Reddit - Ask Me Anything

Welcome to Ask Me Anything from the current moderation team of r/IAmA.

We are the people who write and implement the policies that, in conjunction with user voting, keeps r/IAmA running smoothly. With over 8 million subscribers, some moderation is required to maintain a balanced signal-to-noise ratio. As moderators, we are in the unique position to facilitate some of the most fascinating content on the web. This foreword provides an overview of the history of r/IAmA, from its inception to its current position as one of the most successful crowd-based interview platforms on the Internet.

Reddit is a social networking website containing content and submissions that are driven to prominence thanks to votes cast by the user base. The site is broken down into sections, commonly referred to as subreddits, with each focusing on a specific subject matter. r/IAmA (as well as more than 10,000 other active Reddit communities) thrive on this voting system: popular and insightful content rises to the top, while less interesting content fades into obscurity. This sets the site apart from other social media platforms since users determine the fate of the content posted to the site. Every user has helped to shape and grow r/IAmA with their posts, votes, and questions.

Like many subreddits, IAmA began as an idea elsewhere on Reddit, in this case in /r/askreddit. There, users started Ask Me Anything (AMA) posts in which users were encouraged to ask interesting questions of the postee. Eventually, this lead to the creation of r/IAmA to give these popular threads their own subreddit. The small community grew quickly (gaining 20,000 subscribers in its first four months) and garnering a wide range of posts, topics, and questions.

With the increasing popularity of the format, users began to request certain people and topics for AMAs; over time this has led to numerous AMAs that might not have happened otherwise. At the same time, Reddit employees also began reaching out to well-known individuals to participate in AMAs to answer questions for Redditors. These early celebrity AMAs were posted on Reddits blog, were generally restricted to certain topics, and the questions answered limited to the top ten.

With the explosive growth of the subreddit, issues arose with users creating fake AMAs. In response, the moderators began to encourage users to provide proof with their posts, and also offered confidential verification when the AMA host was uncomfortable putting their proof out publicly.

As r/IAmA grew it began to face obstacles. An ever growing and diverse user base led to differences in opinion over the future of the subreddit. The initial creator, /u/32bites, became unhappy with the quality of the posts and the direction the subreddit was taking. At this point, /u/32bites made the decision to close r/IAmA with the hope another subreddit would take its place. This shutdown did not last long. The community expressed their extreme disapproval and in further moderator discussions, /u/karmanaut was tapped to take over as head mod. This led to some significant changes in r/IAmA standards and policy that improved the platform and shaped the subreddit into the cultural juggernaut it is today.

All AMAs were required to provide substantial proof, which moved the subreddit away from the interpretation that r/IAmA was an opportunity to showcase creative writing (no more fake or joke AMAs!). r/IAmA also developed two new guidelines for contentsubmissions must be either something uncommon that plays a central role in the posters life, or a truly interesting and unique event. This meant that all posts were now required to be verified, and also paved the way for AMAs that were credible. This change attracted more celebrities and public figures to r/IAmA.

As the number of celebrities coming to Reddit and r/IAmA grew, Reddit user /u/chooter, also known as Victoria Taylor, was brought on as the Director of Communications for Reddit. Working in collaboration with the r/IAmA mods, her background in public relations helped familiarize individuals with r/IAmAs format and opportunity. Since beginning work with Reddit in 2013, shes assisted with more than 2,000 AMAs.

Even as r/IAmA continues to grow and evolve over the years, the community still stays true to its roots by desiring an authentic interaction with any poster. Attempts to treat r/IAmA like a standard media stop by selecting only softball questions or aggressively advertising can be shut down, unmercifully at times, by the users. The most notable (and infamous) AMA gone wrong featured actor Woody Harrelson. Attempts to only focus on the promotional efforts for Rampart upset the community and the few, brief responses he did give have eventually become synonymous with giving a bad AMA. (Lets just focus on the movie people.) But for every AMA that goes awry, there have been thousands of positive high-profile AMAsand even some AMAs that have been literally out of this world.

Arguably the biggest achievement of r/IAmA has been allowing those who are interested the opportunity to have unprecedented access to a wide range of people. From President Barack Obama (page TK) to restaurant fry cooks (page TK), from Sir David Attenborough to a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church (page TK) to a man with two penises (page TK), the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal. The subreddit goes beyond the standard interview format, as it allows people doing AMAs to show a more human side that is difficult to convey in the normal press circuit. Anyone can pose a question to the AMA participant, including other celebrities and public figures. These questions range from the wacky (Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck?) to hard hitting and back again; nothing is off limits, and anything can happen.

As of April 2015, there are over 8 million unique visitors and over 20 million page views per month to the subreddit, and it continues to attract new AMAs, subscribers, and visitors every day. As a testament to the importance of AMAs, they have spread around the spectrum of Reddits communities, allowing for more niche AMAs to develop, such as the AMA series /r/science or /r/music, while other websites and platforms have tried to capitalize on similar formats; none, however, capture the breadth, depth, or ongoing element of surprise as the AMAs posted on r/IAmA.

Our hope is that this book helps to highlight just a few of the great, unusual, and intriguing interactions between the IAmA community and the people doing the AMAs from over the years, and introduce the world of r/IAmA to those who may not have had the chance to experience it in-depth.