3 ms·

Those are a huge number of assumptions you're making, absolutely none of which are in the post. Generally speaking, orgs aren't trying to replace high-quality

Those are a huge number of assumptions you're making, absolutely none of which are in the post. Generally speaking, orgs aren't trying to replace high-quality human translations with lower-quality machine translations. They are often trying to put machine translations in where there are no translations, though. Getting the balance right requires fine-tuning. And fine-tuning requires a quick call to start to better understand the issues in more detail.

onetokeoverthe 1y ago
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dingnuts 1y ago
and actually understanding their contributors would require a lot more than a fucking "quick call" that's the problem. stop thinking about the org and think about the person. these are volunteers who feel taken advantage of, being met with corporate jargon fly out and take him to dinner if you actually give a shit. or write a check. a "quick call" is so insulting
- crazygringo 1y ago
  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 world in which this is insulting.
  - shermantanktop 1y ago
    This follows an offense, and the insult is the implication that the offense is trivial.
  - ssivark 1y ago
    The way to show you care is by having a meeting of the minds before you shove your changes in their face. The fact that the deployment was done carelessly demonstrates disregard. I doubt "take them out to dinner" is the right solution in this situation, but any attempt at redressal must understand the above point and acknowledge it publicly. "Ask for forgiveness rather than permission" is far from universally true, and carries massive cultural baggage. You cannot operate within that framework and expect all humans to cooperate with you.
  - Symbiote 1y ago
    It is absolutely insulting. The manager/administrator doesn't apologise, but instead is "sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel". They are dismissive of the concerns as just a "quick call" is proposed, in a short response to a detailed message. Had I been thrown in this situation: "Dear Marsf, I'm sorry that sumobot was introduced to the Japanese SUMO community without consultation. I have disabled it, and the development team are working to undo the changes it has made. We will revert articles to how they were on 21 October. Contributions made since then by the Japanese community could be retained in the staging system, where they can be approved or rejected. Please let me know whether you would like this, or would prefer them to be discarded returning the whole system to the 21 October. We very much appreciate the Japanese SUMO community's contributions and your work as locale leader, and we hope it can continue. Sumobot will remain disabled on the Japanese translation. If, with some changes, it could be useful to you, we can discuss that here, or schedule a meeting if you prefer. Thank you" In this exact situation, before sending I'd check it with my Japanese colleague.
  - tsimionescu 1y ago
    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 take to re-enable it in the future.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      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.
      - tsimionescu 1y ago
        If she doesn't have responsibility for this, she just shouldn't respond. The transition team should have responded. Or, she could have responded with "I'm contacting the transition team leader to escalate your issues as soon as possible" or similar. There is absolutely no excuse for responding to someone who has announced that they are quitting over very explicit grievances with "let's hop on a call to get some details". If ever there is a time to escalate, it is this.
        crazygringo 1y ago
        To escalate, you need to have a better idea of the issues to know who to escalate to. Plus this is turning into a personal issue (quitting) so a forum isn't appropriate for that part. Asking to talk on the phone is a perfectly reasonable, appropriate, and sensitive way to find out more and figure out how to most helpfully address things. A phone call is the first step in escalation. I honestly don't understand your negative read here. Things don't get 100% addressed immediately in a single exchange. Communication is a back and forth process and this is an entirely appropriate initial response from a customer service manager.
jogu 1y ago
Hence why I said "from my read". This is how I view the situation, and why the lead is reacting the way they are. > They are often trying to put machine translations in where there are no translations, though. And at what point are all of the translations done by machines and the work the community is doing no longer needed? At the very least, the nature of their work will change and I think they're not interested in participating anymore.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- krick 1y ago
  (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 rolled this bullshit auto-translator out and pissed off a lot of people in the community, including a major contributor for the last 20 years? Surely they could just ignore him and go on with this auto-translation initiative (BTW, thay don't even have to worry about whatever he wants to "prohibit" to do with his translations, because he waived off his rights by posting them). Would it be better than trying to set up a call and discuss things, try to find some compromise, gather a number of recommendations she may then pass onto people working on the auto-translator initiative (because surely this Kiki person, whoever she is, is not the sole person responsible for this and cannot magically just fix the situation)?
  - jogu 1y ago
    I'm not sure if just this individual is upset, or if he's speaking on behalf of the entire community he's the leader of. I think it's clear that Mozilla wants machine translation to take a bigger role in producing localized content, and this new process will be a large shift in the way things have been done. I think it's fair for Mozilla to do this, but I also think it's fair for the maintainer to be upset with this decision and no longer want to volunteer his time to clean up slop. The initial response feels premature and tone deaf which is why people are irked by it. Given that Mozilla "shot first" so to speak, the onus is on them to take action first e.g. disable the bot, revert changes to articles, etc. Only after doing this can discussion on a path forward happen.
jack1243star 1y ago
> Generally speaking, orgs aren't trying to replace high-quality human translations with lower-quality machine translations. Seems that this is exactly what Mozilla did? And Microsoft, and Reddit, etc.
- kentm 1y ago
  Correct. Companies are absolutely falling over themselves to replace high quality human translations with lower quality machine translation. I’m not sure how a hacker news poster could miss this trend.
  - usrnm 1y ago
    A hacker news poster is very likely to consume the original English text and never encounter anything else, regardless of whether it's human-translated or not. Just like the people who make these decisions in the first place
josefx 1y ago
> Generally speaking, orgs aren't trying to replace high-quality human translations with lower-quality machine translations. How would you handle updates to an article? Would you blindly replace all existing translations or would you notify the maintainers and wait for them to get around to it? I wouldn't be surprised if orgs blindly opted for the first, which also means that a single spelling correction would be enough to overwrite days of work.

onetokeoverthe 1y ago

[dead]

dingnuts 1y ago

and actually understanding their contributors would require a lot more than a fucking "quick call" that's the problem. stop thinking about the org and think about the person. these are volunteers who feel taken advantage of, being met with corporate jargon fly out and take him to dinner if you actually give a shit. or write a check. a "quick call" is so insulting

crazygringo 1y ago
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 world in which this is insulting.
- shermantanktop 1y ago
  This follows an offense, and the insult is the implication that the offense is trivial.
- ssivark 1y ago
  The way to show you care is by having a meeting of the minds before you shove your changes in their face. The fact that the deployment was done carelessly demonstrates disregard. I doubt "take them out to dinner" is the right solution in this situation, but any attempt at redressal must understand the above point and acknowledge it publicly. "Ask for forgiveness rather than permission" is far from universally true, and carries massive cultural baggage. You cannot operate within that framework and expect all humans to cooperate with you.
- Symbiote 1y ago
  It is absolutely insulting. The manager/administrator doesn't apologise, but instead is "sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel". They are dismissive of the concerns as just a "quick call" is proposed, in a short response to a detailed message. Had I been thrown in this situation: "Dear Marsf, I'm sorry that sumobot was introduced to the Japanese SUMO community without consultation. I have disabled it, and the development team are working to undo the changes it has made. We will revert articles to how they were on 21 October. Contributions made since then by the Japanese community could be retained in the staging system, where they can be approved or rejected. Please let me know whether you would like this, or would prefer them to be discarded returning the whole system to the 21 October. We very much appreciate the Japanese SUMO community's contributions and your work as locale leader, and we hope it can continue. Sumobot will remain disabled on the Japanese translation. If, with some changes, it could be useful to you, we can discuss that here, or schedule a meeting if you prefer. Thank you" In this exact situation, before sending I'd check it with my Japanese colleague.
- tsimionescu 1y ago
  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 take to re-enable it in the future.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    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.
    - tsimionescu 1y ago
      If she doesn't have responsibility for this, she just shouldn't respond. The transition team should have responded. Or, she could have responded with "I'm contacting the transition team leader to escalate your issues as soon as possible" or similar. There is absolutely no excuse for responding to someone who has announced that they are quitting over very explicit grievances with "let's hop on a call to get some details". If ever there is a time to escalate, it is this.
      - crazygringo 1y ago
        To escalate, you need to have a better idea of the issues to know who to escalate to. Plus this is turning into a personal issue (quitting) so a forum isn't appropriate for that part. Asking to talk on the phone is a perfectly reasonable, appropriate, and sensitive way to find out more and figure out how to most helpfully address things. A phone call is the first step in escalation. I honestly don't understand your negative read here. Things don't get 100% addressed immediately in a single exchange. Communication is a back and forth process and this is an entirely appropriate initial response from a customer service manager.

jogu 1y ago

Hence why I said "from my read". This is how I view the situation, and why the lead is reacting the way they are. > They are often trying to put machine translations in where there are no translations, though. And at what point are all of the translations done by machines and the work the community is doing no longer needed? At the very least, the nature of their work will change and I think they're not interested in participating anymore.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
krick 1y ago
(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 rolled this bullshit auto-translator out and pissed off a lot of people in the community, including a major contributor for the last 20 years? Surely they could just ignore him and go on with this auto-translation initiative (BTW, thay don't even have to worry about whatever he wants to "prohibit" to do with his translations, because he waived off his rights by posting them). Would it be better than trying to set up a call and discuss things, try to find some compromise, gather a number of recommendations she may then pass onto people working on the auto-translator initiative (because surely this Kiki person, whoever she is, is not the sole person responsible for this and cannot magically just fix the situation)?
- jogu 1y ago
  I'm not sure if just this individual is upset, or if he's speaking on behalf of the entire community he's the leader of. I think it's clear that Mozilla wants machine translation to take a bigger role in producing localized content, and this new process will be a large shift in the way things have been done. I think it's fair for Mozilla to do this, but I also think it's fair for the maintainer to be upset with this decision and no longer want to volunteer his time to clean up slop. The initial response feels premature and tone deaf which is why people are irked by it. Given that Mozilla "shot first" so to speak, the onus is on them to take action first e.g. disable the bot, revert changes to articles, etc. Only after doing this can discussion on a path forward happen.

jack1243star 1y ago

> Generally speaking, orgs aren't trying to replace high-quality human translations with lower-quality machine translations. Seems that this is exactly what Mozilla did? And Microsoft, and Reddit, etc.

kentm 1y ago
Correct. Companies are absolutely falling over themselves to replace high quality human translations with lower quality machine translation. I’m not sure how a hacker news poster could miss this trend.
- usrnm 1y ago
  A hacker news poster is very likely to consume the original English text and never encounter anything else, regardless of whether it's human-translated or not. Just like the people who make these decisions in the first place

josefx 1y ago

> Generally speaking, orgs aren't trying to replace high-quality human translations with lower-quality machine translations. How would you handle updates to an article? Would you blindly replace all existing translations or would you notify the maintainers and wait for them to get around to it? I wouldn't be surprised if orgs blindly opted for the first, which also means that a single spelling correction would be enough to overwrite days of work.