Reddit, whose success hinges on the support it gets from its community, is under fire from pretty much everyone after Reddit reportedly sacked a key community figure crucial to the success of Reddit's Ask Me Anything (AMA) interview sessions.
Major subreddits, each with millions of subscribers, have closed their doors to the public in protest of the alleged firing of Victoria Taylor, the company's Director of Talent responsible for ensuring that the AMA sessions go smoothly. AMAs are Reddit's crowning glory, where personalities of varying degrees of celebrity, from Barack Obama to Peter Dinklage to someone who played a putty in the original Power Rangers series, answer questions submitted by Reddit users.
On Thursday, moderators of the AMA subreddit, all of whom are unpaid volunteers, have decided to turn the subreddit private in protest of Reddit allegedly having fired Taylor without notice. Several major subreddits, including those for books, science, music, gaming, history, videos and technology, followed suit.
User Gilgamesh, moderator of the technology subreddit, posted an explanation as to why the moderators have decided to keep Reddit closed to the public. He said the subreddits have gone private not only to protest the removal of Taylor but also because of "underlying resentment against the admins for running the site poorly—being uncommunicative, and disregarding the thousands of moderators who keep the site running."
As Reddit's Director of Talent, Taylor was essentially the liaison officer between the subreddit moderators, Reddit's administrators and the people who were doing the AMAs. Before every AMA, Taylor provided proof that the person doing the AMA was who they claimed to be and not some PR team fielding questions and giving bland answers. She was also responsible for briefing people who would like to do an AMA on what to expect during the session, scheduling the AMAs, assisting the interviewees in understanding questions, and overall making sure everything goes well.
"We had a number of AMAs scheduled for today that Victoria was supposed to help with, and they are all left absolutely high and dry (hence taking IAMA private to figure out the situation," said Karmanaut, a moderator for the IAMA subreddit. "She was still willing to help them today (before the sub was shut down, of course) even without being paid or required to do so. Just a sign of how much she is committed to what she does."
Hours after the pandemonium, which users have begun dubbing AMAgeddon, broke loose, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian finally made a statement, although he did not explain why Taylor was no longer part of the Reddit team.
"We don't talk about specific employees, but I do want you to know that I'm here to triage AMA requests in the interim," Ohanian said as user kn0thing. "We get that losing Victoria has a significant impact on the way you manage your community. I'd really like to understand how we can help solve these problems because I know r/IAMA thrived before her and will thrive after."
Users, however, seem to be unhappy with Ohanian's response, citing examples in the past when another Reddit employee managed the AMAs, notably Woody Harrelson's epic failure of an AMA when someone asked controversial personal questions and, instead of simply ignoring the questions to bury them down the thread, he would brusquely tell people to focus on his new film.
Users are also complaining about how Reddit's administrators do not see Taylor's value to the community, which is apparently confirmed by Marc Bodnick, community and business leader at Quora, who says he spoke with a Reddit insider saying this was true. Bodnick says Reddit did not understand how much moderators cared for Taylor and was pushing her to initiate commercial projects, such as video AMAs, which Taylor resisted.
"Given Victoria's resistance to management ideas, they decided to abruptly eliminate her position and let her go," said Bodnick on Quora, although the post has been deleted, but not before someone took a screenshot of it.
