I'm not part of Mozilla or any of the communities and I understood the situation by reading the damn post, on the first time.
In the follow-up, any words concerning how the person feels, words on how to talk about this further, and wanting to truly understand what he just wrote in plain and simple terms simply reek strongly of "we really won't change anything, we've made our decision, we are disagree with you but we want you to agree with what we're already doing".
I can hear the exact same tone in exact similar situations with various customer service reps, HR, corporate smooth-talkers, public officials/politicians where the decision is already written in stone and they just pretend they're listening to the customers/employees/citizens affected to quiet down the criticism.
To add to this fire. I recently left my 'recently bought by private equity' workplace of 8 years to work somewhere else not-yet-ruined-by-PE (yet..)
A major part of my decision to quit was this communication pattern.
The whole organisation was very efficiently structured with two separate layers of managers - those who had actual decision power, and a separate layer whose task was to 'deal with us employees' but no decision power.
All communication flowing one way, the same way shit drips (the only resource following 'trickle-down' mechanics).
The only time I got into contact with the former level, was after I had put in my resignation; then they suddenly wanted a 1-1 to "see if there was anything they should learn from this" (presumably to sharpen/hone their skills in mistreating the employee level more efficiently in the future).
it's american english for "oh this must be hard for you. how can we help you to cope?" and no intent to change.
a better response would rather be:
"We're sorry, we were not aware. please can we meet and you help us understand? so we can fix this situation? We'd also like to share our intentions and we hope together we can improve the situation."
The person gives a clear, detailed answer in the post about their problems > "We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with"
To me that's very condescending, like someone who reads but doesn't understand
Borderline AI response
And personally offering a call is like a sidestep "lets move this problem out of the public discourse" which is especially funny considering it's about a forum
> And personally offering a call is like a sidestep "lets move this problem out of the public discourse"
Maybe. But that’s also assuming the worst from the get go, and that’s no way to settle a dispute.
For all we know (which is very little, and thus should offer the benefit of the doubt), offering a call is an admission that text is an awful medium to resolve conflict: It’s time consuming for both parties and a poor conveyor of tone and nuance. Even writing this unimportant comment I had to stop and think and rewrite some parts to get it closer to the meaning I intend, but even so I fazer zero doubts someone will misunderstand it in the worst way imaginable.
Calls aren’t perfect either, but they allow you to understand in real time when a point is not getting through to the other person and calmly resolve each issue as it surfaces. It gets you on the same page faster.
After the call they can still decide to post their conclusions publicly if they so wish, but not every discussion needs to be public. It’s fine (and productive) for two people to discuss something in private and only have to worry about making themselves understood by the relevant party, not worry about having each word scrutinised by every internet rando.
> Maybe. But that’s also assuming the worst from the get go, and that’s no way to settle a dispute.
Offering a call would've been totally fine - if the rest of the reply hadn't been a borderline-insulting cookie-cutter corporate non-apology. If they start by showing bad intentions, why suddenly assume the best for the phone call?
> if the rest of the reply hadn't been a borderline-insulting cookie-cutter corporate non-apology.
“The rest of the reply” is basically one sentence, so let’s avoid reading too much into it. I very much agree it was a bad non-apology and that that is infuriating, but let’s not let irrationality cloud judgement in the pursuit of a resolution.
> If they start by showing bad intentions, why suddenly assume the best for the phone call?
Why are you assuming bad intentions from the start? For all we know this person may just be a bad (textual?) communicator or trying to avoid miscommunication (which seems like a perfectly valid concern, since the original comment isn’t exactly the clearest English). Worse still, the comment I replied to assumed a specific malicious reason for the offer to a call with no evidence, it was just speculation.
Is anyone here familiar with this Mozilla staffer? Do they even know if they interacted with this Japanese user before, online or offline? Do they have a pattern of bad behaviour? Or is everyone just piling on and assuming the devil from a single reply from someone they don’t know? Maybe this staffer is indeed an asshole. Or maybe they’re trying their best and just don’t know how to do better but are open to recognising their mistakes and learning from them. Maybe they would have preferred to be more open, human, and honest in their reply but corporate policy prevents them from doing so. Maybe they have personal issues on their mind and jut couldn’t do better this time. I don’t know. Do you? If anyone in this thread does, they’re not saying it.
This thread is populated by (what seem to be) uninformed commentators throwing fire at the situation from the outside, and that’s unhealthy. Let me ask you: What is, in your view, the desired/best outcome of this situation? Is it to bash Mozilla and/or this staffer? Or is it to provide a solution that would fix the situation in a way the original Japanese commentator would feel valued and happy to come back?
This is the type of response you shouldn't make. Instead you should do your homework and then come back with the receipts.
E.g. figure out why this happened, express why it shouldn't have happened, why it should happen never again, how it is understandable how they feel, express that you cannot expect them to come back, make them an actual offer that would make them come back (e.g. by giving them a better place at the table or offering compensation), etc.
But "I am sorry you feel" is bordering on gaslighting. That is as if you are sorry your wife feels sad after you beat them. You should feel sorry and ashamed for doing the beating, not for how someone feels as a result of it.
The described things are clearly unacceptable and whether someone feels outrage or not doesn't make them more or less acceptable.
I can’t believe what I’m going to say now, but AIs are better at this. Granted, their apologies are good for shit since they have no agency and can’t really learn from their mistakes, but they at least leave no doubts at who is at fault and should be ashamed.
(Cue Gemini with its “I’m a disgrace” self-flagellation)
In addition to not responding to any of the specifics that the poster clearly put time into, there's also a huge mismatch in tone. In general, do not act very corporate when people are personally pissed off, this has a tendency to just annoy most people further.
Well. Too late. Now that they go you want to talk? If I was the one who finally had enough why the fuck would I want to talk to something I turned my back to?
There were very clear statements of what will happen and why. First acknowledge those, express you are sorry for what happened and hint some mea culpa and how you plan to solve it.
Only then if you feel the need to talk realize that you are the one begging them, not the other way around.
>I read it as a person trying to understand the situation.
I have been on the receiving end of such comments enough times to read it as a person trying to appear as if they are trying to understand the situation.
It is gaslighting even. It is extremely manipulative to be sorry about a thing someone else did, while in fact the the fuckup originated from you. Own it or offer to investigate/fix it.
A decent answer would have been worded among the lines of:
"I am personally deeply sorry to see you go [acknowledge you take their decision serious]. I don't know the details, but if what you describe is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), this is clearly unacceptable and should never have happened [acknowledge the issue is serious and confirm it wasn't intentional]. You feeling betrayed as a result of this is only natural and understandable, and it is Mozilla that should feel ashamed for it coming to this [validate feeling, admit guilt]. I will investigate why this happened and want to find ways to ensure something like this never happens again [show that you're willing to do something substential solbing the root of the problem]. Nobody should have their hard work just automatically replaced by AI, not you, nor anybody else [afirm you're on the same page as them by appeal to general principle]. I know you likely don't want to have anything to do with this now, but I would be deeply grateful if you had a moment to talk about this with me, personally, not as a member of Mozilla but as a member of the community [ask them about help, acknowledging you can't expect any, show that you care about this beyond any purely official duties]."
Of course that means some work, but this is how I would answer such a thing.
The OP/article is very clear and very direct on what the problems are. The response is so typical american conflict-shy “let’s talk so we can slowly dimish your critique, and also let’s do talking instead of writing so we cant really be held accountable for specifics”. And, to me it comes across as lazy: the op/article is very specific on the problems, just get to work already, no need to “further clarifications” (obviously disable that stupid bot for the japanese community; then get to work restoring original KBs from backups. Then reach out to talk about next steps)
It’s a tonedeaf response from the staff person. Zero respect for what’s clearly many, many hours of contribured work.
