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Reddit's popular 'ask me anything' feature is down after a key employee is gone
(Reuters) Reddit mascots are displayed at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California April 15, 2014.
Reddit's popular Ask Me Anything (iAMA) feature is offline following a key employee's departure.
Subreddit moderators are revolting and setting their sections to private today after Reddit's director of talent, Victoria Taylor was allegedly dismissed. In a Reddit thread about her departure, she replied that she was "dazed" and "hopefully" plans to stay in the PR field.
At least 11 of the sites subreddits, or community groups, have turned private in protest of the news. What was originally just the AMA subreddit, the protest has expanded to included 11 subreddits dedicated to gaming, history, movies, and other subjects. Some subreddits have also stopped taking submissions.
Reddit has confirmed Taylor's departure, but would not comment further. Taylor has not responded to request for comment.
One of Taylor's job duties was coordinating the site's popular AMAs. Two of the site's most popular posts ever are AMAs: the one with Barack Obama and a conversation with a man with two penises. The AMA subreddit became such a popular section of the site that Reddit eventually spun it out into its own app.
Reddit user Karmanaut broke the news of Taylor's departure in a post and explained that the AMA subreddit had been set to private as the moderators try to figure out how to deal with the logistics of the sessions.
"We have been really blindsided by all of this. As a result, we will need to go through our processes and see what can be done without her," said Karmanaut in the post.
The message on the AMA subreddit currently reads: "Due to internal administration reorganization at reddit, /r/IAmA has temporarily been made private by the moderators. We will be using this time to restructure our process for AMAs."
The science subreddit has also followed suit and gone dark. Its private message also hints at the reorganization: "Due to an unexpected Reddit administrative personnel change /r/science is temporarily private so that we can resolve the situation, our apologizes for any disruption this may cause."
Reddit executive chairman and founder Alexis Ohanian said that the company does have a team in place to handle inbound Reddit AMA requests in Taylor's absensce.
Reddit users are not handling the change well and are updating this list as more subreddits go private.
Daaaang. @reddit let Victoria go? She was literally *the* key to #AMA success for a lot of big names. Huge mistake, IMO. #sadz
— Tara Wright (@tdubs530) July 2, 2015
REDDIT IS SELF-DESTRUCTING. This site is such a trainwreck. It's being run into the ground at full speed.
— Guscraw (@guscraw) July 2, 2015
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