back to article Reddit meltdown: Top chat boards hidden as rebellion breaks out

4chan-with-upvotes Reddit is in turmoil after a staffer much loved by the website's users suddenly left the business. Now the unpaid volunteer moderators of the site have turned against the admins aka the employees of Reddit. The hugely popular Q&A forum called "I am a ... Ask me anything" (r/IAmA) and the science message …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    oh wow

    I can't believe r/IAmA and r/science are unreachable. If you were waiting for a real Reddit shitstorm, wait no further, because it's here and it's happening.

    1. pixl97

      Re: oh wow

      Many other large subs like gaming, pics, movies, and music are down, each of those has over 7 million subscribers. It is really something to watch. It will be interesting to find out what happened with Victoria to set this all off.

    2. Cari

      Re: oh wow

      It's about time, to be honest.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: oh wow

      This will probably sound stupid coming from a non-redditer, but couldn't they just remove or replace the mods in those de-activated sub-reddits and reactive them?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: oh wow

        The admins of course can do anything they bloody well please, so yes (they could replace the mods) . Uncoordinated action and poor communication by admins seems to be exactly the problem the users and many moderators are trying to address. The site being the community that it is, replacing the volunteer mods who actually do the work of creating and maintaining the site sections, and hijacking their threads, would probably unleash a tornado of excrement large enough to bury the entire site.

    4. Jedit Silver badge

      "If you were waiting for a real Reddit shitstorm"

      You mean Paedogeddon 2011 wasn't a real shitstorm?

  2. Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik

    *yawn*

    /me goes back to bed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: *yawn*

      /me goes back to bed.

      Which subreddit is that?

      1. F Seiler

        Re: *yawn*

        http://www.ircbeginner.com/ircinfo/m-commands.html

        The "action" command. It deducts one point from your soul per use.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Makes me pine for the days of the moderatrix

  4. Cari

    Oh well

    KiA is still public :^)

    They have a huge post collecting information on the happenings:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3bxhxf/happenings_three_subreddits_have_gone_private/

    1. AbelSoul

      Re: Oh well

      Hmm - I'm not a regular visitor to Reddit so might be missing something but r/science appears to available.

    2. Craigness

      Re: Oh well

      Redditors don't have to be your audience.

  5. Scott Wichall

    Shame

    I shall just file this in my "Things happening on the internet that I don't give a shit about" folder...

    1. AndyS

      Re: Shame

      Do you comment on them all, just to prove how little you care?

      Who do you think cares about how little you care?

      Do you really care so much about how little you care, that you need us all to know?

      Why do you care so much more about the fact that you don't care, than you care about the thing you don't care about?

      1. Jagged
        Unhappy

        Re: Shame

        But if he didn't tell us how much he doesn't care, we wouldn't get the chance to say how much we don't care that he doesn't care!

  6. MondoMan

    Surely there's some Ellen Pao connection here...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hey, I discovered Reddit when American corporacy murdered Aaron Swarchz. Something I noticed is that news generally appeared there first before spreading out in a wave across the net / corporate media. Of course the lizard overlords don't like the free thinkers all gathering in one place and have been slowly poisoning the well, hoping it would go unnoticed - guess they done fucked up, stupid lizard people!

    1. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

      You really drank the kool aid didn't you? Either that or it's a double bluff. My head hurts, I need a lie down.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You know, I could kind of get behind them trying to clean up some of the more egregious hate subs - trying to stop the retards leaking out is a noble aim - and you can fire someone over there pretty easily AFAIK, but they way they've handled this is shitty. THAT WAS REALLY SHITTY, REDDIT. Enjoy the backlash - wonder how long it will last and if it will have any impact.

    It'll probably blow over in a week.

  9. Tony Paulazzo

    https://voat.co/

    The new Reddit - better than the old one.

    The king is dead, long live the king!

    1. Efros

      Unfortunately they never seem to have the capacity to take advantage of the periodic reddit wars, voat is unreachable during these times due to pressure of new traffic.

  10. seven of five

    Ok, I read the article, wondered, then I read the wikipedia entry and now I am still wondering:

    In plain english please: What is reddit good for?

    THX

    1. AndyS

      Assuming you're not being sarcastic:

      You share a link, question, or picture, and people can discuss it. What makes it unique is every user can vote on every post and comment, so everything is sorted by how new and popular it is. Votes count more early on, and less as time passes, so new, interesting content (and comments) tend to rise to the top.

      There are nearly 10,000 "subreddits" (essentially forums), set up and moderated by people as they wish. So, there are niche corners for pretty much everything you can think of. Some of them spark very interesting, useful and worthwhile conversations. Some don't.

      1. seven of five

        > Assuming you're not being sarcastic

        That is a valid assumption, yes (I do work in IT, after all), but in this case my confusion was genuine.

        1. Steven Raith

          Thanks for asking the question SoF, I have bumbled across Reddit a few times but never had the interest to see what was so special about it; seems like a reasonable concept.

          I'll probably still not go there regularly though - I'm bad enough for forum-diving as it is, and Reddit is perhaps a bit too big for my tastes ;-)

          Upvotified!

          Steven R

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > so everything is sorted by how new and popular it is.

        Why?

    2. Kar98

      Exactly what you're doing here, except on a massive scale and a plethora of subjects.

    3. BigAndos

      I really love Reddit. Some of the bigger subreddits (subs) are a bit too easy to get lost in and can be full of junk/spam/reposts, but there are a lot of really active smaller communities where you can get some great discussion going. For example, people set up subs for a specific series of books or a TV show. It seems a bit less prone to flamewars than older sites like Digg back in the day, although naturally you get exceptions to that rule :-)

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      r/War

      Absolutely nothin'

      1. Naughtyhorse

        Re: r/War

        Say it again

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      What reddit is good for

      It's essentially usenet, except it's owned by a company who have ultimate control and there is advertising. So it's a way of spending an enormous amount of time arguing with idiots, there is porn and, inevitably, a very large number of people with really offensive attitudes (I'd be interested in knowing what reddit's demographic is, but I'd guess it's essentially 18-25 white US male). Unlike usenet most forums ('subreddits') are moderated and there is voting so spam is not such a problem (but don't say anything that might be unpopular, even if it is true). Like usenet it is slowly being overwhelmed by awfulness of various descriptions, but in this case, since it is owned by a company who can potentially be held liable, it will fall to bits in different ways.

      I suspect it's on the way down now, but I would suspect that having fairly recently walked away from it after 8 years or so (the 20 years before that being wasted on usenet).

      It's sad that there seems to be really no good way of actually finding what the news is in various specialised fields which is stable in the long term.

    6. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. Tim Worstal

    So, err, anyone got that Reddit clone in a box?

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      *facepalm* Network effect, Tim. Network effect.

      Reddit's "service" is acting as the queen to a swarm of angry bees. If the queen becomes ill, then the drones are no longer able to coordinate as a hive mind; instead, each departs individually, searching the countryside for a new honey.

  12. Alan Denman

    Volunteers often get suckered.

    The problem being they have simple non monetary values whilst the business itself is a monetary thing.

    I'd say all the CyagenMod dev volunteers mainly got suckered too so it is certainly not an uncommon thing.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Volunteers often get suckered.

      "I'd say all the CyagenMod dev volunteers mainly got suckered too so it is certainly not an uncommon thing."

      Not even a new phenomenon. AOL Message Boards. Although at least AOL doled out free accounts to many of their volunteers.

  13. Christoph

    Here we go again

    Hugely popular system, multiple discussion boards run by and entirely relying on unpaid volunteer moderators.

    Admin treats the moderators with contempt, and then wonders why they are complaining and why the system is falling apart around them.

    It must be the 90s again - Compuserve is back!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Here we go again

      The front page of Reddit certainly looks like something from the 90s.

    2. Alien8n

      Re: Here we go again

      "It must be the 90s again - Compuserve is back!"

      Reddit's terms and conditions include the soul of your first born child?

    3. fajensen

      Re: Here we go again

      It must be the 90s again - Compuserve is back!

      Not really - one could do useful work with Compuserve.

    4. John Tserkezis

      Re: Here we go again

      "Admin treats the moderators with contempt, and then wonders why they are complaining and why the system is falling apart around them."

      So, it's better than Yahoo Groups then?

  14. Gordon 10
    Alert

    Nerd Farming

    and I mean Nerd as a term of endearment.

    These big corporates really don't realise that they are just farming the nerds (moderators in this case) for money whilst the nerds provide their services for free. Which is fine whilst the nerds are quiet but rile them and the corporates ability to monetise the nerds disappear.

    Its a very common business model these days. Wikipedia effectively uses the same model.

    What's going to be interesting in the years to come is if the ability to "fork" these kind of businesses becomes easier with fully elastic cloud models, and open source software, that means the only magnet that keeps people in one place is the sense of community. Break that sense of community at your peril.

    1. Peter 26

      Re: Nerd Farming

      What surprises me is company after company fail to manage their free unpaid workers that provide their content and therefore the whole business. The volunteers are more important than the paid staff. You would think this would be a top priority on managing them.

      Perhaps they'd be better looking for management styles from the likes of music festivals and large charity sports events which rely on managing huge swarms of volunteer workers.

  15. Amorous Cowherder
    Facepalm

    Reddit is quite a pivotal site on the internet for a lot of people, it's a great way to channel traffic to your own site as you have access to so many people you can coerce into looking at your site(s).

    Having said that, this does seem like a lot of nursery school kids losing their marbles because their favourite teacher has left!

    1. Peter 26

      I think it's more like the last straw. This one member of admin staff actually interacted with the volunteers moderators, now they are left with nobody to turn to.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Need Dos Equis man here...

    I don't often venture onto Reddit, but when I do it's to look at what crapshower is going on with the internal mechanics of the site!

  17. ShadowDragon8685

    I don't use Reddit personally, except to read things people link me to, but...

    Wow. The corporate overlords are clearly out-of-touch if they axed the one member of their paid staff that the unpaid volunteer hordes respected, and DIDN'T anticipate a "FOR THE HORDE!" reaction.

    Wonder if they're going to...

    A: Scramble to get chooter back at any price, realizing that they're teetering on the edge of a social shit-storm that money cannot simply otherwise buy their way out of?

    B: Attempt to locate and employ a widely-respected volunteer moderator in the hopes that they can calm things down?

    C: Take heavy-handed draconian measures, including banning widely-respected volunteer moderators who are expressing outrage and solidarity with chooter, which will inevitably make things worse.

    Place your bets, place your bets!

  18. mvisulo

    overblown

    IMO this whole thing is totally overblown as most reddit issues are. although if your actually upset at reddit for their management around this this issue the best thing to do is just stop using it altogether. There are a few good alternatives out there such as voat.co snapzu.com and votable.com

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Freecycle

    Freecycle is (another) network powered by volunteers, lots of work, unpaid, and for many of them their group have been taken over by TFN (The Freecycle Network/Deron Beal)and moved from Yahoo! Groups to his own website full of Google Ads. New volunteers do the work for free, he keeps the money.

    However in UK they split and created Freegle. Same thing as Freecycle, but at least nobody is on top of the pyramid making all the money.

    https://www.freecycle.org/files/form990/2014/form990-2014.pdf

    1. vogon00

      Re: Freecycle

      this is one reason I hate what the web has become. Back in the day, it was all about knowledge and sharing, mostly altruistic.

      Once people start to.try to 'moneytise' the thing, it inevitably turns to rat shit.

  20. Orv Silver badge

    They'll have to add 16chan and 32chan to cover the overflow. Hope someone allocated enough bits!

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