Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we’d be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.
“has all the funds they need to hire people”
r/IAmA is really coming full circle
That is an understatement. I’m a former mod of r/iama (u/Brownboy13) and I was signing on to handle a high profile ama when Victoria messaged that she wouldn’t be able to help us as she was let go without notice. Admin didn’t even bother informing the guest that the employee handholding them through the process would no longer be available. We were caught entirely off guard and I don’t think /r/iama has ever been the same. There was a level of trust the /u/chooter would be in the same room as a guest or at least on a call and make sure it was them answering and not pr teams. It’s been like fucking pr junket since then.
This was the start of my disillusionment with reddit, and it seems to have been finalized with this last shitshow of a decision.
Wow, hard to grasp that was 8 years ago?!
I was never a user of IAMA, but I clearly remember how shitty reddit behaved in that situation.
I did delete my account later, and only lurked through links to my favorite subs for a few years. Now I have deleted my links too.
Reddit has devolved steadily for to many years, time to cut the cord completely.
tbh I had totally forgotten about the Victoria situation. In retrospect, maybe I am dumber than I realized for being surprised at some of the recent Reddit decisions.
IDK, I started using reddit 15 years ago. Maybe you had to contrast it to what it was back then to see it clearly.
For instance it was open Source, which they abandoned about 10 years ago.
Reddiquette was a thing that was actually observed, and you were reminded of if you broke it. Have you even heard of it?
e/The_Doonald could never have existed if reddiquette had been observed. Pau who worked to prevent such things were fired in 2014.
The new layout is pandering to bling and short attention span, a repeat of mistakes made by Digg, that hurt more valuable content, and increase the amount of comments that are nothing more than noise without value.
Cofounder Alexis Ohanian was instrumental in the firing of Victoria, which till this day has no reasonable explanation why she was fired.
There are few real values left at reddit, but fortunately they exist here. ;)
Good answer!
Now we should protect these values so that they will stay on the platform for always.
Thank you and yes.
A good start for that is to not forget the Lemmy code of conduct:
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
Lemmy.world takes it a bit further and borrows from Mastodon. (Linked from the front page.)
https://mastodon.world/about
IDK, I started using reddit 15 years ago. Maybe you had to contrast it to what it was back then to see it clearly.
For instance it was open Source, which they abandoned about 10 years ago.
Reddiquette was a thing that was actually observed, and you were reminded of if you broke it. Have you even heard of it?
e/The_Doonald could never have existed if reddiquette had been observed. Pau who worked to prevent such things were fired in 2014.
The new layout is pandering to bling and short attention span, a repeat of mistakes made by Digg, that hurt more valuable content, and increase the amount of comments that are nothing more than noise without value.
Cofounder Alexis Ohanian was instrumental in the firing of Victoria, which till this day has no reasonable explanation why she was fired.
There are few real values left at reddit, but fortunately they exist here. ;)
16-year Reddit account here. There was definitely a different atmosphere in the earlier days. The community aspect felt stronger.
They also hired exclusively from the community, and were part of it. All the early admins, myself included, came from reddit. The idea of an admin with a 1 karma account was absurd
I agree, and the difference is huge. As you say, there was much more community about it. Not because it was smaller IMO, it was plenty big when I started using it. But the users were different, and it wasn’t as toxic as it became later.
Definitely. Somewhere along the way, it was also missed that downvotes were intended to be for content that were off-topic or not constructive to the conversation rather than something one merely disagreed with. I’ve found much of my moderating had become about reminding people to keep it civil.
Yes absolutely, it’s bad rediquette to downvote just because you disagree, if it contributes to the debate.
I wonder how many even know that on reddit today? I bet most think they are just “like” buttons.
More mainstream appeal and younger users joining doesn’t really help with the quality of the discussion. IIRC when I created an account at reddit in 2011, the active users is still under 50 mils compared to 500 mils. Eternal September is a very real thing.
Would you be interested in running a new version of iAMA on Lemmy?
No, thank you. I’m done with putting in volunteer effort for these kinds of things. I transitioned to mostly lurking on reddit, and I’m likely to remain that way here as well. Modding requires too much of a time and effort commitment for something that I’ll have nothing to show for depending on the whim of others.
Completely understandable. Thanks for the mod work you previously did. It’s a shame reddit happily took your good will, time and effort only to basically kick you in the nuts as reward.
I can be the first guest. I have many leather bound books and drive a Dodge Stratus.
Victoria is still very much missed
Who was she?
She was a Reddit employee that ran the larger AMAs, often acting as the transcriptionist for the person. Reddit fired her because she refused to to run them as paid advertisements, feeling that the spirit of an AMA was about being asked anything, not just paid promotions.
The change was so evident, even for someone like me who (used to) not keep up with reddit drama and inner workings. AMAs used to be so fun, they’d always end up on the front page. I can’t remember the last one (other than Rick Astley’s) that wasn’t a bore
Reddit had a paid employee to facilitate AMAs
Victoria was the original “moderator” of AMAs and they shit-canned her for corporate politics. She was amazing with the celebs and the community. You know, the more you look back the more you realize Reddit’s management has always been shit. I’m not going back. I’d rather be low-key here where we aren’t seeing corporate politics at play - yet (hopefully never)
remember when spez tried to throw victoria under the fucking bus? pepperidge farm remembers
Status: Chooted