As a paid professional who is employed to encourage volunteers to donate their labor so that Wikipedia can be developed with their crowdsourcing, I feel that I have expert insight into the relationship between staff and volunteers in online collaboration. This is a niche field and the relationships between staff and volunteers are broadly misunderstood, because there is little precedent in any community, company, or social organization in which these kinds of relationships can exist. In the case of Wikipedia, or in the reddit (spelled “r”) case on which I am about to comment, the nature of the relationship is as follows: there is a media outlet which is a valuable resource, either Wikipedia the encyclopedia or reddit the community discussion forum, which came to be popular. Its popularity could not have been predicted, and its “creators” were less architects of success than among the thousands of bright minds who had the same ideas simultaneously but distinguished themselves because they actually had the capital to invest in an attempt to develop the idea as a website. Reddit was among the first popular instances of its founding idea to work, even though obviously it is built from close ideas and even took its community from other similar projects. At present Reddit and other similar crowdsourced media outlets exist as places which a community of volunteers indisputably contributes not less than 99% of the value, work, and success of the projects, and paid staff who somehow receive pay associated with the project might guide the community a bit in some directions but overall, the success of the website is the result of the community’s presence. No valuable patents, unique resources, or special insight are offered by the website or staff hosting the community, except that the host has an attractive brand and attractive real estate where people are currently meeting.
It is nice when the people who get the majority of benefits from this arrangement – the website hosts – acknowledge that their success in life is because a lot of volunteers donate their labor to the enrichment of their hosts. In the case of Wikipedia, this acknowledgement is made with gestures including Wikipedia’s nonprofit status, the staff taking salaries lower than they might get at commercial companies, having half the board of trustees elected by the community, and making staff of the Wikimedia Foundation available as targets to be terrorized by loony Wikipedia community volunteers in all sorts of absurd and unreasonable ways. All of these things are friendly deprecating signs of submission on the part of the paid staff to the community of volunteers, and do a little to make up for the unfairness that all contributors to Wikimedia projects (staff and volunteer) experience in all that they do.
In the case of reddit, a commercial enterprise of Conde Nast and some very wealthy Internet entrepreneurs, there is heightened tension because the staff at reddit does less kowtowing. Reddit is a cheap platform and yet one of the most successful media channels in history in terms of audience size, audience engagement, and ability to attract star talent to provide media content. It is not entirely true to say that the creators, founders, and developers of reddit contributed nothing to its success, but it is mostly true. Some credit for reddit’s creation and success should go to Aaron Swartz, because he is the person who most understood, embodied, and stood for the rights of community volunteers when no one else associated with the website is really associated with that kind of spirit. I am not sure how much of his values became a part of reddit – maybe they were, or maybe reddit is just a business that he touched.
Victoria Taylor (/u/chooter) used to be associated with reddit, she had that Aaron Swartz spirit, and she advocated for reddit community interests. She was fired from her position 2 July, and in response, the volunteer moderators of reddit shut down most of reddit 3 July. Already I am saying something that few traditional media outlets could understand, and I am not going to explain all of reddit here, but to summarize: reddit’s content is presented by volunteers and some of the forums published in reddit have millions of subscribers and tens of millions of daily readers, and could be shut down at any time by certain volunteer contributors who operate semi-anonymously in their free time for fun. Outsiders might not understand what is happening here, because they might not understand the nature of the relationship between paid staff and volunteers in community crowdsourcing projects, but this sort of situation is nature to me because I get paid to do Wikipedia. I hardly knew Victoria, and I do not know other reddit staff, but I know Wikipedia and I know these kinds of relationships as well as anyone else. I read the sources covering the reddit blackout. The New York Times, Forbes, BBC, Hindustan Times, Gawker, Gizmodo, and as best as I can tell with translators Le Monde, Die Zeit, and Italian, Vietnamese, Spanish, and other language news outlets are all saying the same things and missing the point of the blackout. They fail to cover the issue because they preferentially report comments from reddit’s paid staff and less understand what the volunteers are doing, because in a crowdsourced semi-anonymous volunteer community there is no spokesperson or leader to consult for a news comment. The reason for the blackout was not Victoria’s firing, but that reddit fired the only employee they had who advocated for the community of volunteers and directly brought benefits to the volunteer community. This happened in the context of all other reddit staff continually seeking short-term business advancement even when it increased the work burden on the volunteers who contribute all the work that makes reddit successful. The community went really wild when Alexis, an executive at reddit, insulted the volunteers for complaining even while expecting them to continue to donate their time.
Victoria’s job was to facilitate AMA interviews. “AMA” means “ask me anything”, and the interviews take the format where someone says “I am (whoever), AMA”. The two most popular interviews reddit hosted were Barack Obama and an interview of a guy with two penises. Beyond that, I think the majority of newsworthy English-speaking celebrities have presented on reddit in the past few years. Professionals in all fields even when not celebrities have also presented on reddit, for example, when any science discovery is made often that will get a 1-minute mention on mainstream news or a paragraph in a newspaper but then the scientist will come to reddit and talk for hours answering every question asked and creating a public record of comments. Victoria’s particular role in this included that she would verify the identity of the interviewee – this sounds trivial, but is actually a real pain for volunteers and a huge help that often means the difference between having the interview or not. For big celebrities, she would also manage the interview by being on hand for technical support, or sometimes even reading questions and typing their responses so that they would not need to learn the reddit interface. As a special benefit to reddit’s moderators, she would also provide audience and impact metrics. I support Victoria because she is such a big help to /u/nallen (Nate), a moderator of /r/science who for years has brought a scientist to give an AMA every day. Nate is one of the greatest interviewers ever and one of the most important journalists ever, even though he does nothing more than facilitate a crowdsourced conversation and not actually do journalism or interviews himself. The body of interviews which he has produced is a treasure of civilization. Whenever a science story is published in academic journals, and when it is hot, he invites the scientist to reddit to present their research. The record of conversation that is created is one of the most amazing scientific and cultural outputs ever in any context and is unprecedented in its scope, candor, accessibility, and level of engagement between professional scientists and the general public. Victoria used to provide Nate with the metrics that he used as evidence to convince scientists that giving presentations in reddit was a legitimate way to bring scientific discourse to the public. Nate probably has facilitated more and deeper conversations between scientists and the public than anyone else, and he has done it as a volunteer. Just like everyone else on reddit, Nate depends on other people who volunteer their labor in giving and participating in discussions, but Nate is a volunteer in facilitating these things, and considering that reddit makes a lot of money because it hosts content like this it is nice when reddit makes investments in the infrastructure which allows Nate to proceed with his activities with minimal hassle. When reddit fired Victoria, they disrupted Nate’s routine activities on reddit and left him in a state of uncertainty about whether he would get the support he needed to do his routine. Nate was just one reddit volunteer contributor of many who depended on Victoria as a cornerstone of community support. He only needs a light touch and a little help in some places, only a fraction of Victoria’s working time, but with that little support he has been able to encourage great things that were much bigger than what any individual could have produced.
The most hurtful part of Victoria’s firing was that it was done with malice to reddit’s community of volunteers. When she was fired, it was under reddit staff presumption that her role in reddit’s workings were insignificant to reddit’s success, because more pointedly, the reddit staff had the assumption that that reddit’s volunteer contributions were insignificant to reddit’s success and therefore did not need staff support. The core premise was that reddit was successful because of the assets held by it as a commercial entity, and because of the merits of its paid staff, and that the volunteer community contributed their labor and volunteer time to reddit because they recognized reddit as a superior and worthy recipient for their free labor and time. Reddit staff presumed that volunteers were expendable and could be perpetually recruited from a limitless pool, so they need not show respect to the volunteers. These are mistaken notions and the height of hubris and arrogance; the reality is that the community of contributors to reddit would much prefer that any nonprofit entity duplicate what reddit does and present the same location that reddit does but in a more ethical and less exploitative way.
At Victoria’s firing, there were immediate objections from people who had AMA interviews scheduled. They were profoundly disrupted and given no recourse from reddit staff, which was confusing because a lot of community volunteers were depending on the interviews going forward. This confusion could have been prevented by any reddit staff taking the time to assume Victoria’s duties and assist the volunteers in doing their interviews. This could have been 3-4 hours of labor, at most, but it was not offered by reddit staff. When the volunteer moderators realized that their volunteer participation was being disrupted over reddit staffs’ petty refusal to help them with their interviews, they became indignant that a wealthy commercial enterprise like reddit would fail to acknowledge the routine needs of its most committed and generous contributors. The situation became more intense when innocently, Victoria offered to help the volunteers in a volunteer role herself – she was fired, but still could donate her time for reddit like anyone else, and was going to do some of what was formerly her paid work duties as a community member until reddit corporate sorted out a paid staff replacement for her.
One of reddit’s founders then began to insult reddit’s moderators, which are key volunteers on the website. They manage the workings of individual subreddits (forums) and sometimes take on roles of community leaders. Alexis Ohanian said several rude things, but the triggering phrase was “popcorn tastes good”.
Alexis Ohanian says “popcorn tastes good” with intent to insult reddit’s volunteers for participating in the website
What happened was a class struggle, in which wealthy people who had been made rich because of volunteer donations spoke badly of their donors. They acted like slaveholders, because it is human instinct that when people get extremely wealthy they start to think that they are better than the people who serve them, and start to imagine that those in their service respect their lordship. In the case of reddit, the servants (volunteer contributors) are much less bound to their masters (reddit staff), and much more able to voice resentment. Reddit staff were not at the focus of reddit’s money because of their own merit or hard work, but because they were in the right place at the right time to benefit from community volunteer labor. The people with money were very proud of themselves, which was permissible, but they crossed the line when they started to insult the people who voluntarily served them. In The New York Times, CEO Pao says, “the most virulent detractors on the site are a vocal minority, and that the vast majority of Reddit users are uninterested in what unfolded over the past 48 hours”. That vocal minority are the moderators who facilitate most of the content contribution, and not the readers who just enjoy the benefits. She also said, “We should have informed our community moderators about the transition and worked through it with them” – this is not sincere. The firing of Victoria was not the major issue – the major issue was that Alexis as executive staff did the firing while taunting the community that because they are less empowered individuals, reddit’s volunteers would willingly humiliate themselves by tolerating the hostile treatment of wealthy reddit staff.
It is very sad when rich people leverage their wealth to position themselves to harm less fortunate people. I started the Wikipedia article “Victoria Taylor” because contributing to Wikipedia is what I do when I feel like sharing information and I feel that it complies with Wikipedia’s inclusion guidelines.