Reddit CEO Ellen Pao has apologised for “a long history of mistakes” after the petition calling for her to resign passed 200,000 signatures.

The online community has been going through a turbulent few weeks following the sudden firing of a popular employee. Reddit moderators, who work in a voluntary capacity, began a ‘black out’ by setting many of the popular subreddits to private and restricting access.

In a statement posted to Reddit, titled 'We Apologise', Pao promised to improve communication between the website and its community of users.

“Today, we acknowledge this long history of mistakes. We are grateful for all you do for reddit, and the buck stops with me,” she said. “The mods and the community have lost trust in us, the administrators of reddit.”

She added that they have drifted out of touch with the community, but is committed to talking more often with the Reddit community at large.

Reddit’s identity crisis comes as the huge forum – averaging around 140 million monthly visitors – is slowly being brought to heel by commercially-minded executives.

The firing of Victoria Taylor, who was in charge of curating interesting people for the site’s Ask Me Anything series, was thought to be over her resistance to commercially-framed opportunities, while the higher-ups at the company continue to make the site cleaner, safer and, eventually, as profitable as possible.