Do we want Reddit to become just a cesspool of commercialization (I mean, for the past few years, it has been heading that way, but isn't full bore yet) or do we want subreddits to continue their autonomy and be able to do what they choose?

Have you considered the fact that the status quo is unsustainable, and that continuing down the previous path without any changes would mean the website is gone for good? It's apparently never been a profitable site. For 10 years. That means investors have been dumping money in over and over and seeing zero return. Why would they continue? They won't, and when they stop the site goes dark.

As for your autonomy, we still have it. You can make a sub about almost anything, even pure racism like /r/coontown. What you can't do is break laws with child porn, or use reddit as a website to harass and bully people, which is a very real problem here.

The new search looks funny but it doesn't suck. I actually really appreciate the subreddit finding feature. Victoria's employment is a private matter between her and the executive team at reddit. It's way over the line for mods to protest about that, or use it as the straw that broke the camel's back. Except in rare circumstances, when an employee is let go it happens immediately, for a whole host of legal reasons and being a decent, fair human being in a shitty situation. Mods are upset they weren't given a heads up that a reddit employee was about to be fired, but do they really think they needed to be told before Victoria was? The reaction to the news was so fast there wasn't even time for reddit roll out a communication plan about it if they had one.

It's a shame that yet again the community here is using a real person as a pawn in their internet pitchfork tantrum. There were a hundred less emotional ways for the mods to get their message out instead of this. They look just as awful and inept in the situation as they are accusing the reddit admins of being.

Not every decision reddit has made has been right, but how can it be? Their userbase is in the millions. There will always be enough unhappy people to raise a stink when they do anything. Unlike with digg though, where the userbase was taken directly out of the cntent equation, the core functionality of reddit is still the same as it was 6 months or even 8 years ago. Submit link, most upvoted goes to the front, discussion section underneath.

This is a long post that goes counter to the tantrum, but I really think everyone needs to step back and breathe. No one in the current situation looks good, and the admins have their livelihood on the line. At the very least this entire thing is happening in an ignorant space, which is a really bad spot to stage a protest from.