[sofixa]

> A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,”

Calling bullshit on that one. If they had expected stability issues, and knew exactly which subreddits will go private and when, how is it possible they had so much "anticipated issues"?

[jedberg]

My guess is that they knew the caches would get blown out and would have to refill with content from non-blacked out subs, and decided to just take the hit and let it ride, knowing it would recover itself soon enough.

I mean, honestly that's probably what I would have done if I were still in charge.

[RSHEPP]

And in this case, use it as an opportunity to learn more about the system. Treat it as an experiment.

[realusername]

They have an outage every two weeks maximum so I also call bullshit on that one, Reddit hasn't exactly been the most stable website before.

[falcolas]

I imagine a previously not-stress-tested component that has to do with searches/fetches with private subreddits went kaboom.

Not too much of a stretch, IMO.

A fantastic Schadenfreude generator, regardless.

[gfv]

When operating a complex system like Reddit, you know that something is going to happen during a significant event, but you generally don't know exactly what will break first.

What's worse is that the system evolved as a response to the previous similar event, and what broke now is probably not what had broken in the past.

[schaefer]

The world has finite resources... such as man-hours.

[sofixa]

Such a critical moment for the future of the company (mass boycott after controversial changes, presumably on the path to IPO; they really don't need any more bad publicity) should be an all hands on deck situation. Again, they've had advanced notice, and knew the full list of subreddits. They should have prepared better.

[pohl]

> should be an all hands on deck situation

[The Mythical Man Month has entered the chat]: Nine mothers, all hands on deck, should be able to gestate a baby in 1 month.

[tiffanyg]

At the risk of adding further low quality content, right here and now, this proposed "Mythical Mom Month" book is an intriguing pitch.

Do you have a more detailed pitch sheet? :)

[TillE]

You're not going to significantly rewrite a caching system in a matter of days, not if you want to fix more problems than you cause.

[jklinger410]

> and knew exactly which subreddits will go private and when

As someone who is close to a reddit mod, they did not know which subs would go private

[TheNewsIsHere]

I don’t say this snidely, but more than 7,000 subs openly committed to going private in advance of today.

I’m sure someone somewhere at Reddit was surprised by sub X or Y going private, but if they were surprised at half the largest subs that went private, then that would be as sad as it is amusing.

Edit: typo