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Honestly I'm so disappointed that Reddit's management allowed such a crappy culture to evolve in their forums for so long. I remember signing on in 2010 and jus

Honestly I'm so disappointed that Reddit's management allowed such a crappy culture to evolve in their forums for so long. I remember signing on in 2010 and just feeling really uncomfortable browsing any of the major subreddits. Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez?

nostrademons 11y ago
The Reddit founders had very strong ideas about censorship and freedom of speech, and so as a matter of principle, they refused to censor subreddits unless the latter were breaking the law. As far as growth goes, this was probably the right choice, as a lot of Reddit's userbase came from previously marginalized groups who now had a forum for their interests on the Internet. Note that Hacker News made the opposite choice: it has a variety of mechanisms (slow-banning, hell-banning, quarantine, explicit moderation) that makes it very clear to certain users that they are not welcome here. And it gets shit for it too: if you browse the New page with showdead turned on, you'll see pretty frequent posts from people who are hellbanned complaining about the fascist moderators of this site. Ultimately, the problem is that for any given slice of humanity, there are significant other slices of humanity that the former find repugnant. And usually vice versa. As a community grows bigger, there's no way to avoid running into the bad apples. I actually think the subreddit system is about as good as it can currently get for a public, open forum.
- nopenopeyep 11y ago
  a variety of mechanisms (slow-banning, hell-banning, quarantine, explicit moderation) that makes it very clear to certain users that they are not welcome here. Are you kidding? None of those make it the least bit clear to the users. HN is the most passive-aggressively moderated site I've ever seen. Also, hell-banning non-spammers is about the most cruel thing you can do. By extension of holding Pao responsible for all actions taken under her charge, I declare PG to be sociopathic, if not outright evil.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    But the moderation is part of what keeps it a fairly enjoyable experience still IMO.
    - nopenopeyep 11y ago
      That's irrelevant to my comment. However, I don't think you have any evidence to support your assumption. As I expected: downvoted for pointing out the truth. HN is terrible.
      - remarkEon 11y ago
        Haven't been around here long, but this place seems to me to be much better than reddit for what I'm looking for. To each his/her own, I guess, but so much of reddit was such utter and total shit for so long that the enjoyment evaporated.
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        How can I have evidence for an opinion other than expressing it?
      - DanBC 11y ago
        > By extension of holding Pao responsible for all actions taken under her charge, I declare PG to be sociopathic, if not outright evil. You don't think the downvotes are for this hyperbolic insult?
        dvanduzer 11y ago
        As a long time enthusiast of HN, and not a total shithead based on karma, I don't think there was anything hyperbolic in the original comment. What is even slightly out of sorts about comparing Ellen Pao to Paul Graham?
        DanBC 11y ago
        You don't think calling PG sociopathic or downright evil is hyperbolic?
golergka 11y ago
> feeling really uncomfortable browsing any of the major subreddits Genuinely curious: why?
- sbilstein 11y ago
  Hard to explain objectively; I think the things that turned me off to reddit back then (now it's more mainstream) were people's willingness to assume tons of knowledge of topics they didn't really know about, the general white, upper middle class male from the burbs tastes of things like r/music and other cultural subreddits. It felt like walking into a videogame fraternity and realizing I didn't belong there. That's a highly subjective opinion...but it's how I felt. r/shitredditsays probably captures a bit of what made me uncomfortable.
  - golergka 11y ago
    There's certainly a white fraternity feel in a lot of reddits, so I can imagine how people can feel disconnect to it. But /r/shitredditsays, well... I was subscribed to it for some time, and the posts themselves do a good job at noticing really bad behaviour on reddit sometimes — but then I discovered the comments there, and I must say, it feels like half of the users of this sub are trolls who pretend to be THE worst strawmen feminists/SJW (I hate this term, but since we're talking about strawmen, I think it fits) ever. Just saying.
    - morbius 11y ago
      The SRS sidebar makes it pretty clear that the whole SJW façade is exactly that: a façade. They obviously have legitimate complaints but hyperbolise everything to poke fun at it.
      - Jimmy 11y ago
        They don't accept the "it's just a joke" excuse from their targets, why should we accept it from them?
ryanlol 11y ago
Why should the reddit administration interfere with communities ran by third parties? IRC networks are still running just fine with minimal intervention.
- chinpokomon 11y ago
  Or for that matter newsgroups. I guess since newsgroups are subscribed by the carrier, IRC might still be the better example.
  - zardeh 11y ago
    there is no /r/all for irc or newsgroups.
- thelamest 11y ago
  On IRC plenty of people who cry about getting a ban or K-line are ridiculed and told to go elsewhere. There is drama there as well, but it's a smaller and less exposed thing.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    IRC is mostly drama, but for whatever reason nobody thinks it's a big deal. (Compared to reddit.)
Zuider 11y ago
>Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez? He wasn't dealt with. He deleted his account in a frantic and futile attempt to avoid exposure. Violentacres/Violentacrez (had to block him twice) set himself up as king of the reddit underworld. The admins cast a blind eye to his antics, and in return he prevented the raw sewage from gushing onto the clean streets of the reddit front page. He was a troll from the start, and deliberately so, even in his choice of username which he had stolen from a popular blogger at the time. This illustrates the kind of brinkmanship that was his trademark - it is not quite impersonation to steal someone else's anonymous handle, but it is not quite ethical either. His one good point was that he kept the other reddit trolls busy via interminable (literally) troll-fights.
- vehementi 11y ago
  Wait, who is right, you or danielweber above?
  - Excavator 11y ago
    In so far as I can remember he had good relations with many on the staff and even ended up with a special icon next to his username. The /r/SubredditDrama posts in regards to the incident are correct as I remember it: Part I - violentacrez: https://archive.is/7ygdr https://archive.is/7ygdr Part II - CreepShots: https://archive.is/8AVd8 https://archive.is/8AVd8 Part 2 above ends with a link to VAs alleged last comments with an alt: http://i.imgur.com/E8fCA.png http://i.imgur.com/E8fCA.png
    - remarkEon 11y ago
      Wow, guess I somehow missed this dramafest.
    - jsmthrowaway 11y ago
      The special icon was subreddit CSS added most likely by himself. Give me five minutes and a subreddit and I'll make your username 72px. The admins didn't bless him with a flag at any time. It's a common meme that violentacrez was "special," had some kind of sway with the admins beyond any other moderator, received instruction from the admins that was unique and not the usual ban threats that many subs get in modmail, and so on. Most people who say these things heard it from someone else, because the actual story is that he was barely tolerated. He even says so himself in your linked thread. I don't get the elevation of violentacrez to something special. I see it a lot (friendly with the admins! The admins asked him to help with creepshots! it's all over this thread) and I don't get it. He was a power mod. So are hundreds of others. There are a bunch of Reddit yarns that put the Kubrick lunar landing to shame; some of them are making an appearance in this thread.
danielweber 11y ago
> Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez? The admins asked violentacrez to help with the /r/creepshots. Later history got rewritten to say that he had created it, maybe to throw him under the bus.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
multinglets 11y ago
> really uncomfortable I know what you mean. I logged into /r/funny one day and someone had used the "b" word. I was just really concerned and uncomfortable with how things were going. What did you end up doing?

nostrademons 11y ago

The Reddit founders had very strong ideas about censorship and freedom of speech, and so as a matter of principle, they refused to censor subreddits unless the latter were breaking the law. As far as growth goes, this was probably the right choice, as a lot of Reddit's userbase came from previously marginalized groups who now had a forum for their interests on the Internet. Note that Hacker News made the opposite choice: it has a variety of mechanisms (slow-banning, hell-banning, quarantine, explicit moderation) that makes it very clear to certain users that they are not welcome here. And it gets shit for it too: if you browse the New page with showdead turned on, you'll see pretty frequent posts from people who are hellbanned complaining about the fascist moderators of this site. Ultimately, the problem is that for any given slice of humanity, there are significant other slices of humanity that the former find repugnant. And usually vice versa. As a community grows bigger, there's no way to avoid running into the bad apples. I actually think the subreddit system is about as good as it can currently get for a public, open forum.

nopenopeyep 11y ago
a variety of mechanisms (slow-banning, hell-banning, quarantine, explicit moderation) that makes it very clear to certain users that they are not welcome here. Are you kidding? None of those make it the least bit clear to the users. HN is the most passive-aggressively moderated site I've ever seen. Also, hell-banning non-spammers is about the most cruel thing you can do. By extension of holding Pao responsible for all actions taken under her charge, I declare PG to be sociopathic, if not outright evil.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  But the moderation is part of what keeps it a fairly enjoyable experience still IMO.
  - nopenopeyep 11y ago
    That's irrelevant to my comment. However, I don't think you have any evidence to support your assumption. As I expected: downvoted for pointing out the truth. HN is terrible.
    - remarkEon 11y ago
      Haven't been around here long, but this place seems to me to be much better than reddit for what I'm looking for. To each his/her own, I guess, but so much of reddit was such utter and total shit for so long that the enjoyment evaporated.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      How can I have evidence for an opinion other than expressing it?
    - DanBC 11y ago
      > By extension of holding Pao responsible for all actions taken under her charge, I declare PG to be sociopathic, if not outright evil. You don't think the downvotes are for this hyperbolic insult?
      - dvanduzer 11y ago
        As a long time enthusiast of HN, and not a total shithead based on karma, I don't think there was anything hyperbolic in the original comment. What is even slightly out of sorts about comparing Ellen Pao to Paul Graham?
        DanBC 11y ago
        You don't think calling PG sociopathic or downright evil is hyperbolic?

golergka 11y ago

> feeling really uncomfortable browsing any of the major subreddits Genuinely curious: why?

sbilstein 11y ago
Hard to explain objectively; I think the things that turned me off to reddit back then (now it's more mainstream) were people's willingness to assume tons of knowledge of topics they didn't really know about, the general white, upper middle class male from the burbs tastes of things like r/music and other cultural subreddits. It felt like walking into a videogame fraternity and realizing I didn't belong there. That's a highly subjective opinion...but it's how I felt. r/shitredditsays probably captures a bit of what made me uncomfortable.
- golergka 11y ago
  There's certainly a white fraternity feel in a lot of reddits, so I can imagine how people can feel disconnect to it. But /r/shitredditsays, well... I was subscribed to it for some time, and the posts themselves do a good job at noticing really bad behaviour on reddit sometimes — but then I discovered the comments there, and I must say, it feels like half of the users of this sub are trolls who pretend to be THE worst strawmen feminists/SJW (I hate this term, but since we're talking about strawmen, I think it fits) ever. Just saying.
  - morbius 11y ago
    The SRS sidebar makes it pretty clear that the whole SJW façade is exactly that: a façade. They obviously have legitimate complaints but hyperbolise everything to poke fun at it.
    - Jimmy 11y ago
      They don't accept the "it's just a joke" excuse from their targets, why should we accept it from them?

ryanlol 11y ago

Why should the reddit administration interfere with communities ran by third parties? IRC networks are still running just fine with minimal intervention.

chinpokomon 11y ago
Or for that matter newsgroups. I guess since newsgroups are subscribed by the carrier, IRC might still be the better example.
- zardeh 11y ago
  there is no /r/all for irc or newsgroups.
thelamest 11y ago
On IRC plenty of people who cry about getting a ban or K-line are ridiculed and told to go elsewhere. There is drama there as well, but it's a smaller and less exposed thing.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  IRC is mostly drama, but for whatever reason nobody thinks it's a big deal. (Compared to reddit.)

Zuider 11y ago

>Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez? He wasn't dealt with. He deleted his account in a frantic and futile attempt to avoid exposure. Violentacres/Violentacrez (had to block him twice) set himself up as king of the reddit underworld. The admins cast a blind eye to his antics, and in return he prevented the raw sewage from gushing onto the clean streets of the reddit front page. He was a troll from the start, and deliberately so, even in his choice of username which he had stolen from a popular blogger at the time. This illustrates the kind of brinkmanship that was his trademark - it is not quite impersonation to steal someone else's anonymous handle, but it is not quite ethical either. His one good point was that he kept the other reddit trolls busy via interminable (literally) troll-fights.

vehementi 11y ago
Wait, who is right, you or danielweber above?
- Excavator 11y ago
  In so far as I can remember he had good relations with many on the staff and even ended up with a special icon next to his username. The /r/SubredditDrama posts in regards to the incident are correct as I remember it: Part I - violentacrez: https://archive.is/7ygdr https://archive.is/7ygdr Part II - CreepShots: https://archive.is/8AVd8 https://archive.is/8AVd8 Part 2 above ends with a link to VAs alleged last comments with an alt: http://i.imgur.com/E8fCA.png http://i.imgur.com/E8fCA.png
  - remarkEon 11y ago
    Wow, guess I somehow missed this dramafest.
  - jsmthrowaway 11y ago
    The special icon was subreddit CSS added most likely by himself. Give me five minutes and a subreddit and I'll make your username 72px. The admins didn't bless him with a flag at any time. It's a common meme that violentacrez was "special," had some kind of sway with the admins beyond any other moderator, received instruction from the admins that was unique and not the usual ban threats that many subs get in modmail, and so on. Most people who say these things heard it from someone else, because the actual story is that he was barely tolerated. He even says so himself in your linked thread. I don't get the elevation of violentacrez to something special. I see it a lot (friendly with the admins! The admins asked him to help with creepshots! it's all over this thread) and I don't get it. He was a power mod. So are hundreds of others. There are a bunch of Reddit yarns that put the Kubrick lunar landing to shame; some of them are making an appearance in this thread.

danielweber 11y ago

> Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez? The admins asked violentacrez to help with the /r/creepshots. Later history got rewritten to say that he had created it, maybe to throw him under the bus.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

multinglets 11y ago

> really uncomfortable I know what you mean. I logged into /r/funny one day and someone had used the "b" word. I was just really concerned and uncomfortable with how things were going. What did you end up doing?