"The moderators had gone on strike. Reddit had no idea what to do. In under a week, the CEO was ousted."

"founders often struggle when the community feels—and displays—intense, vocal ownership of the product."

"1. Identify and measure your Trust Vault"

"This mismatch between the parental and the professional means you are starting from a place of mistrust."

"This led us to the concept we call the Trust Vault—a metaphor for how much trust the customer base has in you."

"At Reddit we had multiple Trust Vaults: a company-level Trust Vault as well as Trust Vaults for individual teams or product managers."

"One way to measure your Trust Vault is using the Edelman Trust Barometer, a survey that measures people’s trust in governments and major corporations. The two key questions in your survey should be:"

"“On a scale of 0 to 6, how much do you trust [your company] staff to do the right thing?”  “Why?”"

"For example, at Reddit, if a product threatened to increase the day-to-day effort of moderators (e.g. introducing a new content type such as livestreaming) and the trust score for moderators had been trending downward, we might adjust our launch schedule, and even delay the launch until we had gotten a few Mod Experience Oriented Wins (MEOWs) . . . yes, that’s a real acronym."

"2. Find the right customer voices to listen to"

"Often the loudest people don’t represent your general user base or your ideal customer profile."

"Beta users posted negative comments far exceeding the original complaints about the sidebar. They demanded we bring the sidebar back. Where were all these people a few weeks earlier?!"

"First, customers typically won’t go out of their way to tell you if a feature is useful or helps them do a task."

"They treat useful features like table stakes: they expect them, so they don’t think those features are worthy of comment."

"As a result, it can be hard to tell whether negative feedback represents the attitudes of most users."

"Second, when assessing user feedback, it’s important to consider two key factors: (1) whether the feedback represents a significant portion (10% or more) of your user base and (2) whether the users who are giving feedback can influence the opinions of other users."

"Third, if you decide to deprioritize a group’s feedback, make sure you help them understand why."

"3. Take actual discussion out of the public square"

"Perhaps the biggest thing we learned at Reddit is that the public square is not the place to have a nuanced product discussion."

"The trick is to form an advisory council—a group of passionate community representatives with whom you can discuss and ideate in a safe, private space"

"The public back-and-forths didn’t promote any clarity or alignment, largely because the incentive in the public subreddit comment thread was to win the conversation."

"2. Create a space and culture for reasonable discussion"

"You need to build a culture in your council that rewards candid feedback and thoughtfulness."

"Live conversations tend to have the most clarity, but depending on the volume of items you’re launching, you may want to consider a forum or chat room in addition."

"3. Build process and cadence for connecting"

"The earlier and more often you can consult this group, the better. Not only will this ensure that you have relevant feedback, it’ll also fill the Trust Vault and signal that you are taking them seriously."

"At conception: Does the idea resonate with them?"

"At design: Does this raise any alarm bells?"

"To keep your group fresh, avoid having an advisory council with a fixed membership."

"Finally, it can create a culture that disincentivizes candid feedback because members of the council are comfortable with your staff."

"To overcome these problems, we suggest setting a 12-month tenure for most members and cycling them out at the end (with the option of one extension)."

"4. Listen, but act"

"the golden rule of feedback is this: Ask for feedback only if you’ll consider it."

"We got frequent requests from the most hardcore of power users for folders to better manage their bookmarks—a feature that hardly anybody used in the first place: bottom left."

"But you should also consider future potential customers—new audiences you want to attract."

"Explaining that you’re not acting on a piece of feedback—and, crucially, why you’re not—may be painful in the moment, but it will build long-term trust."