[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.

[celticninja]

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

I have to say that is wrong. Yishan Wong was the CEO before Ellen Pao. He posted on the site often, he made a bunch of announcements on the site as CEO. Users were well aware of who he was. Prior to that reddit was under CondeNast publications and whilst the CEO of conde nast may not have been well know the admins such as kn0thing, spex, jedberg etc were all well know active users on the site from its inception. There has always been communication between admins with the users through the site.

>The idea that the CEO of Reddit has anything to do with the average user's experience has come about very recently

Again this is wrong. In terms of CEOs Yishan Wong engaged users this when he joined. This was not something that has come about in the last 6 weeks as a result of r/fph being banned.

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

Again this is wrong. Ohanian (kn0thing) certainly got involved in the immediate aftermath. I presume because they thought it would be accepted more easily by users if he said it rather than Ellen Pao saying it. He made a faux pas at one point and took some flak for it, but he understands reddit and he had some serious goodwill in the bank so he leveraged that and things are looking peachy for him now. But there is no indication that he was to blame for the AMA mishandling at all, his role appears to be cleanup.

[rspeer]

"Several" was the wrong word, I guess, because they weren't CEOs before Yishan. Anyway, I still dispute that the typical user knew Yishan Wong by name.

As for Ohanian (kn0thing), I'm thinking of a screenshot of modmail I saw, which was the main primary source I've seen about how admins screwed this all up. Not sure how to find it again, as it was deep in a thread and Reddit's search is not great, but the gist of it seemed to be that (a) he personally had plans for big changes in how AMA would work, and (b) he was oblivious about how these changes would affect moderators, particularly those organizing an r/science AMA with Stephen Hawking.

[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.

[misingnoglic]

moot definitely has community management experience that can't possibly be replicated, is there a synopsis of this 8 hour video anywhere?