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/r/IndiaNews - Revisiting & relishing the humble start which will go a longway« Meta » (self.indianews)

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[–]inmods[S,M] -1 ポイント0 ポイント

Sabotaging and Poaching AMAs being conducted in /r/IndiaNews

/r/IndiaNews started with the AMA series initiative between February 1 to April 30, 2014 with twitter-verrified AMAs seen for the first time in India reddit space. There was no "competition" as such because there was no recent history of any AMAs hosted on any India-related subreddit - barring /r/Bollywood - which actually contributed towards the /r/IndiaNews AMAs and was fully appraised of the situation. Despite all the drama that followed we refuse to be considered in any competition in any context with any sub-reddit. We had our own vision and schedule to which we strictly adhered. Our AMA efforts have been unique and pioneering in the context of Indian social media.

It was very clear with the first sign of the "troll twitter" account that it is mischief of some sort. The mod team at /r/Indianews very carefully considered the situation and analysed the patterns, and called out the duplicity of the troll account and asked for a rebuttal/clarification from those it was claiming to represent.

And it was clear that The troll twitter account was mentioning (then unlisted) official @RedditIndia handle - and there was not a single rebuttal issued from the latter despite being communicated to the moderators of that sub. All the time two of the redditors belonging to the clique kept mentioning and asking the following -

  1. Has /r/Indianews arranged AMAs by duping people?

  2. Is /r/IndiaNews conning people?

Later they deleted all of the comments made by them. Their accusations were strikingly similar in nature and tone as compared to the troll twitter handle. The absence of rebuttal, and continued attacks and attempts to poach the AMAs announced on /r/IndiaNews only points to the fact that this clique is not interested in allowing a relatively small sub to grow. It is cleat that they are very much against it, and would go to any length, including making unsubstantiated allegations to sabotage the growth of a sub.

In fact /r/India twitter handle and the "troll twitter" handle, both were spreading the same kind of misinformation and propaganda against /r/IndiaNews

Funnily at the time when these Twitter handles indulged in spreading misinformation about /r/IndiaNews, its subscription count was already more than 900. That anomaly apart, /r/India mods have little to show for solidarity and intent to come clean in their efforts to stop the troll account - naturally pointing to their complicity or at least their attitude to cause trouble to a small sub and bring disrepute to the Indian reddit community (and there are about 15 odd India related communities on reddit, why only this one is being targetted?)

Poaching of Aditi's AMA

Within second of the guest AMA mentioning @RedditIndia handle (being on mobile, and troll account already populating the time line with messages of new handle is ample reason to be confused) - the @RedditIndia account responded to the mention, and in fact went ahead to have a DM conversation.

The twitter timeline of AMA guest clearly showed the @IndiaReddit tweet - also there was announcement at the /r/IndiaNews - plus, there was a mod conversation going around the "AMA poaching" It is sane to assume - when any mod team has no AMA planned, they'd react appropriately and with responsibility - we do not speak for the other mod team in any way. But we did not get a satisfactory answer, or resolution of the troll twitter account, or the official twitter account of the other sub.

Tweets using Redditindia handle have following conversations -

Then the troll accounts spams her timeline with different handle - getting her confused, and she ends up tweeting to different twitter

who tells them her AMA is canceled http://archive.today/CQwpf

twitter discussion initiated by the twitter account handled by the clique with Aditi :

Why were they soliciting a DM, and then inquiring about "confusion"? were they blind to the innumerable mentions the mercenary account was doing of their twitter id? were they not seeing Aditi's timeline that mentioned @IndiaReddit in 5+ tweets at that time and only ONE mention of their twitter id?

Aditi Discussing AMA with r/IndiaNews - why did the mods of other handle missed this? How can they claim first right over the AMA, when clearly, there was an AMA scheduled and was cancelled due to shenanigans of the mercenary twitter account.

Even so, just to keep the information transparent and in public domain, two of the mods made two separate posts http://www.reddit.com/r/indianews/comments/21lqyv/so_is_rindia_the_only_legit_place_for_all_indians/

Now, these posts were very carefully posted without targeting any individual - and assuming it is a mischief action on part of some individuals, and thus called upon the mod team to correct it by issuing an official rebuttal.

Two of the mod team members did respond to the above threads, a perusal of the comments and interaction will tell you who is accusing who. In short, they never called upon the rogue twitter handle as not being their official one- either on twitter or as a mod-post; plus they accused the mod team of /r/IndiaNews back.

Then there was some intense offline conversation.

Here is a screen shot of one of the members of the clique stating that Taking the Troll's Lead Aditi has agreed to do ama in the other sub

Mercenary troll account was actively sabotaging /r/IndiaNews AMAs and the members of the clique were readily accepting the AMAs which were sabotaged. In coming days at least a dozen mercenary troll accounts being controlled by a "ring master" surfaced to attack /r/IndiaNews on Twitter. We will talk about them in next post.

Meanwhile we even waited for 48 hours for an official response, and upon not receiving any, have to let the post be, and tone down the AMA efforts.

Then after some time (when the @RedditIndia link is updated in sidebar, and /r/IndiaNews is removed from the list of India related subreddits) - by any stretch of imagination, this does not contribute to a "confidence building" measure. In fact, this led credence to the oft repeated claim of the so called rogue twitter handle that "X community is the only real reddit for India" with "Xk subscribers".

Poaching of Anand Gandhi's AMA

Then, by the time of Anand Gandhi AMA, the "official" @RedditIndia account is also boasting about the very same facts (of # of subscribers and real reddit of India) - AND, it even told the AMA guest that "/r/IndiaNews AMA is a trial run, and they'll do a final one". Belittling the efforts of fellow redditors - This is the collective maturity of 11 individuals moderating an years old sub-reddit.

Here are some of the desperate tweets to steal the AMA as quickly as possible -

Even IF we consider Aditi Mittal and Anand Gandhi typing the twitter handle by mistake - does the response from the @RedditIndia handle reflects maturity and professionalism or any respect for the efforts of a few fellow Indian redditors to have a AMA in their own sub?

Is that confusion an excuse for shameless attempts of poaching the AMA? There were similar sort of conversation due to confusion at our end also.

We would like to give the users an opportunity to judge the level of maturity in the vis a vis comparison of the two conversations -

It should be mentioned and appreciated that in between the heated conversations on mod msgs of the sub controlled by the clique, one of the members of the clique did took the initiative to open another channel of communication and we hoped that issue will be resolved amicably. We only wanted the attacking on Twitter to stop. We did try to reach out to him again regarding Prop4Rev AMA but there was no response eventually. In fact the attacks intensified and /r/IndiaNews was censured from the sub controlled by the clique.

We also tried to contact the senior most Indian member of the clique, but did not get any response..

[cont]

[–]inmods[S,M] 1 ポイント2 ポイント

Here are other instances of sabotaging our AMAs

Attacking RamRamdas

http://archive.today/1Kyuk (alt view)

Attacking Inkbrushnme

Attacking Shashank Dixit

Holy cow man, I've been getting these tweets from some accounts I don't want to name here. Anyway, my only take is that you guys are doing an awesome job so keep doing it. We will get a billion people online in next 20 years. Reddit is going to be a mainstay of online users so sit tight, there's a lot of interest coming your way.

http://www.reddit.com/r/indianews/comments/21l334/a_full_time_ceo_a_part_time_redditor_and_a_tf2/cggata3

Attacking Priyanka Chaturvedi

Going after Vidyut - a blogger who did an AMA on IndiaNews and was featured in DNA

Going after Akash Chopra

Both outside accounts going after SunnyLeone

Just a small note - All of the people mentioned above were first contacted by /r/IndiaNews for AMAs.

And a reiteration, we have initially made every attempt to get the mercenary/troll twitter account to be officially disowned by those it was claiming to represent, we've only received abuses in return and much damage was done. We have reasons to believe that by not making a timely announcement of disowning a troll account that was damaging our efforts - the clique has owned responsibility by complicity and inaction.

Conducting even a single AMA is a challenge. We had around 20 AMAs within a span of 35-40 days. Imagine convincing celebrities and well known persons for doing an AMA when -

1) They have very little awareness of Reddit

2) At least a dozen mercenary troll accounts keep hovering on their TL spreading misinformation and propaganda about their scheduled AMA.

It surely has taken a toll on our team but we saved almost all of the AMAs. At the same time we can't express our gratitude to our AMA guests to still have faith in the ability of /r/IndiaNews as a platform for them to interact with the Indian redditors. It also shows that bullying small subs and sabotaging their efforts is not effective. Most of the AMA guests kept their promise and went on with their AMAs. We are really really really thankful to them.

There are many other issues which have been linked to our AMA efforts and in a way used to wrongfully influence the users and divert their attention from the shameful efforts of poaching, sabotaging and stealing AMAs from a nascent sub, we are taking up those issues in the other post.

[–]panditji_reloaded 1 ポイント2 ポイント

Both outside accounts going after SunnyLeone

Bhai logon! Sunny Bhabhi ko haath nahi lagayega!