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Comment by detaro | Hacker News Reader

a) don't apologize for the other persons feelings, but for your actions that lead to it

b) don't look like you are trying to take the conversation out of the community space it's happening in and/or hiding details by going to a private call (you can offer a call, but it shouldn't be the expectation)

c) Acknowledge the concrete complaints made. Are you truly "struggling to understand" what someone means when they complain that it didn't happen in a staging environment first?

d) a-c also lead to "don't sound like any cookie-cutter PR response to a complaint ever, people have learned those are not genuine". Especially if you are a project that makes a big deal out of its community interacting with said community.

e) ideally announce some concrete first step, e.g. pausing the bot

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One point I'd like to add as someone who has worked in IT support for years:

Don't answer when you haven't done your homework. Either you check for yourself if what they claim has happened happened and acknowledge the fuckup or you just trust them as go on "if this is true and we have no reason not to trust you, it should never have happened".

But not understanding? The description of the incident was pretty clear. Maybe think about it and investigate till you understand what the problem is, and then answer.

Or answer being clear about that if you feel like you need to respond now. Acknowledge there is a problem, say you'll have to look into the details before you can say more, come back with specific questions if you need answers.

> Are you truly "struggling to understand" what someone means

You've turned this around into a very different quote, and shouldn't use quote marks for that. They wrote:

> We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with.

I don't like their response and agree with a lot of people in the thread it looks like they are trying to do the call to take it private. But we don't have to make up stuff.

If the post gave any acknowledgement to the already stated complaints I'd agree with you, but it does not, and that does stand out and leads to my reading.

Yes, but what is there to understand? A bot erased the hard work of people. That is the point.

Sure there may be more fine detail to understand around the guidelines etc, but first you should acknowledge that (A) your bot fucked up big time, (B) everybody would be pissed if years of work would be overwritten in such disrespectful manner and (C) that this isn't how you want to treat your community.

If you don't manage that this person made the right call when they decided to leave.

Sure, but there is no reason to fabricate a quote they never said. Their offputting real response can stand on its own without imagining a new one that never happened.

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