Petition calling for Reddit CEO Ellen Pao’s resignation surpasses 190,000

Community manager Kristine Fasnacht would step into that role as well as the new position of Moderator Advocate, to serve as a liaison between volunteer discussion section moderators and Reddit employees, Reddit spokeswoman Heather Wilson said.

Reddit must now keep the furor over the changes it has made in check. Dumping such a well-liked and integral part of the AMA series infuriated the site’s moderators, who were left with no explanation for her sacking or any plan to replace her.

Ellen Pao, interim CEO of online community site Reddit, offered the site’s users an apology Monday, saying that “we screwed up”.

In an attempt to quell those concerns – which have seen 180,000 people sign a petition calling on her to resign – Pao finally posted a message on Reddit itself in which she admitted she and her team had consistently failed to meet expectations. Swaths of the Reddit community that already had Pao in their crosshairs lashed out at her in even harsher terms.

While Reddit doesn’t need to announce why or when it lets go of staff, moderators, who worked closely with Taylor, felt they should have been told about the staffing decision and at least how Taylor’s workload would be handled. In a statement Monday, Reddit executive chairman and co-founder Alexis Ohanian said that the company is looking at revamping AMAs, with an eye on attracting more celebrity and influential people to become regulars on the site, rather than guests.

These moves to focus more on moderators could secure Reddit’s future, considering the vast majority of users are not bothered about the changes in management.

Subreddits, which range from subjects such as United Kingdom politics and “Aww” – cute animal pictures – to weird subjects such as “Joe Biden and a sandwich”, are the building blocks of the site, focusing discussions round a certain subject. Instead of just working with them once a year to promote something via AMA, we want to be a resource to help them to actually join the reddit community. But the moderators were still unhappy. In a similar way that the collapse of Myspace and Friendster offer important lessons for modern social networks, Reddit has to avoid becoming the next Digg. “I don’t have all the answers, and it will take time for us to deliver concrete results”, Pao said. When you’ve had feedback or requests, we haven’t always been responsive.

In response to the protests, Pao issued a statement apologising for her part in the furore, admitting, “We screwed up…We haven’t communicated well”, adding that the “community have lost trust in me and us”.

She added that they have drifted out of touch with the community, but is committed to talking more often with the Reddit community at large.