Not all the mistakes are the same, no? I assume the focus here is factual inaccuracy, and the proximal cause of that is not following a rigorous sourcing and fact checking process. But the advice here also relates to mistakes of interaction - unsuccessful collaborations on a page, or non collegial communication. Hurting someone's feelings is different than a reporting error. Apologize or correct, right? Are there more flavors of mistake, and courses of action?
So you've made a mistake and it's public
131–140 of 403 posts
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#132So this one time, our main customer database fell over. The primary key wasn't wide enough, we hit 2 billion rows, and everyone panicked. We had been working unwise hours for several days, and we got the fix together, and I made a mistake: I pushed it directly to production. Man, my boss was really mad; no one had been getting enough sleep and we were all stressed. I apologized profusely and said it would never happe…
Is there any point in addressing the "mistake" if no one has the need to take responsibility for it?
Life is full of situations where no one acted unreasonably but something undesirable still happened. It's especially common for no one to see a potential problem, and thus for no one to be assigned the responsibility of dealing with that problem. If you have any stake in the overall success of the team, it doesn't matter whose fault something is, you just want the problem fixed.
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#133I think a major point missing in amongst the discussion so far, and one that's causing a lot of crosstalk is whether you should even be apologising at all. For example. Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the…
> Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the kickback against apologising that we're seeing is coming from the numerous public examples of this tactic and the follow-up where any good-faith apology will be used to make a further example of the heretic.
This is rarely about the apology itself, but about establishing that something wrong has happened to begin with. The fact is, a lot of pretty messed up stuff routinely happens and is simply taken as a given. The apology is simply a marker that some behavior will no longer be considered acceptable. It's hardly even a measure of accountability, unless someone is so egotistical that taking responsibility is personally harmful to them.
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#134I think a major point missing in amongst the discussion so far, and one that's causing a lot of crosstalk is whether you should even be apologising at all. For example. Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the…
> Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the kickback against apologising that we're seeing is coming from the numerous public examples of this tactic and the follow-up where any good-faith apology will be used t…
> It's guilty until proven innocent and either way you lose.
One could say it's guilty until proven guilty.
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#135I find it helpful when writing apology posts to start it by writing down the timeline of events. Don’t insert any commentary attempting to justify anything in this part, it just comes off as defensive. Instead just outline what happened though you can include the immediate cause of decisions you made. “Because I was worried about how people would react to X I decided to do Y” Then after that you can write all the stu…
>I find it helpful when writing apology posts ... How many apology posts do you write? Why would you need to write any? I don't understand why any apology needs to be public.
I ran a game company.
There are lots of occasions where we made a change the players didn't like, or we screwed up in a way that led to economic damage to some players, or just had an operational issue that led to a bunch of downtime.
Here is a random example of onee of these.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2603061/page/1
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of easy and obvious ones. Dr Matt Taylor being attacked for an anime shirt is the first that comes to mind.
I see. So people should not apologize for things they definitely did wrong because of situations where you feel other people have apologized and didn’t need to?
[flagged]
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#137I think a major point missing in amongst the discussion so far, and one that's causing a lot of crosstalk is whether you should even be apologising at all. For example. Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the…
> Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the kickback against apologising that we're seeing is coming from the numerous public examples of this tactic and the follow-up where any good-faith apology will be used t…
>This is rarely about the apology itself, but about establishing that something wrong has happened to begin with
Feh, don't even give these struggle sessions and the petty tyrants that perpetrate them that much credit. It's about establishing that something ideologically condemned by those demanding an apology has occurred, and nothing more. Morality is secondary to ideological purity among the types demanding apologies.
Fuck 'em, I say.
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should be noted that you should contact them about their mistake in the most private way possible, then escalating slowly as the need arises. This follows the "praise in public, punish in private" maxim.
This makes me think, it is opposite to what mostly is used in open source projects that have bugtrackers. Github is filled with countless 'mistakes' (issues/pr's) people made in the code they published. Should there be some kind of way to make issues private? Before I was into open source I was always afraid to show my code to anyone because of the critique I could expect. But some coworkers helped me get the confide…
Bugs are not critiques. Working in software development, you learn extremely quickly that everyone writes bugs, and there is nothing to be embarrassed about. The openness of issue trackers even helps elevate that.
On the other hand, it's not normal and not often practiced to go digging to see whose mistake introduced a bug and call them out in public on it - that would be what shouldn't be done at all.
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#139I think a major point missing in amongst the discussion so far, and one that's causing a lot of crosstalk is whether you should even be apologising at all. For example. Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the…
Progressives are widely known for things like increasing the minimum wage, expanding access to health care, or legalizing drugs. I've never heard progressives pushing for forced public apologies.
Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public
#140I think a major point missing in amongst the discussion so far, and one that's causing a lot of crosstalk is whether you should even be apologising at all. For example. Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the…
> if you're actually dealing with a genuine person or group who you've genuinely wronged then a real apology is warranted
A pitfall of this mentality, at least in my experience, is that people I hurt are usually much better judges of whether I hurt them than I am.
Something I learned that helped is: you can hurt someone without being wrong. "I regret that my actions had this effect on you," is a good place to start a conversation when I'm not (yet?) convinced I would have done anything differently in hindsight.
Often, simply acknowledging that someone has been hurt by my actions, and trying to understand why, has yielded far better outcomes than sticking with my judgment. Both in that they affected party feels better, and in that I get to add a new dimension to my understanding of social dynamics.
It often doesn't matter how legitimate someones' complaint is according to my personal worldview; what matters is how the affected feel.