It wasn't just the 'optics'. They screwed up everything about it. They didn't have a replacement. They didn't have a transition period. They didn't have a clue how much work Victoria was doing. They didn't realize how significant she was to a number of core subreddits. They didn't realize how important those core subreddits were. They thought that none of these things mattered, and that a mere email address pointed to the rest of the reddit team could 'pick up the slack'.

They didn't just screw up the optics - they royally screwed up, and then tried to laugh it off.

> Reddit banned several subreddits for organized harassment behavior

While leaving up other subreddits that also have organized harassment behavior. If they had cleaned out all the trash at once, the community impact probably would have been minimal.

> While leaving up other subreddits that also have organized harassment behavior.

I think "organized harassment" here means, people form the banned subs reached out to harass people in the real life, outside of reddit. Not just posting vile stuff in a sub.

Yes, that's exactly what I said. There have been doxxings and harassment campaigns from plenty of subreddits, and only a few were removed.

Pao was CEO for only 8 months until now, she even says so in her resignation note.

http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3cudi0/resignation_tha...

> this second backlash revealed her to be politically compromised

could you elaborate on this?

In a very short period of time, a very vocal and visible part of the reddit community basically took over the site lashing out against Pao (you couldn't go there without reading about how Pao was ruining reddit). This happened once with the subreddit bannings, and then couple weeks later with Victoria's firing.

This powerful section of the reddit community's opinion of Pao is basically ruined at this point, and any further perceived transgressions on her part would no doubt lead to even larger, more damaging backlashes.

It seems the protests have had their intended effect and demonstrated to reddit's management that the community is essentially what drives the site's success (or failure) and that they need to keep this in mind when forming plans for the future. Keeping Pao on as CEO was only fracturing the community, so she had to go.

The community turned against her. To illustrate, her apology thread appears to have no further comments from her (making Pao appear aloof), but in reality she did make several mature and understanding comments in the thread, but they each accumulated thousands of downvoted and were buried. Simply put, she became a lightning rod and people's animosity toward her meant that she could no longer be effective as the executive of a community-driven organization.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...