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> The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users becaus

by embik 11y ago

> The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power mods to treat their users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing their users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong. That's not how I observed the situation honestly. A lot of subreddit mods got flooded with "shut down"-requests and some decided against it, some followed the mass. It wasn't really a hostage-taking, the shutdown has / had widespread support among the user base.

slg 11y ago
>The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power users to treat the majority of users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing the majority of users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong. Does that fix the problems with the above sentences? Regardless of who was ultimately behind it, the shutdowns were a "I'm taking my ball and going home" move at the expense of the entire Reddit community.
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  So it's okay when reddit does it because they're a private corporation and can censor whatever they want, but when the mods of a subreddit censor themselves there's a problem? Hypocrisy and double standards.
  - uxp 11y ago
    I don't think you're correctly characterizing the subreddit shutdowns. When someone in power silences someone else's speech or expression, then it's correctly a form of censorship, like what management did with r/fatpeoplehate. When the owners, creators or moderators of their own speech or expressions stop producing that content as what many subreddits did in response to r/iama suspending operations, purportedly not out of protest but out of a lack of understanding of a current situation, then it's protest. Censorship is a top-down use of power to silence a majority. Protest is a middle-up form of power to inconvenience a majority to apply pressure to the power holders. They aren't the same.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Actually it was a reaction by the Reddit community to management idiocy. As such, it was entirely justified. You don't seem to understand how this works. Reddit does not own the community. Reddit hosts the community, and in return the community provides content for Reddit. The community has already moved from another provider, and if Reddit carries on with more management idiocy, it will move again. Social is littered with the crumbling ruins of corps that believed they were too big to fail, but which fell off the world after Doing Stupid Shit for too long.
  - slg 11y ago
    You are defining the community as people who interact with the site (or maybe content creators). I am defining it as people who visit the site. The old 90-10-1 rule suggests the community how you define it is only a small subset of the community how I defined it. If someone doesn't care enough to even create an account on Reddit, what makes you think they have strong feeling about the personnel decisions of the company?
    - Hello71 11y ago
      so everyone who visits the Daily Mail website is part of the community?
      - slg 11y ago
        I would say any regular visitor is part of the community. There is no requirement to give back to a community in order to be a member. It is just a group of people who share a connection due to common interests or objectives.
    - burglecut 11y ago
      It doesn't matter if the 90 don't feel strongly. What happens when the 10 move to another site?
      - genericuser 11y ago
heyheyhey 11y ago
> It wasn't really a hostage-taking, the shutdown has / had widespread support among the user base. Don't believe this for one second. Like many others have said, it was mostly a vocal minority. /r/pics has 8+ million subscribers and you think a majority of those subscribers wanted it to be shut down? I'm honestly surprised the mods have the power to shut down a default subreddit.
- worklogin 11y ago
  Subscription numbers on a default sub are useless.
- vidarh 11y ago
  > and you think a majority of those subscribers wanted it to be shut down? And you think it didn't? I don't see you offering up any evidence for your position other than assuming they can't have because of the sheer number. Meanwhile we have at least some indication that there were support well beyond the moderators, in the form of heavily upvoted threads with large number of comments in support of shutdowns for many subreddits. It's very possible that the majority didn't support the shutdowns, but that support went far beyond the moderators is a fact easily ascertained by looking at the threads.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Voting on Pao's comments visualised: https://i.imgur.com/nrYiK5M.png https://i.imgur.com/nrYiK5M.png From https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjsm7/ellen_paos_comment_karma_visualized_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjsm7/ell...
  - heyheyhey 11y ago
    > Meanwhile we have at least some indication that there were support well beyond the moderators, in the form of heavily upvoted threads with large number of comments in support of shutdowns for many subreddits. To be honest, it's hard to argue either way. Going by your indication, if we look at /r/all the past week and all the submissions comparing Ellen Pao to Kim Jong-Il or Mao Zedong, would you say reddit widely supports this comparison?

by embik 11y ago

slg 11y ago

>The shutdowns of the other subreddits were petulant moves by power users to treat the majority of users as pawns and hockey pucks. They were punishing the majority of users because they were in a power struggle with the admins. That's wrong. Does that fix the problems with the above sentences? Regardless of who was ultimately behind it, the shutdowns were a "I'm taking my ball and going home" move at the expense of the entire Reddit community.

zxcvcxz 11y ago
So it's okay when reddit does it because they're a private corporation and can censor whatever they want, but when the mods of a subreddit censor themselves there's a problem? Hypocrisy and double standards.
- uxp 11y ago
  I don't think you're correctly characterizing the subreddit shutdowns. When someone in power silences someone else's speech or expression, then it's correctly a form of censorship, like what management did with r/fatpeoplehate. When the owners, creators or moderators of their own speech or expressions stop producing that content as what many subreddits did in response to r/iama suspending operations, purportedly not out of protest but out of a lack of understanding of a current situation, then it's protest. Censorship is a top-down use of power to silence a majority. Protest is a middle-up form of power to inconvenience a majority to apply pressure to the power holders. They aren't the same.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Actually it was a reaction by the Reddit community to management idiocy. As such, it was entirely justified. You don't seem to understand how this works. Reddit does not own the community. Reddit hosts the community, and in return the community provides content for Reddit. The community has already moved from another provider, and if Reddit carries on with more management idiocy, it will move again. Social is littered with the crumbling ruins of corps that believed they were too big to fail, but which fell off the world after Doing Stupid Shit for too long.
- slg 11y ago
  You are defining the community as people who interact with the site (or maybe content creators). I am defining it as people who visit the site. The old 90-10-1 rule suggests the community how you define it is only a small subset of the community how I defined it. If someone doesn't care enough to even create an account on Reddit, what makes you think they have strong feeling about the personnel decisions of the company?
  - Hello71 11y ago
    so everyone who visits the Daily Mail website is part of the community?
    - slg 11y ago
      I would say any regular visitor is part of the community. There is no requirement to give back to a community in order to be a member. It is just a group of people who share a connection due to common interests or objectives.
  - burglecut 11y ago
    It doesn't matter if the 90 don't feel strongly. What happens when the 10 move to another site?
    - genericuser 11y ago

heyheyhey 11y ago

> It wasn't really a hostage-taking, the shutdown has / had widespread support among the user base. Don't believe this for one second. Like many others have said, it was mostly a vocal minority. /r/pics has 8+ million subscribers and you think a majority of those subscribers wanted it to be shut down? I'm honestly surprised the mods have the power to shut down a default subreddit.

worklogin 11y ago
Subscription numbers on a default sub are useless.
vidarh 11y ago
> and you think a majority of those subscribers wanted it to be shut down? And you think it didn't? I don't see you offering up any evidence for your position other than assuming they can't have because of the sheer number. Meanwhile we have at least some indication that there were support well beyond the moderators, in the form of heavily upvoted threads with large number of comments in support of shutdowns for many subreddits. It's very possible that the majority didn't support the shutdowns, but that support went far beyond the moderators is a fact easily ascertained by looking at the threads.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Voting on Pao's comments visualised: https://i.imgur.com/nrYiK5M.png https://i.imgur.com/nrYiK5M.png From https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjsm7/ellen_paos_comment_karma_visualized_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjsm7/ell...
- heyheyhey 11y ago
  > Meanwhile we have at least some indication that there were support well beyond the moderators, in the form of heavily upvoted threads with large number of comments in support of shutdowns for many subreddits. To be honest, it's hard to argue either way. Going by your indication, if we look at /r/all the past week and all the submissions comparing Ellen Pao to Kim Jong-Il or Mao Zedong, would you say reddit widely supports this comparison?