8 ms·

> Hi Marsf, > 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

by nozilla 11mo ago

> Hi Marsf, > 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 to talk about this further? We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with. > My timezone is UTC+7, so it should be easier for us to set up time. Let me know how that sound! What a horribly condescending and patronising response. If I'd received this it would just further vindicate my decision to quit.

nilslindemann 11mo ago
I just read someone asking someone else for a phone call.
- 1over137 11mo ago
  Speaking a second language live is much harder than taking your time and writing something.
  - xxs 11mo ago
    That's not necessary true. Regardless the response is totally trash and the timezone (US west coast) likely doesn't help, either Also I'd expect if a person volunteers as translator they'd be pretty decent at speaking.
    - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
      > Also I'd expect if a person volunteers as translator they'd be pretty decent at speaking. Translators (of texts) are not interpreters.
      - xxs 11mo ago
        To learn nuances, spoken language is quite important. I am not a translator and English is not my 1st language (technically) - I'd have no issues 'hopping' on a call.
        aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
        > To learn nuances, spoken language is quite important. In my experience, it's quite the opposite: written language carries a lot more nuances than the (often more shallow) spoken language.
        crote 11mo ago
        I do. My written English is orders of magnitude better than my spoken English - simply because I practice it a lot more. I have no problem "hopping on a call" if it's a casual conversation between friends, but when stakes actually matter it would be stupid to put myself in a worse position than strictly necessary. Native speakers have a habit of talking a lot, talking fast, and talking with a lot of subtleties, nuances, and hidden meanings. In written conversations I can read a sentence twice and think a second about the right phrasing to use in response, but in face-to-face conversations this is simply not possible. It would be like a professional debater like college kids "debating" with late Charlie Kirk: no wonder they end up "getting owned" - they are punching way above their weight class!
    - Levitz 11mo ago
      The only context I can think of in which it wouldn't be true is if someone learned the language through full immersion with no text involved, it's a bizarre situation. There's also no reason as to assume that a volunteer translator is good at speaking, especially in regards to English, which pronunciation is not explicitly stated in its writing (like, say, Spanish). You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example.
      - xxs 11mo ago
        >You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example. That comma, gives you away. The commas (and punctuation in general) in English are rather special in a way they convey the spoken language rather than designated rules. Edit: As for the full immersion when I was learning English (as kid, 5th grade or so), I recall visualizing the words (letters) in my head while speaking. Certain mistakes like than <> then, it's <> it, their<>there etc. are unlikely to happen while writing due to the way language was initially perceived (and b/c I leaned if-then much earlier). Still, esp. with English I'd not consider translating anything unless my spoken version of it was good enough.
    - price 11mo ago
      The timezone is UTC+7. That's in Asia, two hours from Japan time. That's why the staff member making the reply brought it up: > My timezone is UTC+7, so it should be easier for us to set up time.
      - xxs 11mo ago
        thanks a ton! I did read it as GMT-7... I had to recheck it (just in case). Mia maxima culpa!
- pjc50 11mo ago
  Yes. In an online community that operates in written text and is separated by timezones, there's several reasons why that's a no-no. To me, this seems very simple: they introduced a machine translation workflow. Doing so signals the intent to replace their human translators. The human translators understandably quit rather than collaborate with their replacements.
hazn 11mo ago
Why is it condescending and patronzing? I read it as a person trying to understand the situation.
- rossant 11mo ago
  Same.
- haunter 11mo ago
  The person gives a clear, detailed answer in the post about their problems > "We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with" To me that's very condescending, like someone who reads but doesn't understand Borderline AI response And personally offering a call is like a sidestep "lets move this problem out of the public discourse" which is especially funny considering it's about a forum
  - atoav 11mo ago
    This is the type of response you shouldn't make. Instead you should do your homework and then come back with the receipts. E.g. figure out why this happened, express why it shouldn't have happened, why it should happen never again, how it is understandable how they feel, express that you cannot expect them to come back, make them an actual offer that would make them come back (e.g. by giving them a better place at the table or offering compensation), etc. But "I am sorry you feel" is bordering on gaslighting. That is as if you are sorry your wife feels sad after you beat them. You should feel sorry and ashamed for doing the beating, not for how someone feels as a result of it. The described things are clearly unacceptable and whether someone feels outrage or not doesn't make them more or less acceptable.
  - WesolyKubeczek 11mo ago
    > Borderline AI response I can’t believe what I’m going to say now, but AIs are better at this. Granted, their apologies are good for shit since they have no agency and can’t really learn from their mistakes, but they at least leave no doubts at who is at fault and should be ashamed. (Cue Gemini with its “I’m a disgrace” self-flagellation)
  - deleted 11mo ago
janmalec 11mo ago
How would you form this response to make it less condensending and patronizing? I won't judge if it is patronizing or not because I'm not very good at this kind of thing but would like to understand the issue.
- impossiblefork 11mo ago
  You wouldn't form this response. 'We didn't understand it was this bad, so we've shut down SUMO bot for the Japanese Wiki'.
- cmcaleer 11mo ago
  OP has given all that they need, English is probably not their first language, and the first response was to ask for even more unpaid time and labour (presumably in English) in a format that is likely much more difficult for them to summarise coherent thoughts succinctly in, while addressing zero of their issues. They’re asking for MORE effort of the volunteer to fix their bot’s fuckup. I’m honestly struggling to think of a more insulting way to respond to this. At least “Fuck off” isn’t pretending to care, it’s fewer words to read and isn’t asking for an indeterminate amount of time from you.
- detaro 11mo ago
  a) don't apologize for the other persons feelings, but for your actions that lead to it b) don't look like you are trying to take the conversation out of the community space it's happening in and/or hiding details by going to a private call (you can offer a call, but it shouldn't be the expectation) c) Acknowledge the concrete complaints made. Are you truly "struggling to understand" what someone means when they complain that it didn't happen in a staging environment first? d) a-c also lead to "don't sound like any cookie-cutter PR response to a complaint ever, people have learned those are not genuine". Especially if you are a project that makes a big deal out of its community interacting with said community. e) ideally announce some concrete first step, e.g. pausing the bot
  - cma 11mo ago
    > Are you truly "struggling to understand" what someone means You've turned this around into a very different quote, and shouldn't use quote marks for that. They wrote: > We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with. I don't like their response and agree with a lot of people in the thread it looks like they are trying to do the call to take it private. But we don't have to make up stuff.
meindnoch 11mo ago
I don't understand people like this. No, I don't want to "hop on a call", I've already written down everything. Can you not read?
- rwmj 11mo ago
  It's a combination of inability to read anything longer than a tweet and not wanting to put anything on record.
  - whamlastxmas 11mo ago
    "We tried but this unpaid volunteer didn't cooperate by continuing to work for free"
  - p0w3n3d 11mo ago
    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.
    - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
      Your claim is based on the very strong assumption that if you have a phone or video call with a person that you already hate, things will get better. My life experience does tell me that this is often not the case: if people are already frustrated and have built a wall, it is better to use something more impersonal, like such an online text discussion.
      - benterix 11mo ago
        True but organizations are not uniform, one person decided to take a destructive action and another one might want to fix it. But I agree, if after receiving such a message someone is saying "let's hop on a call", there's little chance of things going right on the call.
cubefox 11mo ago
I don't get it. It's not the best possible phrasing, but people who find this sounds "horribly condescending" are excessively sensitive in my opinion. Like a grown man complaining about being "horribly hurt" when a careless passer-by bumped into him.
- yason 11mo ago
  I'm sorry you don't get it and that you feel they're excessively sensitive. On the behalf of the HN community would you like to share with us more about how you feel about it so that we can better understand your position. I'm sure we can help you find the best possible phrasing to better express the excess of said sensitivity. We're sorry you've had to encounter such a wording and attitude on our forum.
  - nmeagent 11mo ago
    In keeping with the grand traditions of corporate communications, perhaps we should all jump on a call to explore these issues in an unaccountable and likely adversarial way.
- m-schuetz 11mo ago
  I'm sorry you feel that way.
  - cubefox 11mo ago
    No need to be sorry, I'm not a snowflake. :)
- hitarpetar 11mo ago
  sorry you're struggling with the way the community responded
rezaprima 11mo ago
Further down someone mention a bug that surfaced prior, and I take this as an attempt to understand the bug further.
apexalpha 11mo ago
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.
- edu 11mo ago
  As somebody from Spain, I concur.
- gyomu 11mo ago
  "I'm sorry for how you feel" is widely accepted as a non-apology in English. Sincere apologies show awareness of how one's actions led to the situation that would require the apology.
  - apexalpha 11mo ago
    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.
    - fouc 11mo ago
      "I'm sorry for you" is a bit weird, normally we would say "I feel sorry for you", both having the meaning of showing sympathy. It would typically be inappropriate to use either of those in a sincere apology message.
    - whstl 11mo ago
      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 responsibility. With that said: I don't even know if the author (Kiki) is a native english speaker, since she's part of other language translation groups, so it might be 100% without intent. But that's how a lot of people perceive it today.
karel-3d 11mo ago
> I'm sorry good start > for how you feel oh. > hop on a call ...oh.
csmpltn 11mo ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 11mo ago
  You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
yahoozoo 11mo ago
what
Peaches4Rent 11mo ago
It's the "I'm sorry how you feel" that's the problem here. If they just said "Hi, I want to see how we can fix this. Can we get on a call". It sounds much better
skylurk 11mo ago
To me it comes across like a community outreach flavour of sealioning. I wonder if there's a different name for that?
solatic 11mo ago
Fully agree with you, and people who don't understand this should follow through to read the actual link. Marsf explained that sumobot deleted the volunteers' translations, zero coordination, and Kiki's response is "I'm sorry for how you feel?" Is someone supposed to be happy when a machine deletes their volunteer work? WTF? This needs to be explained further? Marsf needs to risk his time getting on a call to explain that having a machine delete your volunteer work is some fucking bullshit, and expect what, more of the "I'm sorry you feel bad we deleted your work" bullshit?

by nozilla 11mo ago

nilslindemann 11mo ago

I just read someone asking someone else for a phone call.

1over137 11mo ago
Speaking a second language live is much harder than taking your time and writing something.
- xxs 11mo ago
  That's not necessary true. Regardless the response is totally trash and the timezone (US west coast) likely doesn't help, either Also I'd expect if a person volunteers as translator they'd be pretty decent at speaking.
  - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
    > Also I'd expect if a person volunteers as translator they'd be pretty decent at speaking. Translators (of texts) are not interpreters.
    - xxs 11mo ago
      To learn nuances, spoken language is quite important. I am not a translator and English is not my 1st language (technically) - I'd have no issues 'hopping' on a call.
      - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
        > To learn nuances, spoken language is quite important. In my experience, it's quite the opposite: written language carries a lot more nuances than the (often more shallow) spoken language.
      - crote 11mo ago
        I do. My written English is orders of magnitude better than my spoken English - simply because I practice it a lot more. I have no problem "hopping on a call" if it's a casual conversation between friends, but when stakes actually matter it would be stupid to put myself in a worse position than strictly necessary. Native speakers have a habit of talking a lot, talking fast, and talking with a lot of subtleties, nuances, and hidden meanings. In written conversations I can read a sentence twice and think a second about the right phrasing to use in response, but in face-to-face conversations this is simply not possible. It would be like a professional debater like college kids "debating" with late Charlie Kirk: no wonder they end up "getting owned" - they are punching way above their weight class!
  - Levitz 11mo ago
    The only context I can think of in which it wouldn't be true is if someone learned the language through full immersion with no text involved, it's a bizarre situation. There's also no reason as to assume that a volunteer translator is good at speaking, especially in regards to English, which pronunciation is not explicitly stated in its writing (like, say, Spanish). You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example.
    - xxs 11mo ago
      >You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example. That comma, gives you away. The commas (and punctuation in general) in English are rather special in a way they convey the spoken language rather than designated rules. Edit: As for the full immersion when I was learning English (as kid, 5th grade or so), I recall visualizing the words (letters) in my head while speaking. Certain mistakes like than <> then, it's <> it, their<>there etc. are unlikely to happen while writing due to the way language was initially perceived (and b/c I leaned if-then much earlier). Still, esp. with English I'd not consider translating anything unless my spoken version of it was good enough.
  - price 11mo ago
    The timezone is UTC+7. That's in Asia, two hours from Japan time. That's why the staff member making the reply brought it up: > My timezone is UTC+7, so it should be easier for us to set up time.
    - xxs 11mo ago
      thanks a ton! I did read it as GMT-7... I had to recheck it (just in case). Mia maxima culpa!
pjc50 11mo ago
Yes. In an online community that operates in written text and is separated by timezones, there's several reasons why that's a no-no. To me, this seems very simple: they introduced a machine translation workflow. Doing so signals the intent to replace their human translators. The human translators understandably quit rather than collaborate with their replacements.

hazn 11mo ago

Why is it condescending and patronzing? I read it as a person trying to understand the situation.

rossant 11mo ago
Same.
haunter 11mo ago
The person gives a clear, detailed answer in the post about their problems > "We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with" To me that's very condescending, like someone who reads but doesn't understand Borderline AI response And personally offering a call is like a sidestep "lets move this problem out of the public discourse" which is especially funny considering it's about a forum
- atoav 11mo ago
  This is the type of response you shouldn't make. Instead you should do your homework and then come back with the receipts. E.g. figure out why this happened, express why it shouldn't have happened, why it should happen never again, how it is understandable how they feel, express that you cannot expect them to come back, make them an actual offer that would make them come back (e.g. by giving them a better place at the table or offering compensation), etc. But "I am sorry you feel" is bordering on gaslighting. That is as if you are sorry your wife feels sad after you beat them. You should feel sorry and ashamed for doing the beating, not for how someone feels as a result of it. The described things are clearly unacceptable and whether someone feels outrage or not doesn't make them more or less acceptable.
- WesolyKubeczek 11mo ago
  > Borderline AI response I can’t believe what I’m going to say now, but AIs are better at this. Granted, their apologies are good for shit since they have no agency and can’t really learn from their mistakes, but they at least leave no doubts at who is at fault and should be ashamed. (Cue Gemini with its “I’m a disgrace” self-flagellation)
- deleted 11mo ago

janmalec 11mo ago

How would you form this response to make it less condensending and patronizing? I won't judge if it is patronizing or not because I'm not very good at this kind of thing but would like to understand the issue.

impossiblefork 11mo ago
You wouldn't form this response. 'We didn't understand it was this bad, so we've shut down SUMO bot for the Japanese Wiki'.
cmcaleer 11mo ago
OP has given all that they need, English is probably not their first language, and the first response was to ask for even more unpaid time and labour (presumably in English) in a format that is likely much more difficult for them to summarise coherent thoughts succinctly in, while addressing zero of their issues. They’re asking for MORE effort of the volunteer to fix their bot’s fuckup. I’m honestly struggling to think of a more insulting way to respond to this. At least “Fuck off” isn’t pretending to care, it’s fewer words to read and isn’t asking for an indeterminate amount of time from you.
detaro 11mo ago
a) don't apologize for the other persons feelings, but for your actions that lead to it b) don't look like you are trying to take the conversation out of the community space it's happening in and/or hiding details by going to a private call (you can offer a call, but it shouldn't be the expectation) c) Acknowledge the concrete complaints made. Are you truly "struggling to understand" what someone means when they complain that it didn't happen in a staging environment first? d) a-c also lead to "don't sound like any cookie-cutter PR response to a complaint ever, people have learned those are not genuine". Especially if you are a project that makes a big deal out of its community interacting with said community. e) ideally announce some concrete first step, e.g. pausing the bot
- cma 11mo ago
  > Are you truly "struggling to understand" what someone means You've turned this around into a very different quote, and shouldn't use quote marks for that. They wrote: > We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with. I don't like their response and agree with a lot of people in the thread it looks like they are trying to do the call to take it private. But we don't have to make up stuff.

meindnoch 11mo ago

I don't understand people like this. No, I don't want to "hop on a call", I've already written down everything. Can you not read?

rwmj 11mo ago
It's a combination of inability to read anything longer than a tweet and not wanting to put anything on record.
- whamlastxmas 11mo ago
  "We tried but this unpaid volunteer didn't cooperate by continuing to work for free"
- p0w3n3d 11mo ago
  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.
  - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
    Your claim is based on the very strong assumption that if you have a phone or video call with a person that you already hate, things will get better. My life experience does tell me that this is often not the case: if people are already frustrated and have built a wall, it is better to use something more impersonal, like such an online text discussion.
    - benterix 11mo ago
      True but organizations are not uniform, one person decided to take a destructive action and another one might want to fix it. But I agree, if after receiving such a message someone is saying "let's hop on a call", there's little chance of things going right on the call.

cubefox 11mo ago

I don't get it. It's not the best possible phrasing, but people who find this sounds "horribly condescending" are excessively sensitive in my opinion. Like a grown man complaining about being "horribly hurt" when a careless passer-by bumped into him.

yason 11mo ago
I'm sorry you don't get it and that you feel they're excessively sensitive. On the behalf of the HN community would you like to share with us more about how you feel about it so that we can better understand your position. I'm sure we can help you find the best possible phrasing to better express the excess of said sensitivity. We're sorry you've had to encounter such a wording and attitude on our forum.
- nmeagent 11mo ago
  In keeping with the grand traditions of corporate communications, perhaps we should all jump on a call to explore these issues in an unaccountable and likely adversarial way.
m-schuetz 11mo ago
I'm sorry you feel that way.
- cubefox 11mo ago
  No need to be sorry, I'm not a snowflake. :)
hitarpetar 11mo ago
sorry you're struggling with the way the community responded

rezaprima 11mo ago

Further down someone mention a bug that surfaced prior, and I take this as an attempt to understand the bug further.

apexalpha 11mo ago

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.

edu 11mo ago
As somebody from Spain, I concur.
gyomu 11mo ago
"I'm sorry for how you feel" is widely accepted as a non-apology in English. Sincere apologies show awareness of how one's actions led to the situation that would require the apology.
- apexalpha 11mo ago
  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.
  - fouc 11mo ago
    "I'm sorry for you" is a bit weird, normally we would say "I feel sorry for you", both having the meaning of showing sympathy. It would typically be inappropriate to use either of those in a sincere apology message.
  - whstl 11mo ago
    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 responsibility. With that said: I don't even know if the author (Kiki) is a native english speaker, since she's part of other language translation groups, so it might be 100% without intent. But that's how a lot of people perceive it today.

karel-3d 11mo ago

> I'm sorry good start > for how you feel oh. > hop on a call ...oh.

csmpltn 11mo ago

[flagged]

tomhow 11mo ago
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

yahoozoo 11mo ago

what

Peaches4Rent 11mo ago

It's the "I'm sorry how you feel" that's the problem here. If they just said "Hi, I want to see how we can fix this. Can we get on a call". It sounds much better

skylurk 11mo ago

To me it comes across like a community outreach flavour of sealioning. I wonder if there's a different name for that?

solatic 11mo ago

Fully agree with you, and people who don't understand this should follow through to read the actual link. Marsf explained that sumobot deleted the volunteers' translations, zero coordination, and Kiki's response is "I'm sorry for how you feel?" Is someone supposed to be happy when a machine deletes their volunteer work? WTF? This needs to be explained further? Marsf needs to risk his time getting on a call to explain that having a machine delete your volunteer work is some fucking bullshit, and expect what, more of the "I'm sorry you feel bad we deleted your work" bullshit?