I find it telling it was negative a majority of the time. Usually "mods" get +1'd just for being mods (common on many forums). It shows, to me at least, that what she said rarely was supported by the community.
I would argue that decisions of large bodies of anonymous people are historically and demonstrably inaccurate, misleading, nearsighted, and wholly terrible for not only the decision they're making, but also the good of the body itself.
Groups of people, at a sufficient capacity, are simply some of the worst, most base, and utterly abhorrent things to exist on this planet, and claiming that the disapproval displayed by the group calling itself "Reddit" is "telling" would be, to say the least, a misstep.
Having a trend over time allows for a better judgement as karma is a metric that can change drastically over time. A generally disagreeable person can have a huge spike in positive karma but that doesn't mean they're liked overall. So it helps that the chart shows as far back as 2013.
A slow overall increase with several downward trends means you're generally agreeable but have a controversial opinion (opposed to the "collective group mentality"). A slow overall decrease with an upward trend now and then means you're generally disagreeable and occasionally say something the community agrees with.
Her karma over time tells me that she's generally disagreeable with a few moments that brought her from "negative" to "neutral" and that before the subreddit bans her popularity was spiraling downwards, hit a full catalyst, and the apology was rather well received.
If her karma was overall positive and only trended negatively in light of the subreddit ban and the Victoria mishap - it'd be telling of a very different story. The fact that it's been consistently negative is telling of the larger picture.
And do you know something about Victoria's firing that everyone else doesn't? Do you know why she was fired?
Including, but not limited to, "I hate this person so will downvote everything and anything they say."
Which makes you a disagreeable person if enough people hate you enough to downvote anything you say.
In the past, factions went to war in order to take absolute power. When they achieved it they would destroy all rivals and enforce strict conformity. They would try to avoid the necessity of constant fighting to hold on to their position by employing various means to cement their legitimacy in the minds of the ruled. One of these was the idea of an aristocracy which had an inherent right to rule. Another was harnessing religion to declare that the rulers held power by divine right, making rebellion a sin. Regime change would only come about through violence.
In a democracy the competing factions can bide their time in the anticipation that they can get into power again. Because of that, they do not feel compelled to use violence to seize power, and by the same token, violence does not have to be used to suppress them.
An interesting side effect of democracy was the relaxation of the need for absolute conformity. This facilitated social mobility, commerce and the flourishing of literature and scientific exploration, all of which would have been seen as subversive and dangerous to the status quo in the older way of doing things, and consequently, rigorously suppressed.
Democracies have been known for only a few brief periods of human existence. They emerged for a few hundred years, in a very limited sense, in one city-state within Greece, 2500 years ago. And then disappeared until just over 200 years ago, with some spread since.
Fewer than half the people on Earth today live in democracies (though it's close: 48%), only 12.5% live in full democracies. Far more live in autocratic regimes than any other of the forms measured by the Democracy Index: 37.6%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
The fastest growing economy in the world is solidly autocratic: China. Despite the claims of the benefits of both democracy and capitalism, many critical advances have come from countries which lacked one or both institutions: Nazi Germany developed jet aircraft and missiles, Communist Russia was the first to orbit satellites and put man in space.
I'm not opposed to democracy. But it seems it's got a few challenges as well.
(There's a story there. It's interesting.)
There are numerous states that have functioned quite well that _weren't_ (or aren't) democracies.
Nazi Germany was, in fact, a democracy. Hitler stood for election in Germany's presidential elections of 1932. While he didn't win a majority of the July vote (none of the _six_ candidates did), he was appointed chancellor following a series of inconclusive elections.
A concern of mine is whether democracy brings wealth, or wealth democracy. Causality's arrow is sticky.
In fact I don't know of a true democracy (defined here as a democracy where no group is excluded, where votes are counted fairly and where each person who wishes to do so can vote for whatever he wants) that has since transitioned into anything else.
None of this, of course, means that democracy is a good system, merely that it is sticky.
Reddit is also not a democracy -- it's a series of benevolent dictatorships, where the content is decided on by anarchistic vote, but can be controlled ultimately through a supreme leader, empowered by the virtue of their age (the oldest member of the subreddit gets to decide the content of that subreddit).
Am I the only one that sees this as possibly the greatest potential "turnaround" story ever created?
In a similar fashion, if Barack Obama posted something like "Mom and apple pie are both great.", it would be downvoted by his political foes and upvoted by his political allies. That should not be taken as an indication that "the community" opposes or disagrees with his viewpoints on Mom and apple pie.
I disliked her for
* Firing Victoria, who took AMAs to the next level. I enjoyed them a ton.
* Firing an employee for having leukemia - http://redd.it/3c0idl
* Using corporate weasel words instead of having the guts to be honest - "We're banning behaviour, not ideas"
* Treating the community with disdain and contempt, while not understanding how reddit works at all. She derided her detractors as being a very tiny minority without realising that the most active people are the ones creating and moderating the content that helps reddit thrive. If these people are unhappy with her and leave, then the passive majority (such as myself) will follow them to wherever they go.
But no, I'm probably a misogynist and a racist who hates Ellen Pao because she lost a gender discrimination lawsuit, amirite?
The Victoria specific AMAs tended to be short, done on the phone where she types responses, and oriented around'My new movie is out Friday don't miss it' instead of a conversation. I prefer the raw format myself.
>Firing an employee for having leukemia - http://redd.it/3c0idl
That this became the battle-flag for everyone to pitchfork is seriously appalling:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868887
>Using corporate weasel words instead of having the guts to be honest - "We're banning behaviour, not ideas"
I'm personally only familiar with the banning of /neofags because I know people who were targeted and harassed by that reddit. It was clearly banned for the behavior of the mods in the reddit, and not for content, as evidenced by other reddits with much worse content not being banned at the same time.
>She derided her detractors as being a very tiny minority without realising that the most active people are the ones creating and moderating the content that helps reddit thrive.
What does this even mean, all her detractors were also the ones creating the content? Most of the reddits complained about wanting more powerful mod tools, not less control: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cuw90/megathrea...
Incorrect. She did some of the best ones. The ones with Bill Murray and Sean Bean really stick out in my mind as being really great. You couldn't see either of them, but thanks to her you could make out inflections, emphasis and character. It was like hearing them talk, rather than having them type. Either way, regardless of what you think I loved the AMAs that Victoria assisted with, and so did a whole lot of other people. Pao took that away from us, and you're saying that we shouldn't criticise her for that?
> That this became the battle-flag to pitch-fork
He was almost recovered. He would have rejoined work in a month, but she rejected that. That reddit was so benevolent to him was thanks to hueypriest and Yishan Wong. She reversed this policy. Now you're saying its appalling that people are criticising Pao because Yishan and hueypriest were so nice.
> What does this even mean?
It means that the people most engaged with the site (top submitters and moderators) were unhappy with her. The site depends on these people for quality content This was written in really simple English, I don't see what your trouble with understanding it was.
I feel like you were in the flow of a "point-by-point takedown" and had to say something about the last line, but that left you looking pretty silly by the end.
While she was CEO he got 4 months of the almost two years being paid while too sick to work. He got an extra full year of insurance.
He never had a move date scheduled. He was "2-3 months away" and in his AMA when asked where he was working today? He said he still wasn't feeling well enough for full time work - this was 5 months later. "Sorry, we can't keep waiting, we need someone who can do the job immediately."
So yes it is appalling that this became the reason to be furious, while treating an employee better than he would be treated at 99% of other companies in the US. In a reasonable universe the story would have been: "Wow, reddit treats employees amazingly."
* I resented that she fired Victoria, because I liked Victoria and what she brought to reddit. I didn't speculate on why she was fired at all. But let me speculate a little now - it wasn't for performance reasons judging by what every single person who has worked with Victoria says.
* I relayed what the employee in question said about it on reddit. If its a question of trusting what he says or what Pao says, I'll err on the side of the former, because of the duplicity that Pao has exhibited in recent months.
I hope that clears it up.
It is unreasonably acceptable for death, rape, and other threats to be used as a form of outspoken criticism online, and as an outspoken critic, I don't appreciate being lumped in.
Just like Facebook, it's almost entirely related to what you subscribe to/follow. /r/chess was entirely mum on the situation, for example.