Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

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>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.

> - No apology
- No "we stopped the bot for now"
"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.

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

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.

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.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/HTFU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile_(book)

> 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 suspect that you didn't understand the subtext of the conversation.

>> 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.

It's not gaslighting to simply disagree. So please don't throw around accusations like that. Subtext is by definition open to interpretation.

I wasn't trying to be patronizing, and I certainly wasn't "feigning concern". Again, that's the response of a cynic who refuses to believe that sincerity and good intentions are possible. But you are making it clear you don't want to continue the conversation so that's fine.

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.

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.

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