Reddit faced a crisis on Thursday as moderators temporarily shut sections of the site in protest at the dismissal of a much-loved employee.
Victoria "Chooter" Taylor, up until this week director of talent at the content aggregator, was responsible for helping out with the Ask Me Anything section of the site, a crowdsourced question and answer session.
In this role worked with celebrities responding to questions that "redditors" put to them through the site, helping fix technical issues and ensuring that the celebrities were who they claimed to be.
However moderators of the site, who are unpaid volunteers, found out that Taylor had been removed from her position just over two years after she took it, for reasons that remain unclear.
Karmanaut, a prominent moderator, said of the dismissal in a Reddit post: "We all had the rug ripped out from under us and feel betrayed.
"We [the mods] had a number of AMAs [Ask Me Anything threads] scheduled for today that Victoria was supposed to help with, and they are all left absolutely high and dry."
He added that that Taylor had been willing to work for free with the moderators for the question sessions that had already been set up, something he regarded as "a sign of how much she is committed to what she does".
Among the forums that were shut down were the Ask Me Anything section and various popular "subreddits" dedicated to humour, books, gaming, science and music.
Alexis "kn0thing" Ohanian, co-founder and executive chair of Reddit, refused to discuss the reasons for Taylor’s departure, writing on the site: "We don’t talk about specific employees.
"We get that losing Victoria has a significant impact on the way you manage your community. I’d really like to understand how we can help solve these problems, because I know [the Ask Me Anything section] thrived before her and will thrive after."
The furore comes following months of turmoil over the direction of the website, much of which has centred on the current interim chief executive Ellen Pao, who came to public notice over a failed sexual discrimination suit against venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins.
Pao has made some unpopular changes to the site, particularly over its policies regarding subreddits that brush the legal limits of freedom of speech, including ones though to spread hate speech and incite harassment.
As reported on CBR, last month saw an exodus of redditors to rival site Voat, which aims to be less restrictive over content submissions and comments than Reddit.
