"Reddit management and that it's just a bunch of angry children complaining without cause."
Anyone that makes these sort of decisions based on absolutely no evidence besides that she was fired, is childish and should not be a moderator.
"The mods in question are adults and professionals, and they've clearly and succinctly explained their grievances with Reddit management."
They might be physically adults, but emotional intelligence for many of the mods seems to be lacking.
"particularly the matter of heavy-handed censorship that appears to be applied inconsistently"
The mods are just as bad when it comes to censorship...decisions based on pure emotion, political views, and personal grudges. Exactly what you don't want when it comes to someone moderating a community.
Reddit is what the world was like in the middle ages and the reason we don't solve all of our issues with a lynch-mob.
Many don't see it because they don't like the people that are being silenced, bullied, and marginalized.
This actually reminds me of when Unidan was shadowbanned.
Unidan was a super-popular redditor who loved educating people about science, and he would pop up everywhere and deliver useful information written in a way most laymen can understand. People loved him.
He got banned right after getting in an argument with somebody, where he was being really aggressive and heavy-handed. A lot of people flipped out and claimed he was banned just for getting into a heated argument. They attacked the admins, and then they proceeded to stalk and harass the girl he got into an argument with. They followed her around, downvoted all her comments into the negative triple digits, and effectively made her account useless.
A day later, it turns out that for his entire history as a redditor, he had been using five sockpuppets to upvote his posts and downvote all the posts around him so his posts could become more visible, and that was why he was banned.
So the community turned against him. All his posts on his new account were being aggressively downvoted, the word "Unidan" entered popular use as a slang term for someone who uses vote bots to puff up their karma, and he ended up pretty much disappearing from reddit after a while (he tried to come back a few times, but nobody wanted to hear what he had to say anymore).
As for the girl who got stalked, the admins removed the limits on her accounts placed by the downvotes, the community followed her around upvoting her for a while to restore her karma, and the devs introduced new anti-brigading measures to make sure an organized downvote brigade like that can never fuck somebody's account up again.
I have a feeling that when we find out why Victoria was fired, the community will turn on her and start apologizing to the admins, because this sounds like the exact same situation.
The fact that Victoria was canned accounts for maybe 10% of the outrage. The other 90% is the way the firing was done (uncommunicated, disruptive, and all around poorly handled), and is what led to the annoyance boiling over.
Oh, that's a perfectly valid complaint, and it's one I agree with.
But there are a large amount of people treating Victoria as a saint. I've seen a lot of posts going "They fired the one admin everyone actually liked!", and I'm worried there's going to be a huge backlash when the reason she got fired leaks out.
And at a minimum, it'd mean that reddit is poor at handling communication. Most likely that they aren't paying attention past, just stepping into things now and then. Who the hell bans Unidan just like that? You couldn't put some checks into your bot?
Vote manipulation is a serious, big, huge, possibly the single biggest no-no on the site.
The difference between a post never making it to the front page and making it to position #1 can be as small as one or two votes when the post is new. Unidan selfishly crowded out other content for his own, and the ban was fully justified.
They fired the relationship manager for the AMAs. The way the did that harmed/ruined some relationships. The 'how' is as important as the what in that case, so your comment seems bizarreley off base.
This is a wholy different issue that the dust up a month ago. Thats why a petition for the CEO's resignation has 200,000 signatures. The incident 1 month ago promted onlt 10K or so, so this latest issue is a 20x increase in pissed off people.
"The 'how' is as important as the what in that case, so your comment seems bizarreley off base."
You forgot the 'why'. Why was she let go? Reddit, the company, was paying her salary and they have the right to let her go if they feel she isn't doing her job. You don't even know the whole story. You are defending the mods based on biased and one-sided information.
"Thats why a petition for the CEO's resignation has 200,000 signatures"
This can easily be manipulated online, so I don't even know if I can trust it.
They're not mad that she was fired. They're mad because she was fired aND reddit leadership had no plan to help the communities that depended on her work. Instead they left them high and dry. That's a very important distinction.
You like many people seem to not realize something that the other side is saying: WE KNOW REDDIT HAS THE RIGHT TO FIRE THEIR STAFF, AND NO ONE IS COMPLAINING BECAUSE REDDIT CHOSE TO RESTAFF.
Now, go back and read the all caps like five times, because people keep trying to say that to you, and you keep shouting about how reddit has the right to fire people.
People are upset because reddit corporate did a shitty job of managing reddit corporate, and it caused reddit corporate to fall through on several plans they had made with the public and other parties.
This particular instance of shitty management and execution on the part of reddit corporate is just the latest in a long string of bad management, and people finally got sick of it.
"People are upset because reddit corporate did a shitty job of managing reddit corporate, and it caused reddit corporate to fall through on several plans they had made with the public and other parties."
Shouting louder and using caps doesn't make me believe you or add to the discussion.
I just don't think this was a planned and orchestrated protest as a result of mis-management. There might have been 1 or 2 mods that felt this way, but the rest did it in "solidarity"..more likely a pure emotional decision to feel like they were part of the group (reminds me of the occupy wallstreet mentality..which accomplished nothing and just made the protesters look foolish).
If they really wanted to make a change, they should have all gotten together and contacted management..like mature adults. But this takes intelligence, discipline, maturity and doesn't give them the desired effect of rebellion. It feels good to rebel because it gives a person a sense of power that they probably don't normally have in their life.
It's the difference between a government discussing change and a mob of people burning down the city because they aren't getting what they want. A step back in terms of social change.
I also didn't see any of the explanations that you claim when it was happening. It's just back-pedaling to try to justify the actions of the mods.
Most inexperienced people don't don't how to play politics...and may get what they want in the short-term (the company just wants to put out the fire until they can figure out a good strategy) but will be pushed aside in the long-term.
The mods have no leverage except the power to make a sub-reddit private...and that can easily be taken away. If they let all of the mods go today, there would be people lining up to replace them tomorrow. But, this would be a bad PR move for Reddit...so it won't happen this quickly.
Anyone that makes these sort of decisions based on absolutely no evidence besides that she was fired, is childish and should not be a moderator.
"The mods in question are adults and professionals, and they've clearly and succinctly explained their grievances with Reddit management."
They might be physically adults, but emotional intelligence for many of the mods seems to be lacking.
"particularly the matter of heavy-handed censorship that appears to be applied inconsistently"
The mods are just as bad when it comes to censorship...decisions based on pure emotion, political views, and personal grudges. Exactly what you don't want when it comes to someone moderating a community.
Reddit is what the world was like in the middle ages and the reason we don't solve all of our issues with a lynch-mob.
Many don't see it because they don't like the people that are being silenced, bullied, and marginalized.