I think you're overlooking the fact that all 36 million (or however many) people that visit Reddit each month are NOT equal....the active content creators are intrinsically more valuable to a community like reddit, simply because they make the community what it is. When the people that make the content (of which 200k is no insignificant drop) that attracts the other 35 million ad-viewers are unhappy, Reddit MUST do something about, whether this 'minority' is vocal or not.

How are you tying the petitioners back to Reddit accounts to gauge their participation rate on the site?

Logically those who care enough about Reddit to sign the petition would tend to be frequent users of the site and content creators, not casual users who probably don’t care about Reddit’s development at all.

>>So half a percent of the userbase or so? I'd call that a vocal minority.

By that logic, the people who protested during the Civil Rights movement were also a vocal minority. Doesn't make their grievances any less valid.

They were a vocal minority. So's the KKK.

This is why I'm contesting the idea that "a grassroots campaign" is evidence that someone was in the wrong. It's merely evidence that some people had an opinion about the situation.