Even if you're not invested in reddit's fate (I'm a fairweather user myself), this whole debacle has been a fascinating example of how to screw up community man

Even if you're not invested in reddit's fate (I'm a fairweather user myself), this whole debacle has been a fascinating example of how to screw up community management, and how that in turn ruins public relations. Good community management is all about managing expectations and cultivating your userbase so that they'll support you during rough patches. Likewise, good public relations is all about controlling and influencing the narrative. Reddit-the-company, has apparently failed on both fronts. First, they shut out their core of dedicated, free volunteers, giving them literally no reason to be loyal to the company. As a direct result, reddit lost out on one of their best tools for managing the narrative. So when Reddit co. undermined their most prominent, productive volunteers by firing their staff liaison with no warning, it's no damned wonder that the moderators turned on their "bosses". Result? Instant PR nightmare, with next to zero available leverage for controlling it. The whole thing is a failure of management, pure and simple. Reddit's board should be looking for blood.