[wonderthrowaway]

> Part of it is proof, of course: we know it's legitimate when she's sitting right there next to the person and can make them provide proof. We've had situations where agents or others have tried to do an AMA as their client, and Victoria shut that [...] down immediately.

Righteous firing or not, a lot of this is a lesson in avoiding a SPOF.

[mtdono]

From a systems dynamics point-of-view, single points of failure are problematic.

However, in human dynamics and the foundation of all leadership (and thus creating genuine followership), it requires a single point of accountability.

Leaders of any community are accountable to their followers. Leaders have to realize that the community and the purpose are always more important than them.

I think the reason why u/chooter was considered a leader (or top-notch liason between admins and mods) was because of her commitment to the quality of the AMA.

I think the reason why u/chooter is adored by readers was for the same reason, though typically expressed by her inate ability to capture the AMA guests voices, mannerisms, etc. She was being 100% accountable to the community and the purpose that she was serving.

This is a thing to be admired, encouraged, and emulated. Not scorned or spoken of in terms of an acronym.

I'm not picking a thread fight, as I think your perspective is very important within hardware networks and/or very relevant in process management, it's quite inaccurate when describing the human dynamics involved with building a community.

[Crito]

Given the bizarre nature of Jackson's comments in that AMA, I somewhat suspect that Victoria fucked up by writing down what Jackson was saying over the phone verbatim.

Doing that is usually a good way to make somebody seem rather illiterate. For example, people are much looser with the way they structure sentences and organize thoughts when speaking in an unprepared manner.

When you listen to audio of them talking, everything seems normal because we have different expectations for written English and spoken English. When you don't get to listen to the audio but only read a transcript, then you start to get problems because then you have written English that only meets a spoken English standard.

[mtdono]

The JJ angle has already been removed as the reason for dismissal. (Besides, Victoria is known, adored for actually being able to type down what the person doing the AMA sounds like --see Jeff Glodblum AMA).

See here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png

I suspect that this had much more to do with the one thing that a management team is more interested in: money.

- AMAs are (or were?) probably one of the most visited subs on Reddit - AMAs readers are often on pages for hours - AMAs are on reddit-domained pages, so the "real estate" is valuable and "in-house"

If there was a management idea to "tweak" the AMAs to monetize it and Victoria thought it would not be true to the community, and spoke up, it would be easy to see why they would sack her.

This is much more likely to be the cause than capturing the typing down an AMA guest comments in the cadence they have been provided.

[Crito]

Pao seems to directly refute Marc's claims: https://i.imgur.com/0LZWrFp.jpg

It's not impossible that she is lying, but I think it is quite plausible that Marc's contact is not as authoritative as Marc seems to think. He is probably just repeating that person's speculation.

I'd also like to point out that if they fired Victoria for embarrassing Jackson, admitting that this was the case would be counterproductive because it would make a mob of angry redditors [even more] angry at Jackson.

[Crito]

Well I don't know how else you explain those responses.

The only other two explanations I can think of are "Victoria was posting replies to the wrong comments" or "Jackson _actually_is_ illiterate".

Seriously, the responses were borderline incoherent.

[plorkyeran]

It's also a nice example of how being the single point of failure for something doesn't provide as much job security as some seem to think.

[markdown]

It seems more likely that her employers didn't fully appreciate how much value she provided.

[theskyislikely]

Or how much value the mods provide, working entirely for free.

[yen223]

SPOF = Single Point of Failure, for those wondering.