It seems like someone who has no awareness of the problem, who wants to learn more about the problem, and the fastest way for both parties is over the phone ASAP rather than through a bunch of emails.
When software goes wrong, you need as much information as possible to figure it how to fix it.
>I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced. Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further? We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with.
- No apology
- No "we stopped the bot for now"
"We're sorry for how you feel" is enterprise for "we think you're whining". Maybe not what the person meant but how anyone is going to read it.
The original sin here is Mozilla just enabling this without any input from the active translation community.
This isn't a new problem, loads of Japanese translations from tech companies have been garbage for a while. People sticking things into machine translation, translators missing context so having absolutely nothing to go on. Circle CI, when they announced their Japan office, put out a statement that was _clearly_ written in English first, then translated without any effort of localization. Plenty of UIs just have "wrong text" in actions. etc etc.
Anyways the point is just that one side of this relationship here clearly cares about the problem way less, and _even when presented with that fact_, does not even pretend to be actually sorry for the damage they are causing.
"We're sorry for how you feel" is enterprise for "we think you're whining".
Anyways the point is just that one side of this relationship here clearly cares about the problem way less, and _even when presented with that fact_, does not even pretend to be actually sorry for the damage they are causing.
This is just a single initial reply from a "community support manager" in Indonesia. It's not from the Mozilla CEO or the leader of the project. They surely don't have the power to stop the bot. But what they can do is find it more over a call, and then who to escalate it to. Then maybe it does get turned off before it's fixed or changed.
You seem to be confusing someone in customer support with someone who holds power over entire projects. I don't understand how you think a customer support person should be able to just turn off software across the globe in response to a single short message on a forum with few details.
Huh, if you click through their link the person responding is also a "sumo administrator" and it's "sumobot" causing the issues. It seems entirely likely they are personally directly responsible for it.
Regardless they are representing the company. If they aren't the right person to respond - they should not have responded and kicked it up the chain/over the fence to the right person - instead of responding by offering to waste the complainants time on a call with someone you are asserting is not the right person to be handling this. Supposing you are correct about their position, it makes their response far worse, not better.
"SUMO" = SUpport.MOzilla.org. It's the name for the entire Mozilla support organization; everybody involved in the linked discussion is in this organization. It doesn't seem like this person is related to the bot. They are a "Locale Leader" for Indonesia, which is the same position this poster is resigning from (but for Japan). They seem to be peers.
So I'm a complete outsider, but they do not appear to be in the same position as the poster. They are marked as "Mozilla Staff" and "SUMO Administrator" (amongst many other things), neither of which the complainant is marked as.
It is true both they and the person they are responding to are marked as "SUMO Locale Leaders"... but it seems rather clear from the context that is not the role they are inhabiting in their (non) apology and request for a "quick call" with the complainant.
The language they use is certainly not the language a peer would be expected to use either.
Thanks for that info--I think you're right and I'm wrong. I didn't see the group memberships before but now I see that the replier is far more involved in SUMO. I had only seen that they were both locale leaders and that the replier was a staff member from the tag on the post.
CS comms are tricky, I agree! You have to reply to stuff, often before you have any form of full picture. Just think you gotta be careful then, and the message they posted was not good on that front.
I do get what you're saying, and it's not like I think the CSM should be fired for the message. I just think it's bad comms.
Here are some alternative choices:
- post nothing, figure out more internally (community support is also about vouching for people!)
- post something more personal like "Thank you for posting this. I'm looking into who is working on this bot to get this information in front of them". Perhaps not allowed by Mozilla's policies
- Do some DMing (again, more personal, allowing for something direct)
But to your point... it's one person's message, and on both sides these are likely people where English isn't their native language. I'm assuming that community support managers are paid roles at mozilla, but maybe not.
And like... yeah, at one point you go into whatever company chat and you start barking up the chain. That's the work
They are the person who announced the bot would be rolled out. If the person who announced the rollout isn't either the leader of the project or someone who can push for changes to it, then that's already totally against the community.
Second, this "community support forum" isn't just a corporate help desk. It's a forum for community supporters of Mozilla, an open source organisation for which community contributions are hugely important. Mozilla can't just fuck over parts of it's community and expect that to be business as usual.
It is well known passive aggressive corporate phrase to shut people up. Who it is used by is largely irrelevant, it almost always means the same thing.
It's also well-known language from product managers and UX researchers trying to gather data to improve their product. And well-known language from customer support people trying to gather more information in order to escalate to the right people who can help.
Your knee-jerk cynicism saddens me. If someone doesn't want to help, they generally just ignore. They generally don't suggest hopping on a call ASAP. When they want to call you is when they're taking it seriously.
> It's also well-known language from product managers and UX researchers trying to gather data to improve their product. And well-known language from customer support people trying to gather more information in order to escalate to the right people who can help.
No it is not. The particular phrasing that was used I have never seen used in any other way than to be dismissive towards people.
> Your knee-jerk cynicism saddens me.
My cynicism isn't knee jerk, My cynicism stems from roughly 20 years working as a developer, being in and observing the industry.
> If someone doesn't want to help, they generally just ignore. They generally don't suggest hopping on a call ASAP. When they want to call you is when they're taking it seriously.
Not if it gets noticed and talked about on forums. It is then used as damage control.
If you're never seen it used to be helpful, I don't know that to tell you. I have, all the time, and it seems entirely normal and unremarkable.
> My cynicism stems from roughly 20 years working as a developer
That saddens me. It seems like you've worked at some rough places, I'm sorry. But they're not all like that, and I wish you could see that.
> Not if it gets noticed and talked about on forums. It is then used as damage control.
I don't see how it's going to work as damage control. Can you explain how? Either it helps resolve things (good), or it doesn't and people keep complaining in the thread. I don't see any scenario where it controls damage. Damage control is things like locking a thread or shadowbanning. Not offering to call.
I'm really sorry you see everything through such a cynical lens.
> If you're never seen it used to be helpful, I don't know that to tell you. I have, all the time, and it seems entirely normal and unremarkable.
I suspect that you didn't understand the subtext of the conversation. If you aren't used to dealing with it, you will take the comment on face value, if you are like me that had to deal with it most of my life, you won't.
> That saddens me. It seems like you've worked at some rough places, I'm sorry. But they're not all like that, and I wish you could see that.
I got paid well enough. I prefer to be a gun for hire and deal with the reality. I actually prefer these environments, I can assume everyone around me is a snake.
> I don't see how it's going to work as damage control. Can you explain how? Either it helps resolve things (good), or it doesn't and people keep complaining in the thread. I don't see any scenario where it controls damage. Damage control is things like locking a thread or shadowbanning. Not offering to call.
I am sure other people have explained this to you. However it is extremely simple.
1) Feign concern. This fools enough people so it gets quieted down.
2) Call up, pretend to care, person calms down as they feel like things are being addressed.
3) Do nothing.
4) It gets forgotten about, person that initially instigated complaint doesn't bother following up.
> I'm really sorry you see everything through such a cynical lens.
I don't see everything through a cynical lens. I see communications of this type as cynically because they have almost always been disingenuous.
> I suspect that you didn't understand the subtext of the conversation.
I suspect you're inventing a subtext that simply isn't there.
> I actually prefer these environments, I can assume everyone around me is a snake.
Again, I'm really sorry. That's a very, very sad thing.
> I am sure other people have explained this to you. However it is extremely simple.
This process you're describing doesn't make any sense. People who are quitting a volunteer position don't get fooled. They're not going to feel like things are being addressed if they aren't. They tend not to forget, but rather tell others, write long blog posts, share them on social media, etc. If the phone call doesn't try to address things but just ignores them in a call, it only adds fuel to the fire. It wouldn't be a good strategy.
> I see communications of this type as cynically because they have almost always been disingenuous.
And I'm sorry. If you think an offer to delve into a complaint over the phone to get more information is a cynical ploy, I really am sorry. It seems like there's nothing that could convince you someone is really trying to help, because of the lens you're choosing to interpret everything through. And because of the lens you've chosen, it seems self-reinforcing, which makes it extra-sad.
> I suspect you're inventing a subtext that simply isn't there.
No I am not. I don't appreciate being gas-lite about this.
How this office politik is used is covered in blogs, covered on YouTube. My parents, friends and colleagues are aware of it. Maybe you need to open your eyes.
> Again, I'm really sorry. That's a very, very sad thing.
Stop apologising, I find it patronising and insincere, even if that isn't your intention.
BTW. I've done the best work under those circumstances, I got paid a lot and it made me HTFU, which helps with personal growth.
> This process you're describing doesn't make any sense.
It makes perfect sense. You are assuming they care if the get a small amount of negative press about it. They don't.
This will be forgotten about within a week, even by most people commenting even here.
> And I'm sorry. If you think an offer to delve into a complaint over the phone to get more information is a cynical ploy, I really am sorry. It seems like there's nothing that could convince you someone is really trying to help, because of the lens you're choosing to interpret everything through. And because of the lens you've chosen, it seems self-reinforcing, which makes it extra-sad.
Firstly. Speaking to me like this is quite honestly patronising. I am quite capable of doing value free analysis.
Secondly, The sort of language people are complaining about almost always been used as a way to deflect valid criticism back on person making the critique. Almost always for disingenuous reasons. Feigning concern about my cynicism doesn't change that fact.
In any event I am tired of being patronised by you.
I did previous work on a product where there was intended to be a message in many languages saying “call XXX for help in (language name)” but they’d obviously used “English” in the text to be translated as several of the translations into Asian languages literally said to call the number for help in English. I raised this and got nobody to care.
From my read, the software didn't go wrong. It did exactly what they intended it to -- machine translations replaced handwritten translations provided by community volunteers. Seems like a pretty big middle finger to those volunteers.
The lead realized that Mozilla doesn't care about their opinion (they did this without discussing with them) nor do they care about the work they were doing (by replacing their work with machine translations). A "quick call" doesn't solve this.
Those are a huge number of assumptions you're making, absolutely none of which are in the post.
Generally speaking, orgs aren't trying to replace high-quality human translations with lower-quality machine translations. They are often trying to put machine translations in where there are no translations, though. Getting the balance right requires fine-tuning. And fine-tuning requires a quick call to start to better understand the issues in more detail.
Companies are absolutely falling over themselves to replace high quality human translations with lower quality machine translation. I’m not sure how a hacker news poster could miss this trend.
A hacker news poster is very likely to consume the original English text and never encounter anything else, regardless of whether it's human-translated or not. Just like the people who make these decisions in the first place
> Generally speaking, orgs aren't trying to replace high-quality human translations with lower-quality machine translations.
How would you handle updates to an article? Would you blindly replace all existing translations or would you notify the maintainers and wait for them to get around to it?
I wouldn't be surprised if orgs blindly opted for the first, which also means that a single spelling correction would be enough to overwrite days of work.
Hence why I said "from my read". This is how I view the situation, and why the lead is reacting the way they are.
> They are often trying to put machine translations in where there are no translations, though.
And at what point are all of the translations done by machines and the work the community is doing no longer needed? At the very least, the nature of their work will change and I think they're not interested in participating anymore.
(Unlike GP) I don't actually have a problem with your assumptions. They seem likely to me. But I still have a problem with the whole sentiment of, uh, people on your side of the discussion.
Let's just assume it is how you say it is. (The only assumption I am not willing to make is that people at Mozilla are already convinced it was a bad idea after all.) What in your opinion would be the right move now, after they rolled this bullshit auto-translator out and pissed off a lot of people in the community, including a major contributor for the last 20 years? Surely they could just ignore him and go on with this auto-translation initiative (BTW, thay don't even have to worry about whatever he wants to "prohibit" to do with his translations, because he waived off his rights by posting them). Would it be better than trying to set up a call and discuss things, try to find some compromise, gather a number of recommendations she may then pass onto people working on the auto-translator initiative (because surely this Kiki person, whoever she is, is not the sole person responsible for this and cannot magically just fix the situation)?
I'm not sure if just this individual is upset, or if he's speaking on behalf of the entire community he's the leader of.
I think it's clear that Mozilla wants machine translation to take a bigger role in producing localized content, and this new process will be a large shift in the way things have been done. I think it's fair for Mozilla to do this, but I also think it's fair for the maintainer to be upset with this decision and no longer want to volunteer his time to clean up slop.
The initial response feels premature and tone deaf which is why people are irked by it.
Given that Mozilla "shot first" so to speak, the onus is on them to take action first e.g. disable the bot, revert changes to articles, etc. Only after doing this can discussion on a path forward happen.
There is no such person as "Mozilla". There is Kiki, a "Support Community Manager", probably a relatively low-level worker (but it doesn't matter much if she is actually has some weight in the organization). So, you are Kiki. You just saw that message. What do you do now? Just ignore it? Do not respond anything and immediately call the CEO and try to convince him/her that he/she must order to disable that auto-translation bot, without even trying to gather more information? No onuses and stuff, what are your actions, exactly?
Because a lot of people in this thread are whin… ahem, expressing their discontent with Mozilla, as we all usually do, but I've yet to see anybody to propose anything realistic at all, let alone better than ask an offended community member for a call and at least to try to talk it through and establish what could be some actionable steps to remedy the situation.
> What in your opinion would be the right move now, after they rolled this bullshit auto-translator out and pissed off a lot of people in the community
In Japan? Sincere appology followed by resignation.
No, the Japanese absolutely do not set up a call to discuss things after you've scerwed and disrespected them. They respectfully give you the cold shoulder.
Mozilla should not be surprised if their market share dwindles in Japan after this.
> Would it be better than trying to set up a call and discuss things, try to find some compromise
Are you serious? First, make a decision without consulting anyone, foist it on people that don't want it, then 'try to find a compromise'? If you care about people, you consult them before you make a decision, not after they've been burnt by it.
There many, many translating teams. When they designed this, it would be normal to consult with some of them. Not every single one. Maybe they sent some plans to every team and many of the teams never read them. Maybe the plans were hard to understand.
People aren't perfect. Setting up a call to discuss things is how you start to fix things.
and actually understanding their contributors would require a lot more than a fucking "quick call"
that's the problem. stop thinking about the org and think about the person. these are volunteers who feel taken advantage of, being met with corporate jargon
fly out and take him to dinner if you actually give a shit. or write a check. a "quick call" is so insulting
A quick call is a courteous first step. The other person might not have time for a long call, so you want to show you're respecting their time. Then you follow it up with a longer meeting with the relevant engineer and manager, etc. "Taking someone to dinner" is not the first step here. The way to show you care is by trying to understand the situation before anything else.
No, a quick call is not a courteous first step when someone tells you that you've destroyed 20 years of their work and they no longer want to have anything to do with you.
Suggesting that such an offence can be resolved by a "quick call" is extraordinarily disrespectful. A courteous first step would have been to apologise profusely, revert the damage that the bot did, and ask to set up a call to discuss what it might take to re-enable it in the future.
This is NOT the leader of the new transition tool! This is just a customer service manager in Indonesia who is trying to gather more information.
The steps that you describe might well be taken after the "quick call" gathers more information and figures out the people to escalate it to.
You are being entirely unreasonable in what you are demanding. This isn't a response from the Mozilla CEO. This is sometime in customer service, responding to a short post in a forum. Their response is entirely appropriate as a first step.
If she doesn't have responsibility for this, she just shouldn't respond. The transition team should have responded. Or, she could have responded with "I'm contacting the transition team leader to escalate your issues as soon as possible" or similar. There is absolutely no excuse for responding to someone who has announced that they are quitting over very explicit grievances with "let's hop on a call to get some details". If ever there is a time to escalate, it is this.
To escalate, you need to have a better idea of the issues to know who to escalate to. Plus this is turning into a personal issue (quitting) so a forum isn't appropriate for that part. Asking to talk on the phone is a perfectly reasonable, appropriate, and sensitive way to find out more and figure out how to most helpfully address things. A phone call is the first step in escalation. I honestly don't understand your negative read here. Things don't get 100% addressed immediately in a single exchange. Communication is a back and forth process and this is an entirely appropriate initial response from a customer service manager.
The way to show you care is by having a meeting of the minds before you shove your changes in their face. The fact that the deployment was done carelessly demonstrates disregard.
I doubt "take them out to dinner" is the right solution in this situation, but any attempt at redressal must understand the above point and acknowledge it publicly.
"Ask for forgiveness rather than permission" is far from universally true, and carries massive cultural baggage. You cannot operate within that framework and expect all humans to cooperate with you.
It is absolutely insulting. The manager/administrator doesn't apologise, but instead is "sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel". They are dismissive of the concerns as just a "quick call" is proposed, in a short response to a detailed message.
Had I been thrown in this situation:
"Dear Marsf,
I'm sorry that sumobot was introduced to the Japanese SUMO community without consultation. I have disabled it, and the development team are working to undo the changes it has made. We will revert articles to how they were on 21 October. Contributions made since then by the Japanese community could be retained in the staging system, where they can be approved or rejected. Please let me know whether you would like this, or would prefer them to be discarded returning the whole system to the 21 October.
We very much appreciate the Japanese SUMO community's contributions and your work as locale leader, and we hope it can continue. Sumobot will remain disabled on the Japanese translation. If, with some changes, it could be useful to you, we can discuss that here, or schedule a meeting if you prefer.
Thank you"
In this exact situation, before sending I'd check it with my Japanese colleague.
But he fairly in depth described the problem and his reasoning for why it is a problem. There's nothing really to "jump on a quick call" about without actually first addressing the issues. Plus it just sounds, for lack of a better term, retarded. First off, in comparison to basically any other communication, calls aren't quick. Much less the one that you have to schedule around time zones. Calls require focused attention which if you are used to multi-tasking are a huge drain. Secondly I don't really feel like going too deep, but the use of the verb jump is like a bludgeon to the frontal lobe of anyone that's had to spend time listening to buzzword heavy C-suite speeches when they could have been doing their actual work.
Quite. "We may have made a mistake, would you be open to discuss this with us either through email or a call at your preference?" would work a lot better in this setting.
> But he fairly in depth described the problem and his reasoning for why it is a problem. There's nothing really to "jump on a quick call" about without actually first addressing the issues.
No, he didn't. I'll repeat a comment I made elsewhere:
The problems are nowhere near actionable. A lot more information is needed.
E.g. literally the first bullet: "It doesn't follow our translation guidelines". OK -- where are those guidelines? Is there a way to get it to follow them, like another commenter says works? Does the person need help following the process for that? Or is there a bug? Etc.
These are the things a call can clarify. It's the necessary first step, so why are people complaining?
> Calls require focused attention which if you are used to multi-tasking are a huge drain.
Solving important problems requires focused attention. Which is why you get on calls to solve them when they're urgent and important, and not something that can be multitasked.
I think you misunderstood what people are taking issue with. You explain that this matter is complicated and non-trivial - and yes, that’s exactly the point!
People don’t have a problem with real-time communication via audio or video in general. They have a problem with the suggestion that it’s a trivial issue that can be easily fixed by "jumping on a quick call."
The point about there being a "fairly in-depth" description of the issues isn’t that there’s nothing more to discuss - fixing those issues would obviously require talking through the specifics. The point is that this is a real problem that requires action and commitment, so suggesting it’s a non-issue that can be clarified with “a quick call” comes off as dismissive and unproductive, whether that’s intentional or not.
"Let's hop on a quick call so we can truly understand what you're struggling with".
The response doesn't acknowledge the severity of the problem at all and the wording of "what you're struggling with" suggests that the original poster is somehow at fault (or too dumb) for "struggling" with Mozilla's terrible decisions.
This is the kind of reply you'd get if you contacted Dell tech support because your computer is not turning on.
I assume it didn't. I can't imagine it's not versioned.
> The response doesn't acknowledge the severity of the problem at all
Offering to escalate to a phone call immediately seems to acknowledge the severity to me. Not really sure what you want here. The person came in with complaints, the response is to dig into them over the phone. That's ideal.
> the wording of "what you're struggling with" suggests that the original poster is somehow at fault (or too dumb) for "struggling" with Mozilla's terrible decisions.
This is a bizarre interpretation. I read it as validating that the person is having a rough time. There is zero indication of whose fault it is, or that it has anything to do with intelligence. That's coming from you, not the text. The fact that you are reading empathetic wording as an insult to someone's intelligence baffles me.
If I take the time to organize my thoughts and present them, I want the person to whom I'm presenting them to attempt to respond.
If I failed to make myself clear, at a minimum, presenting me with a list of things needing clarification is helpful for me to take the time to prepare.
"Hop on a call" is to me almost always shorthand for "I don't respect the issue enough to attempt to organize my thoughts ahead of time, but I'll ramble about it and let you pick my brain." Or in the most malicious cases, the other party is seeking plausible deniability.
In my experience it's not that way 100% of the time, but it's damn close.
> the fastest way for both parties is over the phone ASAP rather than through a bunch of emails
I don't disagree with your statement, but I read the sentence:
"Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further?" with a similar gross reaction as the OP comment did.
Reading that in response to Marsf's original message of airing grievances and feelings of disrespect towards his work felt entirely tone-deaf and corporate in nature. Especially in context of this being in response to the Japanese team, where Japanese business communication norms are often at odds with the American standard.
You might think that this method of communication is inefficient, but the heart of the matter seems that the Japanese team finds the very emphasis on efficiency as disrespectful when it comes at the cost of the human element of respect.
> felt entirely tone-deaf and corporate in nature. Especially in context of this being in response to the Japanese team
The person is a "Support Community Manager" in Indonesia if you click on their link. They're not the CEO of Mozilla who is supposed to be an expert in intercultural communication. I think you're being kind of harsh on someone who is presumably not high-level and just trying to do their job and get more information to be helpful.
Even if not a high level, then s/he had to learn that style of communication from peers in the corp, and the tone is set by managers. It's entirely OK to blame someone who has title “Manager”.
The style of communication seems perfectly fine to me. It's acknowledging there's a problem, apologizing as much as they can before they have the real facts, and offering to communicate over the phone to figure out what's really going on. I honestly don't know what more you want from someone who is a customer service manager. Not the leader of the team who built the translation product.
The problem is, its false to insist that the manager does not have real facts. The facts have been stated by OP in the first post in the thread, and while the statement can be true or false, it's not like it's not there. The responder should have listened and evaluated this, possibly with consultation with PM of the feature, and just by this response we can assume s/he just didn't listen.
Moreover, OP chose the very thread as the venue, and attempting to switch it to a different, intransparent one is a disservice to the community. Community is very important context of this message, and the response seems to validate the proposition that it's really the end of it, per the subject of the thread.
> The person is a "Support Community Manager" in Indonesia if you click on their link. They're not the CEO of Mozilla who is supposed to be an expert in intercultural communication.
This is completely backwards. The CEO is not expected to manage intercultural communication. You know whose job that is? The community manager.
The community manager for Indonesia wouldn't be expected to manage communication with Japan, but managing local contributors is absolutely a job for the community manager and not the CEO.
> This is completely backwards. The CEO is not expected to manage intercultural communication. You know whose job that is? The community manager.
Sorry, you're wrong. Intercultural communication is very much a core skill for the CEO of a global organization. They're expected to know how to communicate appropriately so some international deal doesn't get torpedoed due to a faux pas.
> The community manager for Indonesia wouldn't be expected to manage communication with Japan
"quick call?" in corporatespeak means "I believe our disagreement to be a minor misunderstanding that can be clarified in a few minutes of conversation"
In a company you should never ever "quick call" someone (especially on a group forum) who has presented a genuine list of grievances against whatever you're doing, unless you're subtly trying to pull rank to override those grievances.
You're right. I misquoted, and that was an error on my part. While I regret the error, I don't feel the word "quick" really changes the sentiment too much. It certainly doesn't change my visceral response.
The thing about English language is that, just like Japanese, it's highly contextual and has different constructs for expressing different level of respect. The problem is, English speakers are completely unaware of this, so either they get it right based on intuition, or they fuck up. In this case, the guy used "I'm your superior and you'll do what I say" mode, while the appropriate mode would've been "oh shit I'm sorry how do I fix this".
It seems like someone who has no awareness of the problem, who wants to learn more about the problem, and the fastest way for both parties is over the phone ASAP rather than through a bunch of emails.
When software goes wrong, you need as much information as possible to figure it how to fix it.