[Frenchgeek]

Not exactly : that employee was the sole line of communication for the most popular part of the site.

The firing by it self would have had some people grumbling a bit, but it wouldn't have become the newsworthy shitstorm it became.

The problem was that the moderators weren't warned and were left without any other means of dealing with the needs of the many events planned and happening.

They were already asking for years to have better tools and better ways to communicate with the admins.

So in the end, the firing was only the straw that broke the camel's back, not because of a beloved and dedicated employee, but because of a lack of respect and concern that became more than insulting.

Redditors may be the product, but a farm doesn't last long if you don't care for the cows.

[uxcn]

I'm not sure this is accurate. Aside from the protest over the weekend, over 150k people (non-moderators) signed a petition to have Ellen Pao removed as CEO. That doesn't seem like a tools issue.

[snowwrestler]

That is a mob justice issue.

[TarpitCarnivore]

> Redditors may be the product, but a farm doesn't last long if you don't care for the cows.

But out of Reddit's entire user base how many are actually pissed off enough to go someplace else? Let alone how many are actually pissed off over this or other politics around Reddit and mods. I'd have to imagine the number is very small.

[jacobtracey]

The entire userbase doesn't matter that much. The majority of reddit users don't contribute any decent content.

Keeping the minority of users that are actually producing content happy is what they have failed to do and is the real risk - if there's nothing to look at, the rest of the userbase will follow the content somewhere else.