TRP Network Blog

This Post has been Curated by redpillschool
More Silence from Reddit Administration - A Failure for Community Managers to... Manage?
Published 10/29/18 by redpillschool [0 Comments]

It's been over a month since the initial quarantine, and we still have not gotten a clear answer from the administration about what the offending content was, nor have we gotten a straight answer (or any answer for that matter) on what they recommend that we change.

/u/Spez directed us to a male abuse denier, Michael Kimmel, as an example of positive masculinity, and quickly took that recommendation down after Michael Kimmel was forced to step down due to sexual assault allegations, quickly proving that /u/spez and the administration are absolutely clueless when it comes to "positive masculinity".

To this, we have received absolutely zero apology for the sheer and unbridled misogyny that the administration demonstrated. I have decided that it was time to stop waiting for the administration to do the right thing and apologize, so I have contacted them on our behalf:

When you quarantined /r/theredpill you posted a message on our landing page:
"For information on positive masculinity, please see the resources available at Stony Brook University's Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities."
And you linked to them. Their executive director was Michael Kimmel, who was on record on many occasions denying male victims of domestic violence and then accused of sexual assault and forced to step down from his position.
This was your example of positive masculinity that you sent to 300,000 of our subscribers. After these events came to light, your team silently removed the message but not until after damage was done.
I had abuse victims contact me and our mod team, confused and upset because of what happened. They did not like the idea of reliving their worst nightmare- that nobody would believe they were victims. Here they had found friends and people they could talk to about their experiences, and one day they were simply sent the message by your administration team that male victims of abuse simply do not matter and that real positive masculinity means denying that it happened.
I understand you guys don't like us. But for the sake of humanity and all that is good, will you please issue an apology to our members who were very much shaken by this experience?
I think we can both agree Michael Kimmel is not a role model for men. It was a mistake to suggest he was. Please do the right thing and issue an apology to our members.

To our latest reply to the admin regarding our appeal, we have heard absolutely nothing from the administration. This should be very worrying to anybody considering reddit in a potential upcoming IPO. Their community management staff is woefully unprepared to actually manage the community. They are unable to simply communicate with their community leaders to give direction and support. In a way, you could say that the entirety of TRP's current existence could be attributed to them for simply not reaching out and giving guidance and support during the growth of this community.

Imagine, the thing they hate the most exists because they were unable or unwilling to simply reach out to us and give us some direction.

I have once again send the admin a message asking for clarification and asking if we should continue awaiting their reply. If they refuse to do so, it will be very telling. It will mean that they do not know why they have attempted to silence us, and they have no actual answers to give us.

They could just ban the community, but our mod team fervently enforces Reddit's rules. If they do this, they send a message to every other community on reddit: We don't play by the rules we have set. It's entirely subjective. Expect your community to be banned if it's inconvenient for us in any way. The rules don't matter.

Personally, I don't think many communities like it when the administration acts in such a capricious manner as that. Without rigid rules and guidelines that the administration adheres to, confidence in the system breaks down. When the users get pushed around too much, they leave. It happens with every major social network platform. And it can happen here.

They need strong leadership, now. What they have, unfortunately, is a namby pamby community manager who won't commit to anything in writing and doesn't know how to lead communities. This will be reddit's downfall. Every time they make an announcement, the backlash and resentment grows larger. It will hit a critical mass and be impossible to contain.

For the sake of their own site, they should stop destroying the only thing that makes Reddit great: its community.


For those following the appeal:


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