So you're... trying to get celebrities to become regular users?

How?

That doesn't make any sense. You can't force rich, famous, and busy people to use your product. What are you going to do? Start launching commercials for Reddit starring Arnold? "Hello, I am Arnold Schwarzenegger, and when I am down in the dumps I like to go on /r/birdswitharms for inspiration for my muscles!" I don't see it.

Users don't expect celebrity AMAs to turn into a regular presence. Yeah, it's a one-off thing, and we understand that and are ok with that. It's an event, and that's the nature of an event. These people have their PR teams and social media accounts and all that. They don't need to be posting comments in /r/reactiongifs or whatever.

If the celebs choose to become active users on their own, that's cool, but how are you supposed to encourage them to do that, and how does getting rid of Victoria accomplish it? It just doesn't add up. I get you'd like to be able to say to the public "Reddit isn't just that site you hear about in those news articles about pedophilia and leaked celebrity nudes twice a year, it's also a place where your favorite big-name creatives freely talk to people", but that's not really what the site is about.

I'm saying this as a long-time user of the site, a moderator of a decently-sized subreddit (we just broke 150K subscribers at /r/comicbooks), and somebody who has in a volunteer position represented the site at a public event and interacted directly with people holding AMAs. And I don't say that like I carry some kind of clout or expect a response from some faux heightened sense of importance, I say this to give you my perspective: These people come to do a publicity event, and then they leave. Once in a while you get a disaster like Woody Harrelson's AMA, but for the most part people seem to enjoy this stuff, and the celebs know what they're getting into. It kind of sounds like you're trying to indoctrinate these guests into something, which isn't cool, and could possibly drive people away from the idea of holding AMAs with Reddit.

The way I see it, we moderators and you admins aren't so different. Oh sure, there's a world of difference between you, Ellen Pao (not YOU you, but I'm using Ellen as an example to represent the admins in general because I don't know who the rest of you are), Business Graduate from Harvard and new CEO of one of the Internet's top 50 websites and me, Max Dweck, almost-screenwriting graduate and slacker who is one of a few people who oversees a community of 150K subscribers (which we know doesn't mean 150K people actively using the site all the time). But we're both in a position of power in our respective communities to the site. More importantly, we're both in a service position to the users of our communities.

I get that at the business level there are vast differences to the stuff we mods do, and for what it's worth, I don't much care about any of this. There's no money involved for us mods, we're just trying to create a cool place for people to talk about comic books. We run /r/comicbooks in a way that keeps the sub independent of most of the drama that goes on around the rest of Reddit, and try to make that subreddit in itself the best community we can. But that's what all the mods of the big subreddits do too. The folks at /r/funny try to make a fun place for people to check out what's funny. /r/askreddit tries to be a good place for discussion. And the mods at /r/IAmA try to create a place where people can learn fascinating things about other people, including their favorite celebrities, and you threw a huge monkey wrench into that operation.

I've bought Reddit Gold. I've had Reddit Gold bought for me. So have thousands of other users. Reddit the website's userbase is a source of revenue for Reddit the company, not just through the direct money we put into keeping the website's servers up, but through generating content that attracts both users and advertisers to the website. You owe it to really listen to the community. I don't think this fiasco's going to scare away Reddit's userbase, or the next one, or the one after that. I don't know what it'd take. And I don't think the corporatization of the site is all bad. Even though I'm obese, I don't give a shit about /r/fatpeoplehate, but if getting rid of it means getting rid of subreddits that celebrate blatant racism and other forms of hate, I'm all for it, because getting massive quantities of stupid angry assholes together in an echo chamber can only lead to more problems for humanity down the line. But you owe it to your users to really listen to them.

Would it be cool to post a joke on /r/funny, have somebody compliment you, and know that the compliment came from Steven Spielberg? Yeah. Is it what the website's users are crying out for? No. In a lot of way's Victoria was just as much a face of the company that you are, and fair or not, it looks like people liked her a hell of a lot more than they like you. Me, I don't have an opinion. And again, I'm not the one with the business degree, so I don't know what the legality of it is, but I don't see what there is to be gained by withholding the reasons for firing Victoria. It's not like you got rid of some random IT guy, you got rid of a person the community came to admire, and that's problematic.

I don't know if the apology is genuine. But whether it is or isn't, you owe it to serve the Reddit community. And that means listening to the wants of the people who made the website into something big enough to be worth being a CEO of.

So yeah. That's my ramble. I'm going to go back in my comic book microcosm and ignore the yelling and screaming of the masses of the big subreddits I mostly ignore anyway. I'm probably missing out on some prime jokes about Doctor Doom right now.