21 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
Excellent point. Profit corporations may have some justifications for keeping their actions secret. For example, protecting trade secrets. But since Reddit management is *de facto* a government of a large community-of-choice, and even *expressly* a government, having taken that position itself, transparency becomes an obligation.
I realize that implementing "complete transparency" in this context has obstacles. But whenever an organization is faced with a huge onslaught of angry customers/citizens/whatever, in *any* context, no matter what the underlying cause, complete forthright transparency and honesty will help, and anything less will ultimately hurt and seem like manipulation.
Comment by SpaceSteak at 07/09/2014 at 14:06 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Complete forthright transparency, eh? Slow down! Can you imagine a completely opened government... where corruption can't happen as much, because checks and balances are easily verifiable and enforceable? Seems like that would definitely hurt some people. ಠ_ಠ
One day, there may be some sort of light-speed, region-less communication system that links all of humanity together, in order to get closer to that dream.
Although it is fun to joke about, I think the disappointment felt in the /r/blog and /r/announcements comments stem from people thinking reddit brought us closer to this world, but this makes us face an imperfect reality. Reddit as a platform definitely brings us closer to this world, it's just not a complete reality yet, and there's definitely tons of room for improvement.
Also, we can't forget that reddit is a privately owned corporation, so it's playing the same game that we're ultimately tired of. It might play it differently, with cute aliens and non-celeb boobies, but it is bound by the same rules that have corrupted so many other corporations into soulless entities that seek nothing but to keep on existing and growing.
However, reddit management does seem to have good intentions. My personal opinion is that Yishan's heart is generally in the right place, but the world is imperfect so they make mistakes. This whole thing is a giant mess, and if I was in his shoes, I wouldn't know how to deal with it either. The fact is that managing communities with millions of active members is not easy.
There is not always a good answer, so sometimes the best answer you can come up with is terrible. The leadership issue, IMO, was not acting swiftly one way or the other. Waiting out a week, getting the 250,000,000 views on TFP (according to the IamA from the head mod) and *then* deciding it was too much of a headache to deal with? Well, I guess sometimes people mess up by just not deciding fast enough. This is one of those times.