That really echoes the response by Ellen Pao herself in the New York Times article [1]:
> But Ms. Pao says that the most virulent detractors on the site are a vocal minority, and that most of Reddit users were not interested in what unfolded over the past 48 hours.
That may be true as the "lurkers" main interest is to consume the information made available by voluntary work of the contributors and moderators) and they, of course, don't benefit in the short term from the blackout.
But it is important to remember that this "vocal minority" is the part of the audience that contribute the most to the success of the site, and they > do it for free.
And, being charitable and assuming that the demands of these volunteers are valid, the shut down was a minor inconvenience to the passive audience but one that can bring change and improvement in the long term.
It's not as simple as that. I'm a moderator on several subreddits and, via moderator mail and private messages, monitored events during the shutdown. The impression that I got from speaking to other moderators and users of diverse subreddits across the site is that many of them feel a sense of pent up frustration toward Reddit. The mismanagement of AMA was the straw that broke the camel's back, and so many of them closed in solidarity with IAMA, and as a form of protest. It was not a witch hunt by any means, but simply an expression of "We're all fed up with this. Something needs to change". The protest was effective at getting Reddit leadership to rethink their actions and change course.
It's true that many Reddit users are "lurkers" who simply read the site and never contribute. These people probably never have had cause to become frustrated by the Reddit admins. However, among those who actively contribute, a surprisingly high fraction, from my personal observations, seem to be upset.
I can also say that there was debate among moderator staff on a number of subreddits. It's not as if everyone went along with it unilaterally. However, when moderators of other subs learned how poorly the situation was being handled, and learned how condescendingly Reddit staff responded, the backlash surged. Take for example the snide comments that Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanion wrote to users who expressed concerns: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam...
Or the unhelpful, brusque way that Reddit handled AMAs during that time: http://i.imgur.com/ICSz7Xp.jpg (After reading, compare to statements from AMA mods about how helpful, supportive, and responsive Victoria was.)
I was initially skeptical about the shutdown, but seeing this evidence with my own eyes was enough to swing me into the "pro shutdown" camp or at least the "I don't oppose the shutdown" camp.
The responses from the community in these threads does not give me the impression of a witch hunt:
Reddit and Alexis subsequently apologized and said they didn't realize the "depth of the frustration", but actions like this certainly contributed. Treating people with contempt is always going to make a situation worse. If Reddit had responded promptly, professionally, and respectfully, I doubt so many subreddits would have shut down, and it would have been resolved much sooner. I personally had no complaint with Reddit staff prior to the shutdown, but their handling and response to it concerned me. A company's staff should never treat their users that way. It should not take a massive backlash for admins to think, "Maybe I shouldn't be snide and condescending." The people running an organization need to be the mature ones in the room. The shutdown was Reddit users calling them out on their behavior.
Edit: Why the downvotes? Is this comment not constructive?
I don't think poster knows for sure but you can assume based on traffic levels to comments and just general web stats. A majority of users don't comment on anything. Most people don't even create an account to vote. They probably don't even know what was going on.
That seems like a pretty silly argument. You can literally use it as an argument against any sort of change because "most people don't vote."
In fact they do vote, not with upvotes and comments but with their views. Those views indicate the place is somewhere they like spending their time, which is primarily a function of the moderators and the people posting content to the subreddit in the first place (the "vocal minority"). Since they already show they appreciate the work of those people by regularly viewing the content, it's actually more likely they agree with that minority by default than disagree.
Maybe they do agree? We don't really know because they are the "non-vocal majority". I'm willing to bet a large portion have no interest in reddit's internal politics or the mods struggle. They just want their cat pics. I do agree that they find value in the content or they wouldn't keep coming back and that the content comes from the minority. Reddit is really walking the edge. Things like this are why a bunch of users switched to reddit from digg in the first place. I don't think they will hesitate to do it again. They will follow the content submitters.
Most social sites seem pretty similar as far as user interaction other than click through. I got 60k page views from one top HN post, a couple hundred upvotes, and probably less than 100 comments on the thread and my blog.
Most people just want to use reddit normally.