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End of Japanese community

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Re: End of Japanese community

#501

Post by cyberrock »

chao- wrote: post #26
jahsome wrote: post #10

I'm not really able to understand the finer details but I think I picked up enough to get the broad strokes. Really though, all I needed to see was the phrase "jump on a quick call" to form an irrationally strong opinion. That phrase instantly warms my entire body with rage.

I am fascinated by the nuanced opinions people have about word choice. What phrase would you use to ask someone to discuss a matter, but which you feel would be more appropriate for this kind of situation?

I suspect GP has had negative experiences with that specific phrase, "hop on a [quick] call", hence their "irrational rage". I also hate seeing that phrase at work:

1. "Hop" and "quick" suggests very simple matters, so to text-based people like me it doesn't really make sense why we wouldn't be able to resolve this matter asynchronously over text.

1b. Alternatively, the matter isn't actually trivial, so we should've had a proper meeting with other stakeholders instead of the caller debating me solo in a "quick" call.

2. I'm in the middle of something important or just hit my stride, and the caller is completely derailing my train of thought instead of just scheduling a meeting.

2b. The worst outcome is when I agree to "hop on", but the caller has gone AFK within 5 minutes of sending their invitation, so I'm just quietly seething by myself in the call.

3. The caller and I can't understand each other's accents so I'm trying to accommodate for the both of us by communicating through text, and I find it difficult to bring this incompatibility up without getting fired. I also had a caller who always whispered at his laptop mic so I had to turn up the subwoofers to have a chance of understanding him.

But we should point out that "quick" doesn't exist in Kiki's message. I think that goes back to point #1 about how the specific word "hop" can imply that the issue is trivial. Or maybe we're all going insane over unnecessary ad-hoc meetings.

Unrelated: I hate to appear anti-remote work, but I've noticed that remote workers tend to send more of these ad-hoc invitations, even more than getting tapped on the shoulder in the office. Are you all doing well out there?

Re: End of Japanese community

#502

Post by gr4vityWall »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #322
rwmj wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a combination of inability to read anything longer than a tweet and not wanting to put anything on record.

I'd say otherwise - it's a reach out to have a relationship. It's hard to have human relationships only by writing. Of course the best way to build it is to meet in person, but if impossible - it's always good to have a video call. If someone is frustrated, the following chats won't do much really. They have already built a wall, and we need to meet around it, not throw our letters over it.

> It's hard to have human relationships only by writing.

I don't follow. Some of my most important friendships were built on forums and text-based communication. We never felt any need to have video calls. Some of them I met in person once, 15+ years after we started messaging each other, and we're great friends regardless.

I don't mean to say you're wrong in an absolute sense, but I can't relate to your post at all. Not a single one of my friends has video calls as their preferred method of socialization with online peers.

Re: End of Japanese community

#503

Post by saghm »

Y_Y wrote: post #494
NoboruWataya wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native English speaker, I don't see it as condescending either. Yes it's a bit "corporate" in tone, but that is not uncommon at all in large human organisations (not just for-profit corporations but also government, NGOs, political orgs, etc). Also the reality is that "hopping on a call" can often help to resolve problems that would otherwise devolve into months of bikeshedding on mailing lists. Which is often e…

Having a call is fine, but it's not like the original complaint didn't lay out in plenty of detail what the problem was. Given the context of corporate doublespeak, I saw the response as "Oh shit, we can't refute your issues, but maybe we can bullshit you privately into putting up with them?". (I see a few disagreements here, back up with "I'm a native speaker". Me too friend, but understand messages like this is (im…

Or even worse, it's public posturing with full knowledge that the call isn't likely to happen, and it wouldn't resolve anything even if it did.

Re: End of Japanese community

#504

Post by gsck »

whstl wrote: post #431
apexalpha wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great but we're not all native English speakers. And "I'm sorry for you" seems like a hollow phrase to a Dutch person but this is used all the time in English. It's like how you say "How are you" when you really don't care but it's just how you start a conversation.

Not saying you "have" to know or that the interpretation is even correct for this case, but, just to explain: The "I'm sorry you feel this way" is quite a recent phenomenon. It started showing up in public apologies by companies and celebrities, purely for PR. It's basically a deflective euphemism for "I'm sorry that you don't like whatever happened" without really admitting culpability, sidestepping all responsibili…

"I'm sorry you feel that way" was literally the first thing I ever got taught when doing front of house/customer service training. Its definitely a super common phrase, at least in English speaking countries

Re: End of Japanese community

#505

Post by Y_Y »

crote wrote: post #460
apexalpha wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from the Netherlands I read absolutely 0 condescending or patronising behaviour in this. It just looks like someone trying to get in contact and help out. I could've written this myself, genuinely trying to help.

Also from The Netherlands, this is 100% condescending and patronising to me. I read this as corporate-speak for "go fuck yourself". Let's go through it line-by-line: > I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced. "We have zero regrets about the changes we made and have no intention of making any changes - the problem is how you feel about them". > Would…

200% agree

In particular I think your alternative response is excellent and what I would have hoped for in an ideal world.

Re: End of Japanese community

#506

Post by k1musab1 »

crote wrote: post #460
apexalpha wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from the Netherlands I read absolutely 0 condescending or patronising behaviour in this. It just looks like someone trying to get in contact and help out. I could've written this myself, genuinely trying to help.

Also from The Netherlands, this is 100% condescending and patronising to me. I read this as corporate-speak for "go fuck yourself". Let's go through it line-by-line: > I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced. "We have zero regrets about the changes we made and have no intention of making any changes - the problem is how you feel about them". > Would…

I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find a well-articulated example of a proper response. It isn't just a few words that needed changing, the original response by Mozilla mas missing the whole point that you bring up in your example: a 20y veteran volunteer is leaving. Within a small community, the action of a single veteran/leader leaving this way will certainly have an effect on the rest of the volunteers, even more so when you consider the cultural aspects of this specific community.

Re: End of Japanese community

#507

Post by reddalo »

skrebbel wrote: post #253
reddalo wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy that somebody is trying to create a new browser -- even though some people say it's impossible nowadays. But FUTO sponsoring that project gives bad vibes.

Why? You’re referring to tue club that makes Immich, right? What’s so bad about them?

I also love Immich, but it seems like there's some controversy about FUTO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45666239

Re: End of Japanese community

#508

Post by trallnag »

adeptima wrote: post #7

10+ years in Japan. The message here is much deeper from my perspective. “Let’s jump on the call” is not the solution. The guy was stripped off of his face. I love Japan for being human. Small business bar or restaurant with 3 tables. Not everything should be streamlined for a quick call solution… the process was pushed on his head. Google nemawashi decision making process

"I love Japan for being human". What does this even mean? Immediately followed by something about food?

Re: End of Japanese community

#509

Post by Gud »

avhception wrote: post #295
vintermann wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who knows? Everyone whose native language is not English knows. Seriously, people with this attitude should be forced to run their browser and mail client with a plugin to run everything through a couple of machine translation roundtrips. Give it two months, and I guarantee you'll understand.

My first language is German, but I've got most of my devices set to English. Because of that, Youtube started machine-translating German video titles and audio into English at random. The audio quality is just bad, everything sounds muffled. And the translations are often complete garbage. I absolutely detest this "feature".

Now imagine you are like me, someone who travels the world for work. I get everything in Dutch, German, Swedish, Finnish, Arabic and of course Schweizerdeutsch. And some other languages.

There used to be an “international English” setting.

Re: End of Japanese community

#510

Post by taikahessu »

eloisant wrote: post #368
pmontra wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but now that's the answer to questions like "how do we deploy AI without pissing off our communities?"

I have your answer: you provide a tool for your translators, you don't unleash a bot that makes changes left and right and creates new pages. Typically, when a new page is written in English, don't automatically generate a version in all languages. When a translator starts creating the page in their language, provide a button to pre-fill with ML translation if they want to . And for users, you can display the English…

This sounds about right, and should be incorporated everywhere.
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