I agree. I also moderate a subreddit. It's very small, but the people who are there are generally great. It's the larger ones where it just becomes so much work.

-B

Very true, and I certainly do miss it. Do you remember the day when AOL hooked up their network to usenet? So much "me too"...

Anyway, forum software sort of got itself into a rut. It seemed like everyone copied everyone else's bad PHP setup. So in that way, reddit was unique. And HTTP is far, far more ubiquitous than NNTP.

-B

I'm sure some will. Burn out can be pretty common from what I've read.

But that's how they set up their system: users can create and manage their own areas of the site, while users add content. It was actually a pretty good idea ten years ago. Back then you had slashdot and fark and other forums where the admins essentially created all the different content areas (subforums, I suppose). So it was always a little limited. Now reddit comes along and you can create an area all your own just to talk about beanie babies or whatever. The amount and type of content is limited only by your user base (and, lately, sense of morality).

The trouble is that as things grow and time goes, people move on, lose interest, whatever. You've got really huge super popular areas and they generate a huge amount of work for the guy who started the beanie baby area, and so he brings in other folks to help. At least they hope this is how it works. Way back when a few guys made subreddits for every common noun you can think of. Some of those folks have left.

I'm sure more people will move on.

-B

The majority of users most certainly don't care (or care enough to sign a meaningless petition). But a lot of moderators, who are essentially the unpaid employees who are driving most of the content on the site, like those popular AMAs, DO care. A lot of them are pretty upset. The lack of communication and planning makes their (volunteer) jobs harder, which makes them less eager to do those jobs.

Take the AMAs for example. When Victoria was there, the mods could do what they do: verify the person's ID, make sure it happens on time, set up the schedules, etc. When they fired Victoria, the link between the admins and moderators was gone. That left the mods with no good way to do their jobs and make all that content the company is so eager to monetize. The mgmt team shot themselves in the foot, in other words, and now all the mods are getting are platitudes and vague promises without any deliverables, timetables, etc.

More people will likely start caring when the overall quality of content goes down as mods get more and more burnt out.

-B

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Ellen Pao is, by many accounts, an abysmal manager and a CEO who appears to lack vision and/or a plan -- which are two things a CEO absolutely must have. Her handling of Victoria's dismissal is pretty clear evidence of that. A 20-something night manager of a McDonalds on the interstate could have handled letting an employee go better than she did.

We're talking about someone who doesn't even know how to use her own product (she once posted a submission that linked to one of her private PMs) and can't even apologize on her own site before going to the media to try to put out fires. She's apparently got dodgy ideas about race and sexism (her failed lawsuit against KP, banning certain subreddits). So an influential black leader gets pissy over a PR stunt that went bad and demands some action? Sure, I could see Pao reacting by firing the most high-profile and well-liked employee at the company without having a contingency plan in place.

-B

And yet you post this on slashdot?

Oh, irony.

-B

She was all over other media outlets over the weekend, and only just now makes vague promises about "tools". Hopefully those won't go the way of the "transparency!" promises they made earlier. People are apparently rather unhappy. But the good news is that Ellen Pao thinks that her users don't care, and the ones who are raising a fuss are insignificant. That's the way to make the moderators (which are basically unpaid employees) happy, Ellen!

Her management style reeks of VC meddling. It's all sanitize and monetize now. Weird shadowbanning, giving some offensive subreddits the boot but not others, etc.

I predict a gradual exodus. The cool kids tend to move on anyway once their parents have arrived.

-B

[... 5 minutes later...]

- Hey, how come I can't run Excel anymore?
- Excel doesn't run under Linux, but here, you can use OpenOffice instead.
- Screw that, I need to run Excel! Put Windows back on!

"Regurgitate?" I'm the author of it, you fool. It is a parody of this wingnut idiocy — and, I dare say, a far classier than the original for it uses no namecalling to get its point across.

As so often happens, an Illiberal fails to recognize his own... Yep, somebody here is "mentally handicapped".

Sitting causes hypertension, standing — thrombophlebitis. Whatever you do to a human being, he stubbornly crawls towards cemetery.

— Mikhail Zhvanetsky

I don't know which country you're posting from, but in the USA it is definitely illegal for a business to discriminate -- there are anti-discrimination laws explicitly saying as such. For example, if a black person walks in to your restaurant and you refuse to serve him because he's black, you can expect to get sued, and lose. The only thing new here is that the courts will probably now also side against you for turning away a gay customer as well; however the principle is well established.

... and the real Shakespeare was also the result of millions of generations of a genetic algorithm. It seems the experiment has already been done :)

Haha read some of the offending quotes under Color Blindness. "I have a dream" would fit right in.

Rural economies cannot support the nice houses, cars, jobs, shopping malls, and priviledge they see, and they feel left behind.

These same people also feel very intimidated by things they don't understand, and they don't understand much.

Thank you very much for this example of condescension. The way you dismiss over half the country — without, as is usual your kind, any attempts at citations — is really telling. Telling about you... At least, your erzats-deity managed to get some compassion into his condescension — you lack even that.

Me? I would take a country pumpkin over your kind of snobbish "I know, what's better for everybody else" asshole any day of the week. And twice on Shabbat.

It's a symbol of the red state/blue state divide. That's why you're sticking up for it, after all.

Oh, yes, a Ukrainian immigrant living in New Jersey is sticking for Confederate flag, because "he is left behind in a rural State". I've seen people making worse guesses than you just made — with all the aplomb customary to the above-mentioned snobbish assholes — but they are very rare indeed.

But, at least, even you admit, the flag is not "about slavery". I suppose, that's progress.