In the beginning Reddit communities had a handful of subscribers, but now they grew to millions. That is why the moderators need somebody like Victoria Taylor to help them.
Reddit moderators work hard in order to support the forum that is accessed by almost eight million readers each month. Last week the moderators purposely closed the website for 24 hours explaining that they did so as a protest against the fact that the company suddenly terminated Victoria Taylor. She was a Reddit employee who worked extensively in collaboration with the moderators.
The moderators explained that they shut Reddit down because the management made an essential change without taking into account how this would affect both the moderators which take care of the subreddits which form the site and the community, especially since these two factors are Reddit’s biggest resources.
However the abrupt termination of Victoria Taylor is just one example of such changes which the management made without considering how this would affect the people who use the site every day.
Reddit CEO Ellen Pao issued an apology. She acknowledged that they “screwed up” and not only in this instance, but also over the past several years. She also said that the moderators and the community have lost their trust in her and other Reddit administrators. When Pao was asked why she did not apologize until now she replied that she had apologized, but her comments were downvoted by the users very fast and thus they were no longer visible.
Tyler Lawrence, a Reddit moderator, said:
“With all this negative press and negative user base reactions towards her positions as CEO, I think she’s pretty much lost all credibility. That leads to an inability to lead the company effectively. From this point on, people will just associate her with the bad things.”
The moderators say that the democratic system on Reddit has worked very well. In the beginning the communities had a handful of subscribers, but now they grew to millions. That is why the moderators need somebody like Victoria Taylor in order to help them the challenges which might appear when one runs a site which is used by millions of people.
She is so important because the communities built their policies around her. Moreover she was a reliable coach, a point of contact in case of emergency and a warm voice. How the moderators hope that Reddit will recruit somebody who is talented and also has the necessary background to fill her position.
Image Source: Reddit
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