respect. She needs to be on the front page all day gracefully responding to the revolting things being said about her so that normal users can remember that she's an actual person and not an anonymous force of nature advancing evil in the world. Edit: Seems that's what she's doing right now.

jacquesm 11y ago
> She needs to be on the front page all day gracefully responding to the revolting things being said about her so that normal users can remember that she's an actual person and not an anonymous force of nature advancing evil in the world. Because that worked so well for kn0thing...
- georgemcbay 11y ago
  Alexis' early responses were the exact opposite of "graceful".
  - celticninja 11y ago
    yes but since his mea culpa the community is not holding it against him. One of the mig issues people have with Ellen Pao is that her first responses on the issue were to the NYT, Buzzfeed etc and not directly to her own users.
    - sanderjd 11y ago
      Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? I can envision a configuration of reddit corporate structure where there is a responsive, deeply involved, and powerful "head of community" position who would respond to the community in these situations, while the CEO does more traditional CEO stuff like talking to investors and press (among other things). The problem seems to me to be that they don't appear to have that "head of community" position. Indeed, it seems that /u/chooter had become that person de facto, perhaps without the company's leadership realizing it, and seemingly without the necessary internal sway.
      - McGlockenshire 11y ago
        > Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? No, it isn't. Ellen Pao being at fault for everything is a meme spawned by the Gamergate/MRW/anti-SJW crowd. The recent mishandling of the fatpeoplehate ban and then the lack of communication about letting Victoria go have just fanned those existing flames. If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like this, nor would they be the best person to be publishing apologies.
        celticninja 11y ago
        i think you are comparing the reddit CEO to some bluechip company like Apple or IBM. It isnt anything like them, they produce no goods, their users are their product and more so their moderators. They are a social media company, if you cant deal qwith social media on your own site how are you supposed to be trusted with a social media site? If the CEO was some boring old white man and he had done the same thing then yes his head would be called for. You are trying to make this an issue of her gender and her race when it is nothing to do with that. FUnnily enough one of the reasons that she inspires such dislike is because she played the victim of sexism card and then after a trial she was found to have no case. And actually what came out of the trial was the truth about her self-serving behaviour. The trial documents make it very clear that she was no angel, she was sexist toward other females, she hads an affair whilst married, with a married man, and then blamed that on the other person all the while there were text messages and emails showing she was as much to blame as he was. Coupled with all of this her partner is currently facing a lawsuit on a case of fraud. Stuff like that pisses people off and with reddit there are a lot of users that care a lot about the site, they care about how it is perceived and they see her as detrimental to the site in part becuase of her behaviour as CEO but also due to her behaviour prior to becoming CEO which has been well reported regardless of her reddit position.
Raphmedia 11y ago
It is sadly too late. On such a crisis, you need to react and react fast. You or your public relation team must be ready to leap and be as transparent as possible. You need to have someone on call for such situations. The minute that employee was fired and the pressure was building up, they should have reacted by saying (as much as legally possible) why she was fired. The internet is used to transparency. Then, they should have explained how Reddit, as a community, will move on. Meanwhile, the moderators should have been aware of what was going on since the very beginning and the administrators of the website should have relied on them to control their respective communities. Firmly affirm the current situation, then firmly affirm your plan for the future. They should have addressed the fears of the users. Users who are known to be very afraid of order and who will quickly pick up a mob mentality. Instead of reacting quickly, the community was completely ignored and free to be scared. This resulted in making a meme of hating the CEO of Reddit. By meme, I mean that definition: "an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means". It is too late to change this. Once the internet makes a meme out of something, and that meme catch, is it contagious and there is nothing you can do about it. They then apologized. By apologizing, you are taking the blame in the eyes of everyone. Ellen Pao will never be seen with respect by the Reddit community from now on. Instead, she appear to be an incompetent leader who is unable to deal with crisis.
cthalupa 11y ago
> A small number of users is upset at her stance in favor of diversity and against sexism Uh. What? First of all, Ellen Pao's stances against sexism and pro diversity are suspect. She used them as a reason as to why she was fired, and sued her former employer. She lost. Miserably. Her husband is also an allged ponzi scheme fraudster. Whatever Ellen Pao may deserve, sympathy is not it.

jacquesm 11y ago

> She needs to be on the front page all day gracefully responding to the revolting things being said about her so that normal users can remember that she's an actual person and not an anonymous force of nature advancing evil in the world. Because that worked so well for kn0thing...

georgemcbay 11y ago
Alexis' early responses were the exact opposite of "graceful".
- celticninja 11y ago
  yes but since his mea culpa the community is not holding it against him. One of the mig issues people have with Ellen Pao is that her first responses on the issue were to the NYT, Buzzfeed etc and not directly to her own users.
  - sanderjd 11y ago
    Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? I can envision a configuration of reddit corporate structure where there is a responsive, deeply involved, and powerful "head of community" position who would respond to the community in these situations, while the CEO does more traditional CEO stuff like talking to investors and press (among other things). The problem seems to me to be that they don't appear to have that "head of community" position. Indeed, it seems that /u/chooter had become that person de facto, perhaps without the company's leadership realizing it, and seemingly without the necessary internal sway.
    - McGlockenshire 11y ago
      > Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? No, it isn't. Ellen Pao being at fault for everything is a meme spawned by the Gamergate/MRW/anti-SJW crowd. The recent mishandling of the fatpeoplehate ban and then the lack of communication about letting Victoria go have just fanned those existing flames. If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like this, nor would they be the best person to be publishing apologies.
      - celticninja 11y ago
        i think you are comparing the reddit CEO to some bluechip company like Apple or IBM. It isnt anything like them, they produce no goods, their users are their product and more so their moderators. They are a social media company, if you cant deal qwith social media on your own site how are you supposed to be trusted with a social media site? If the CEO was some boring old white man and he had done the same thing then yes his head would be called for. You are trying to make this an issue of her gender and her race when it is nothing to do with that. FUnnily enough one of the reasons that she inspires such dislike is because she played the victim of sexism card and then after a trial she was found to have no case. And actually what came out of the trial was the truth about her self-serving behaviour. The trial documents make it very clear that she was no angel, she was sexist toward other females, she hads an affair whilst married, with a married man, and then blamed that on the other person all the while there were text messages and emails showing she was as much to blame as he was. Coupled with all of this her partner is currently facing a lawsuit on a case of fraud. Stuff like that pisses people off and with reddit there are a lot of users that care a lot about the site, they care about how it is perceived and they see her as detrimental to the site in part becuase of her behaviour as CEO but also due to her behaviour prior to becoming CEO which has been well reported regardless of her reddit position.

Raphmedia 11y ago

It is sadly too late. On such a crisis, you need to react and react fast. You or your public relation team must be ready to leap and be as transparent as possible. You need to have someone on call for such situations. The minute that employee was fired and the pressure was building up, they should have reacted by saying (as much as legally possible) why she was fired. The internet is used to transparency. Then, they should have explained how Reddit, as a community, will move on. Meanwhile, the moderators should have been aware of what was going on since the very beginning and the administrators of the website should have relied on them to control their respective communities. Firmly affirm the current situation, then firmly affirm your plan for the future. They should have addressed the fears of the users. Users who are known to be very afraid of order and who will quickly pick up a mob mentality. Instead of reacting quickly, the community was completely ignored and free to be scared. This resulted in making a meme of hating the CEO of Reddit. By meme, I mean that definition: "an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means". It is too late to change this. Once the internet makes a meme out of something, and that meme catch, is it contagious and there is nothing you can do about it. They then apologized. By apologizing, you are taking the blame in the eyes of everyone. Ellen Pao will never be seen with respect by the Reddit community from now on. Instead, she appear to be an incompetent leader who is unable to deal with crisis.

cthalupa 11y ago

> A small number of users is upset at her stance in favor of diversity and against sexism Uh. What? First of all, Ellen Pao's stances against sexism and pro diversity are suspect. She used them as a reason as to why she was fired, and sued her former employer. She lost. Miserably. Her husband is also an allged ponzi scheme fraudster. Whatever Ellen Pao may deserve, sympathy is not it.