[jacquesm]

> She needs to be on the front page all day gracefully responding to the revolting things being said about her so that normal users can remember that she's an actual person and not an anonymous force of nature advancing evil in the world.

Because that worked so well for kn0thing...

[georgemcbay]

Alexis' early responses were the exact opposite of "graceful".

[celticninja]

yes but since his mea culpa the community is not holding it against him.

One of the mig issues people have with Ellen Pao is that her first responses on the issue were to the NYT, Buzzfeed etc and not directly to her own users.

[7Z7]

>One of the mig issues people have with Ellen Pao..

Bullshit, that's just the newest thing they've loaded their blunderbusses with - and is less than days old. It isn't why they've been calling her a cunt and hitler, and asking for her to be fired or killed for months.

[celticninja]

yes it is a recent thing however look at the "we apologise" thread and it is the topic of the top voted comment. People care about it.

The cunt/hitler thing all relates to the banning of r/fph and the reasoning behind it. Her statement to the effect that reddit was not a free-speech site but a safe place was the originator of most of the hatred. Reddit always championed itself as a free-speech site and it was the users that came and stayed for that reason that felt betrayed by her personally.

[7Z7]

No, it's even older than the FPH banning. It's pure tabloid misogyny, and has been increasing steadily since here appointment.

FPH's banning and the Victoria thing have certainly turned up the volume of it, as the hate-squad hold up each new issue (and with the Victoria episode, finally an issue that raised valid concerns) as more proof that they'd been right to harass her for months.

[celticninja]

Really? If it was around before fph then it was very low key and it would have been because of her lawsuit because prior to fph that was all we really knew about her. But that doesn't mean that the hate was unfounded, her behaviour as portrayed by her own admission at trial, was shitty and as a jury decided she was not discriminated against, she was just a shitty person trying to play the victim card. People didn't want her associated with something (reddit) that they care about.

It is nothing to do with misogyny that is just a handy wall to hide behind because she is female. If it was misogyny then why the uproar over a female member of staff being fired?

If her accusers were shown to be female it would become a our her race. End of the day she is disliked because of her actions and behaviour, her gender and race have nothing to do with it.

[DCPOS_Anthony]

> It's pure tabloid misogyny,

I couldn't care less about Pao. I think the attitude and actions of Ohanian (who is, after all, the person who fired Taylor) has been pretty much the antithesis of helpful during this debacle.

[dredmorbius]

Reddit and Redditors, as with HN and its participants, are diverse and contain multitudes.

I moderate a couple of modest subs and have participated on Reddit, generally positively, for three years. Pao hadn't impressed me hugely, though I didn't find her behavior strongly negative. The FPH situation was handled and communicated poorly, but from what I understand, was sound (the banning was based on violations of site rules, not specific expressed opinions).

Pao's personal legal issues have certainly been a distraction, and while I've not obsessed over the case and related issues, she, and her husband, seem to have an interesting history and set of problems.

The blow-up over Taylor was different: it concerned directly trust between Reddit and a small number of very crucial moderators -- /r/IAMA's mod team is 23 users, but the are the gatekeepers to one of Reddit's most valuable features (not one I use much myself, FWIW). The specific roster of complaints from IAMA and other subs affected were on point and material.

The response from the larger Reddit community has varied: some was legit, some expressions of outrage over real or imagined past offenses.

My own views of Pao took a sharp downward note at that point. David Frum and Asher Wolf, neither of whom are pimply-faced teenage boys, both make great observations:

https://twitter.com/Asher_Wolf/status/616834072015339520 "Reddit's users are their product. Reddit is currently discovering where the balance of power lies when a product with opinions revolts."

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/616965682517921792 "I'm not following the Reddit thing closely, but one thing seems obvious: corporations shouldn't hire CEOs who hate their product and customers."

I'm also a fan of Merideth L. Patterson's "On Port 80": https://medium.com/@maradydd/on-port-80-d8d6d3443d9a

(My own comments: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/jxHO4czSkI3duweJv5XTRA)

It's one thing to have the usual outrage squads raising a ruckus. Another when core subs go dark because the mods have revolted.

That's what pushed this impasse. Pao's been handling it very poorly, though she may still turn things around.

[7Z7]

I agree with every single thing you've written here. My only point was that the Victoria situation was not at all the reason the hate-squad (who issue death-threats instead of talking about the issues) started hating on Pao - it's just another bullet in their misogyny gun.

The mods/subs going dark is another thing, and was not at all addressed by my original comment.

[sanderjd]

Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO? I can envision a configuration of reddit corporate structure where there is a responsive, deeply involved, and powerful "head of community" position who would respond to the community in these situations, while the CEO does more traditional CEO stuff like talking to investors and press (among other things). The problem seems to me to be that they don't appear to have that "head of community" position. Indeed, it seems that /u/chooter had become that person de facto, perhaps without the company's leadership realizing it, and seemingly without the necessary internal sway.

[dredmorbius]

A key role of the CEO is in addressing key constituencies and stakeholders: investors, business partners, customers, employees. And in Reddit's case, the people who do much of the heavy lifting in managing the forums, and in participating in discussions on the site.

There are limits to how much time you want to dedicate to any one constituency. But yes, when you've got a problem with your mods and users on a mod-and-user-centric company, you talk to the mods and users.

[sanderjd]

I would say that the CEO's key role is more to make sure that key constituencies and stakeholders are addressed as effectively as possible, not necessarily to address them directly themselves. Sometimes it is actually more effective to delegate that job. Having said that, it certainly seems to be the case that the closer a constituency is to the core competency of the business, the more likely it is that they should be addressed directly by the CEO, and I buy the argument that moderators and heavy contributors should be the core competency or reddit.

[celticninja]

maybe not, but this is a social media site, where those in charge have always engaged with the users through the site. kn0thing, jedberg, spez etc all did, Yishan did and so users can be forgiven for expecting Pao to follow suit. To avoid that and go to Buzzfeed, which is a reddit petpeeve just because they take a good portion of their content from reddit and dont give atribution, well it doesnt take the CEO of a social media site to work out how that will pan out.

[McGlockenshire]

> Is it a given that responding to the community is the proper role for a CEO?

No, it isn't.

Ellen Pao being at fault for everything is a meme spawned by the Gamergate/MRW/anti-SJW crowd. The recent mishandling of the fatpeoplehate ban and then the lack of communication about letting Victoria go have just fanned those existing flames.

If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like this, nor would they be the best person to be publishing apologies.

[celticninja]

i think you are comparing the reddit CEO to some bluechip company like Apple or IBM. It isnt anything like them, they produce no goods, their users are their product and more so their moderators. They are a social media company, if you cant deal qwith social media on your own site how are you supposed to be trusted with a social media site?

If the CEO was some boring old white man and he had done the same thing then yes his head would be called for. You are trying to make this an issue of her gender and her race when it is nothing to do with that.

FUnnily enough one of the reasons that she inspires such dislike is because she played the victim of sexism card and then after a trial she was found to have no case. And actually what came out of the trial was the truth about her self-serving behaviour. The trial documents make it very clear that she was no angel, she was sexist toward other females, she hads an affair whilst married, with a married man, and then blamed that on the other person all the while there were text messages and emails showing she was as much to blame as he was.

Coupled with all of this her partner is currently facing a lawsuit on a case of fraud. Stuff like that pisses people off and with reddit there are a lot of users that care a lot about the site, they care about how it is perceived and they see her as detrimental to the site in part becuase of her behaviour as CEO but also due to her behaviour prior to becoming CEO which has been well reported regardless of her reddit position.

[rspeer]

Reddit has had several CEOs, which the typical user rarely knew by name.

The idea that the CEO of Reddit has anything to do with the average user's experience has come about very recently, and I believe it's being propagated by the fatpeoplehate crowd (she sure affected their experience).

The mishandling of IAmA seems to have been done by Alexei Ohanian, but he's not being photoshopped onto Hitler.

[brymaster]

> Ellen Pao being at fault for everything is a meme spawned by the Gamergate/MRW/anti-SJW crowd.

No, it wasn't.

> If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like this

Nice meme. Let's address both the race and sex parts:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+brendan+eich

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+tim+armstrong

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+satya+nadella

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+mark+pincus

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=fire+yishan+wong

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=boycott+papa+johns

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=hobby+lobby+scotus

and extra special: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=cancelcolbert

[lookbothways]

>If the CEO was some boring old white man, nobody would be calling for his head like this, nor would they be the best person to be publishing apologies.

You mean like Brendan Eich? (CTO, but still)

Or, as long as we're talking about online megacommunities, how about moot of 4chan? He stepped down as the owner of 4chan half a year ago and people are still mad at him.

[McGlockenshire]

Go listen to the live Q&A moot did at the end. Yes, all eight hours of it. All community managers should strive to be at peace with the world as moot was. He truly understood his community and understood that no matter what he did, there'd still be people hating him.