Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

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 communication is face-to-face (the way we've evolved to do it).

Getting to the bottom of the issue in 1-1 communication with a representative of the community should be the common approach when complex problems arise, because then you can be sure that you're on the same wavelength before you do your mass communication with the rest of the community. Saves a TON of time and heartache and ill feelings.

View on HN

Community is all about open communication, and cultivating it through active participation. There is no need to take further first steps here, as support.mozilla.org is the open platform that community agreed upon. For face-to-face communications there seems to be All Hands meetings, as mentioned by Michele.

This communication in particular is about how one member is sharing their "discomfort" of the non-communicated automation efforts done by Mozilla, and is also expressing their resulting action - leaving that community.

Please don't conflate the efforts of institutions (Mozilla) with the ones of communities (SUMO). Transparency is a big factor that marks their difference. So yes, community is also about communication.

As an unpaid volunteer to a multimillion dollar corporation that has just erased a huge collective volunteer effort, listing in writing the reasons I'm unhappy is already way too much effort.

Asking that same volunteer to hop on a video call is just insensitive. They're the one providing free work; if you care about solving the problem and not losing the volunteer force, you should go where they are (the forums) instead of asking them to come to you (video call). They probably don't want to take time out of their schedule to waste their time talking with a community rep. And they probably don't even want to do a voice/video call.

> 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.

Whatever else they might be, they're clearly out of touch. You'd have to be living under a rock to not realize that AI is controversial - especially in the more OSS/FSF parts of the internet - and rolling it out like a bulldozer is going to create outrage.

If they're just screwing things up, they're not learning from their mistakes. They already introduced the bot to the Spanish and Italian communities, with the same issues. To the roll it out further to the Japanese, and who knows who else, without fixing the issues is not speaking to their competence.

But if they had rolled-back the 2 languages and paused on the third, thr team behind this will have little to show during end of year reviews. So onwards the wheels turn, to show a large and growing rollout supporting millions of users across Europe and Asia in 2025

Where is the communication before the damage was done when it actually mattered?

Yeah exactly. I understand you may feel that I bulldozed your house, but it was an honest mistake. I deployed an AI bulldozer. Some communities are very happy with the results. Others may need time to adjust. Look, I want to talk. First and foremost this is about communication.

As soon as you get Wi-Fi back up, let's hop on a call.

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.

"Are they malicious? Twirling neatly waxed mustaches as they cackle gleefully as the little ants scurry about in a panic?"

Where are you getting this from, specifically? The claim I can see is that Mozilla didn't care enough to check first. So this looks as if it might be a straw-man argument. I think those are specifically prohibited in the FAQ.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com