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End of Japanese community

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Re: End of Japanese community

#521

Post by ants_everywhere »

iAMkenough wrote: post #125
ants_everywhere wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, it's a bit strange for a for-profit company like Mozilla Corporation to rely on volunteer labor through its non-profit parent Mozilla Foundation to perform customer support. There was a period where every company was trying to "crowd source" free labor. It died off because people didn't like working for corporations for free. I can see why they have it under Mozilla.org. And lots of companies have communi…

There was probably a more tactful way to shift labor from passionate volunteers to soulless AI. I too would be upset if an organization threw out a decade of translation work without any warning or discussion, in favor of a robot pretending to understand my language and failing.

I agree there could have been more tact, and I would probably be upset too if a bunch of my work got replaced by automation. I would even feel that way if the automation was better. I've criticized Mozilla extensively in the past, and I would see a clumsy rollout as consistent with my concerns about them.

The difficulty with a post like this is it brings out a primal anti-technology impulse in all of us. But once you clear away the piling-on and emotionally charged hot takes there isn't much here to talk about.

This post, aside from a statement of intent to quit, is a report that was made about the bot. Mozilla made an invitation to address the concerns. All of that seems normal. Rollout with mistake -> bug report -> attempting to understand what went wrong. But the bug report contains unrealistic demands that seem almost rhetorical and the attempt to figure out what went wrong is being met with scorn, as in the top comment of this HN discussion.

> passionate volunteers to soulless AI.

Humans don't have souls either as I'm sure you know :-P. To post this comment, you're using a soulless computer that took jobs away from human computers. You probably listen to music made with soulless synthesizers that took jobs from musicians. You no doubt take photos with soulless cameras that took jobs from painters.

I think we have to be clear to ourselves that, although the transition to automation will be painful, nobody is going to prevent technology from advancing. So we have to find a way to use it to build the future we want, not try to tear it down as soulless or evil.

Re: End of Japanese community

#522

Post by stockerta »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #514
ares623 wrote: post #3

This is rich > We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with. The post literally starts with a list of grievances. Maybe ask the AI for an executive summary and the key points.

Yes, and the poster wants to understand them. How would you have responded?

Not like a dick like he did. No lets jump into a quick call while ignoring everything OP said. It's clear a quick call will not solve this. Turn off the AI roll back all the shit it caused is the bare minimum.

Re: End of Japanese community

#523

Post by ClawsOnPaws »

StarGrit wrote: post #456
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…

I am English and the phrasing used is a backhanded way to tell you to shut-up and go away. I've seen it used by both native and non-native speakers in this manner. It is about 50/50 though as many people don't seem to pick up on backhanded way that many English people speak. > Also the reality is that "hopping on a call" can often help to resolve problems that would otherwise devolve into months of bikeshedding on ma…

The core thing here is the "I'm sorry you feel this way". This immediately deflects all sense of wrong-doing from the people actually doing wrong to the people feeling hurt. There are so many other ways to phrase this that are either more neutral or even acknowledging of some kind of mistake being made that's not on the volunteer's side, but that's not what's happening here. Essentially this means "We did the right thing and now we need to figure out how to make you understand this", not "Something went wrong and we need to figure out how to come to an understanding which might include us having done something wrong".

Re: End of Japanese community

#524

Post by jwpapi »

jacquesm wrote: post #85
jwpapi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I’m not even sure it’s easy to decide which side is in the right here and it’s not as simple as people think it is. Mozilla is painted bad here, but who knows if the automated translations do not help more people than it hurts the translators. What if the reduced financial pressure allows Mozilla to focus more on privacy and less on ads. Unfortunately these things are really gray, but you really can’t expect a c…

> I’m not even sure it’s easy to decide which side is in the right here and it’s not as simple as people think it is. - No prior communications. - No discussion about what uses the contributed information was being put to. - No discussion about the release and the parameters around the operation of the bot. - No discussion about whether or not this was a desirable in the first place (with the community, not just inte…

Ohhh shit it was volunteer pardon me!

Yes no gray area!

My comment was assuming that it’s a paid role and also just commenting on the process of translating with ai vs without

Re: End of Japanese community

#525

Post by stephenlf »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #515

I'm not sure why I clicked on this beyond just knowing it was going to be another Mozilla trainwreck and not being able to look away. But what was truly stunning to me was this comment thread. There are people here actually defending the following response: > 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 t…

Talking face-to-face is absolutely the right response, though. Would you have preferred a canned apology?

Re: End of Japanese community

#526

Post by crazygringo »

tpxl wrote: post #198
krick wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Unlike GP) I don't actually have a problem with your assumptions. They seem likely to me. But I still have a problem with the whole sentiment of, uh, people on your side of the discussion. Let's just assume it is how you say it is. (The only assumption I am not willing to make is that people at Mozilla are already convinced it was a bad idea after all.) What in your opinion would be the right move now , after they r…

> Would it be better than trying to set up a call and discuss things, try to find some compromise Are you serious? First, make a decision without consulting anyone, foist it on people that don't want it, then 'try to find a compromise'? If you care about people, you consult them before you make a decision, not after they've been burnt by it.

How do you know they didn't consult anyone?

There many, many translating teams. When they designed this, it would be normal to consult with some of them. Not every single one. Maybe they sent some plans to every team and many of the teams never read them. Maybe the plans were hard to understand.

People aren't perfect. Setting up a call to discuss things is how you start to fix things.

Re: End of Japanese community

#527

Post by crazygringo »

tsimionescu wrote: post #199
crazygringo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? A quick call is a courteous first step . The other person might not have time for a long call, so you want to show you're respecting their time. Then you follow it up with a longer meeting with the relevant engineer and manager, etc. "Taking someone to dinner" is not the first step here. The way to show you care is by trying to understand the situation before anything else. There is no wor…

No, a quick call is not a courteous first step when someone tells you that you've destroyed 20 years of their work and they no longer want to have anything to do with you. Suggesting that such an offence can be resolved by a "quick call" is extraordinarily disrespectful. A courteous first step would have been to apologise profusely, revert the damage that the bot did, and ask to set up a call to discuss what it might…

This is NOT the leader of the new transition tool! This is just a customer service manager in Indonesia who is trying to gather more information.

The steps that you describe might well be taken after the "quick call" gathers more information and figures out the people to escalate it to.

You are being entirely unreasonable in what you are demanding. This isn't a response from the Mozilla CEO. This is sometime in customer service, responding to a short post in a forum. Their response is entirely appropriate as a first step.

Re: End of Japanese community

#528

Post by malvim »

kstenerud wrote: post #395
whilenot-dev wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about communication though, it's about community. Mozilla just introduced a bot to overtake community efforts. > another asking to open a communication channel. The other person is asking to open a private communication channel. OT, but where is this reductionism-to-rationalize-trend coming from lately?

Community is also about communication. In fact, that's a primary aspect of a community. Yeah, Mozilla introduced a bot that's stomping on things. Are they malicious? Twirling neatly waxed mustaches as they cackle gleefully as the little ants scurry about in a panic? Or is this a case of humans doing what humans do: Screwing things up. The first step is to open communications, and the most effective form of communicat…

Except it’s not a screw up, is it? I’m not saying it’s malicious, and I feel your caricature of “twirling mustaches” is useless and detracts from the point.

It’s not a “screw up”. It’s also not malicious per se. It’s insensitive and shows a lack of care for the community. They deliberately turned on a bot that would overwrite work done by people, and make these people work with diffs and proofreading, without them having a say in it. In production!

It’s not like they can’t test it. Or involve everyone. There are locale leaders, as the Italian person alluded to.

This is shitting on community, and then going “sorry not sorry”, because they’re not rolling it back and they’re saying “I’m sorry you got your feelings hurt, wanna talk”?

This CAN be sorted out. And I believe it will. But it WAS insensitive and it WAS a case of not caring for the people who put their time and effort in voluntary work that benefits you. It’s really bad, no matter the intentions.

Re: End of Japanese community

#529

Post by StarGrit »

ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #523
StarGrit wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am English and the phrasing used is a backhanded way to tell you to shut-up and go away. I've seen it used by both native and non-native speakers in this manner. It is about 50/50 though as many people don't seem to pick up on backhanded way that many English people speak. > Also the reality is that "hopping on a call" can often help to resolve problems that would otherwise devolve into months of bikeshedding on ma…

The core thing here is the "I'm sorry you feel this way". This immediately deflects all sense of wrong-doing from the people actually doing wrong to the people feeling hurt. There are so many other ways to phrase this that are either more neutral or even acknowledging of some kind of mistake being made that's not on the volunteer's side, but that's not what's happening here. Essentially this means "We did the right t…

Exactly. I never ever seen it used in any other way.

Re: End of Japanese community

#530

Post by watwut »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #514
ares623 wrote: post #3

This is rich > We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with. The post literally starts with a list of grievances. Maybe ask the AI for an executive summary and the key points.

Yes, and the poster wants to understand them. How would you have responded?

Are you saying they were hard to understand or badly written? Because to me they seem to be crystal clear explanation of issues. I also did not concluded that the leaving person is "struggling" or generally need help.
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