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So you've made a mistake and it's public

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Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#81

Post by pugworthy »

khazhoux wrote: post #70
offtop5 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Reddit and 4Chan are things, Wikipedia is far from being the most toxic . Maybe the most elitist

Strong disagree. The vast majority of subreddits are fine. Toxicity is compartmentalized to specific subreddits, which you can very easily avoid. On the other hand, I find a community like Stack Overflow to be much worse because the BS can strike any time, any place. Between questions marked "Off-Topic", and snarky replies, and the non-replies ("We won't answer your simple question because you should not be asking th…

I also agree. I find both Twitter and Reddit to be on the most part delightful sources of information. I do have a certain self-made bubble in terms of who I follow, but it's a bubble full of creators, artists, and those that want to share what they've done in a positive way.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#82

Post by trynewideas »

Zelphyr wrote: post #62

Something that I would include with the apology part (the text may have covered this and I missed it) is that apologies don't have but's. "I'm sorry I funded Wikimedia Antarctica but..." Everything you say after the but negates everything you say before it and now you're only trying to justify your actions. Simply, "I'm sorry I funded Wikimedia Antarctica." and proceed to describe what you learned: "I neglected to lo…

> These elements are required for your acknowledgement to be also valid as apology, see Apology#Which elements should be included in an apology for the details.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Apology#Which_elements_shoul...

> When the offender takes full responsibility for one's wrongdoing, a simple statement saying "I am sorry." may help build the trust. This is particularly true if there is a story of good relationship with the offender; In most cases however, it will be insufficient.

It doesn't explicitly address "I'm sorry, but..." phrasing, but does suggest limiting apologies to specifically acknowledging what was done (and the pain it caused), accepting responsibility, and expressing regret.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#83

Post by khazhoux »

ape4 wrote: post #25

Jeffrey Toobin: "I was fired today by @NewYorker after 27 years as a Staff Writer. I will always love the magazine, will miss my colleagues, and will look forward to reading their work,"

I think about the worst public mistake I've made, multiply the panic and embarrassment by about 1000x, and that maybe starts to approximate what must have gone through Toobin's mind when he heard his colleagues calling out to him on the Zoom video. First, the confusion -- "why is everyone calling out my name all of the sudden?". Then he shifts his attention back to the conference... "there's no way they saw me". Then "How did they see me!??!?". Then "can I deny this?" Then eventually... "I think my life is ruined." How do you look someone in the eye again, when you know they know? His life over in an instant, all because he misjudged the line-of-sight from his camera (while making the horrible decision to "relax" while on a work call). One slip, and his world collapsed.

Most of us skate right up to the edge of disaster on a daily basis, and aren't even aware of it. One distraction and you forget you had something frying in the kitchen; or you crash your car; or you reply-all by mistake; or you bitch about your boss on the team-wide Slack channel instead of the 1:1 channel you thought you were on.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#84

Post by core-questions »

mannykannot wrote: post #55
macspoofing wrote: post #23

I'm not sure apologizing publicly has made anything better for any individual, especially in the current moral panic climate. Mobs don't accept apologies. Public apologies stamp official guilt on the individual and therefore serve as a license for the mob to further punish them because now they have admitted their fault and therefore are 'officially' guilty of the crime. Public apologies, therefore, are the metaphori…

Denying that you have made a mistake is likely to piss off the people who would otherwise be willing to move on. As the "mob", which may or may not exist in any given situation, is not going to be swayed by protests of innocence, the former are the only people you should care about.

> Denying that you have made a mistake is likely to piss off the people who would otherwise be willing to move on.

Which is why you don't deny it either; you move on, avoiding the Streisand Effect as best as possible by not engaging. It's passive denial vs. active denial.

I'm not saying this is moral or good - I'm only saying that it seems to work for people. It's a question of game theory. We can get better apologies if we start to accept apologies and move on with our lives, but the mob wants blood and these days the public apology only serves as an admission of guilt, absolving the mob of any evil when they pull the person apart limb from limb.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#86

Post by polote »

I find this very funny. You have made a mistake? then starts this algorithm and you are all done !

> that you are sorry about the harm/damage/waste/confusion your mistake caused (being specific would demonstrate understanding);

I have big problem with apologizes, you don't owe apologies because you made a mistake, apologizing will not change anything, you can easily not feel the apologies you are making.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#87

Post by derekbreden »

anuila wrote: post #74
justin_oaks wrote: post #2

> What should I do when I see someone else is making a mistake? > When you see others making mistakes, first help them see their mistakes and deal with them (e.g. by recycling this text, or by independently offering your analysis and answers to Steps 1 and 2 above). > Remember you make mistakes too, and be tolerant of the time it may take people to accept that they have made a mistake. (But you don't need to allow th…

I have trouble handling others’ mistakes if I’ve corrected them before, they acknowledged the mistake, but they keep doing them. What am I supposed to do with people who won’t learn from their mistakes (in the workplace)? I’m directly affected by them as they increase my workload, so I can’t just ignore them.

I recently had a coworker point out to me a grammatical error I keep repeating, flush vs flesh, that he had reminded me of a year ago.

I recently pointed out to a different coworker some whitespace inconsistency in a pull request in a similar fashion as I had pointed out a while back.

In digging deeper into both situations where I was the reporter or the reportee, the issue came down to legitimate lack of agreement on whether it was indeed a mistake.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#88

Post by trynewideas »

caymanjim wrote: post #79
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

I like that. I'm quite good at apologizing, because I need to do it so often. I get lots of practice. The American abhorrence for admitting fault and/or apologizing is quite mystifying to me. It's really corrosive. I've spent 40 years, promptly admitting mistakes, and repairing, where possible. WFM. YMMV.

> The American abhorrence for admitting fault and/or apologizing is quite mystifying to me. It's really corrosive. I don't accept this premise. Americans don't have a lot of the cultural baggage that leads to this. If anything, Americans are quick to admit fault and address root causes. We don't have a cultural history of beating around the bush, saving face, deferring to elders who are clearly wrong, etc. Individual…

The US is also a massive country comprised of isolated and distinct subcultures, with a much more dramatic urban/rural split than denser regions. An acceptable apology in one part of the US is a thinly veiled insult in another.

Mistake 0 is assuming there's an "American abhorrence" or a tendency held by "Americans on the whole". It's difficult for any American, much less anyone outside of America, to have interacted with each of its distinct, and often wildly divergent, subcultures to find a genuine common thread.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#89

Post by JackFr »

Zelphyr wrote: post #62

Something that I would include with the apology part (the text may have covered this and I missed it) is that apologies don't have but's. "I'm sorry I funded Wikimedia Antarctica but..." Everything you say after the but negates everything you say before it and now you're only trying to justify your actions. Simply, "I'm sorry I funded Wikimedia Antarctica." and proceed to describe what you learned: "I neglected to lo…

My wife and I follow that and have tried to teach it to our kids. An apology with a ‘but’ isn’t an apology.

Two more worth thinking about: Explain vs. excuse. While your feelings and justifications may explain your bad behavior they do not excuse it.

Not your fault, but still your problem. The (wrong) idea that an unexpected circumstance can excuse bad behavior, because it’s not your fault.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#90

Post by ggm »

The form of words of an apology is extremely important. The worst form (in my personal opinion) is the qualified apology as in IF I have offended I apologize. It questions the need, it implies that its open to doubt.

I apologize unreservedly is far better.

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