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Another Ben from Khan Academy here! I'd like to also emphasize how much we lean on our community. Khan Academy's goal is not to be perfect, but to iterate towa

by kamens 13y ago

Another Ben from Khan Academy here! I'd like to also emphasize how much we lean on our community. Khan Academy's goal is not to be perfect, but to iterate towards perfection — it'd be impossible to do that across such a broad array of content without building up a strong community. Beneath our videos the community creates Q&A to help address (we hope) misconceptions and follow-ups about each topic (fun example: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy/universe-scale-topic/scale-small-large-tutorial/v/scale-of-the-large https://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy/...). When the original WaPo article was posted, it mentioned a user's question ("So is .02009 greater than .0207?") as evidence of KA failure. But to me, the fact that there were already helpful, patient responses to this question from our community...well, that's a success. We know KA can't magically teach everybody everything, and building a community of support is one of our biggest goals. Of course, we also use the gems in this community to help us iterate on content. Sal goes back and reworks videos often, but this is difficult to scale so we recently added the ability for us to make "official clarifications" from our community's content. These are video annotations that clarify important or confusing points for videos we haven't had time to redo yet (see an example at 12:47 in https://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/acids-and-bases/v/ph--poh-of-strong-acids-and-bases https://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/acids-and-base...). Overall, Sal has imbued the entire company, starting at the top, with a belief that shipping beats perfection.* We're building tools to move as fast as possible any time we can improve our content — but that won't stop the occasional valid criticism from surfacing. We'll make use of it. On a transparent/personal note, I take issue w/ many of the assumptions and tone behind this letter...but my shortcomings here won't stop our team from plucking some value out of it. * https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/for-developers https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/for-develop...

nonrecursive 13y ago
Thanks for the clarification! I think you guys are doing awesome, world-changing work. I, too, took issue with the letter. It seemed like the author was trying to embarrass Khan Academy, using one issue to imply that you're irresponsible and lazy. I think that his approach is in itself irresponsible and lazy - it would have made more sense for the author to reach out privately to get a better understanding of how your organization operates instead of loudly proclaiming, without merit, that you're squandering trust and resources. Anyway - just wanted to say that I think most people will find that the article reflects poorly on the author and not on Khan Academy. Keep up the good work!
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  I know nothing of how Khan Academy works and have no specific opinion on whether the author of this blog was right or wrong to call them out... But, as a general rule, I find it hard to fault people for turning to public shaming quickly as a way to get through to a tech/web company about some problem they have these days. It is, sadly, often the best path to results. There are amazingly large swaths of the software/web/services industry where customer service and back channel communication to decision makers in the company essentially doesn't exist. Phone numbers don't exist, appropriate email addresses are hard to find and are likely to just robo-response you (and point you to a FAQ that doesn't cover your situation) if you do manage to find them, etc. Maybe there is some obscure mailing list the user could be heard on, except that mailing list is only known by experts on the software or service and good luck finding it if you aren't even aware it might exist. Or maybe there is some specific person they could tweet at, but not being part of that culture they have no idea who that would be. I mostly blame Google for the sad state of this. Though they are hardly the only offenders, they were pioneers in this area and are certainly one of the largest who still practice it across most of their products and their continued practice of it legitimizes it in the minds of other web companies. Again, I'm not saying any of this does or doesn't apply to Khan Academy. I'd guess based on the community nature of the product it is not nearly as bad as I've seen elsewhere, but I think the sorry state of customer service across the industry is directly responsible for these sorts of public shaming posts and the people making them aren't being irrational all things considered, the service/software companies as a group are bringing it on themselves.

by kamens 13y ago

nonrecursive 13y ago

Thanks for the clarification! I think you guys are doing awesome, world-changing work. I, too, took issue with the letter. It seemed like the author was trying to embarrass Khan Academy, using one issue to imply that you're irresponsible and lazy. I think that his approach is in itself irresponsible and lazy - it would have made more sense for the author to reach out privately to get a better understanding of how your organization operates instead of loudly proclaiming, without merit, that you're squandering trust and resources. Anyway - just wanted to say that I think most people will find that the article reflects poorly on the author and not on Khan Academy. Keep up the good work!

georgemcbay 13y ago
I know nothing of how Khan Academy works and have no specific opinion on whether the author of this blog was right or wrong to call them out... But, as a general rule, I find it hard to fault people for turning to public shaming quickly as a way to get through to a tech/web company about some problem they have these days. It is, sadly, often the best path to results. There are amazingly large swaths of the software/web/services industry where customer service and back channel communication to decision makers in the company essentially doesn't exist. Phone numbers don't exist, appropriate email addresses are hard to find and are likely to just robo-response you (and point you to a FAQ that doesn't cover your situation) if you do manage to find them, etc. Maybe there is some obscure mailing list the user could be heard on, except that mailing list is only known by experts on the software or service and good luck finding it if you aren't even aware it might exist. Or maybe there is some specific person they could tweet at, but not being part of that culture they have no idea who that would be. I mostly blame Google for the sad state of this. Though they are hardly the only offenders, they were pioneers in this area and are certainly one of the largest who still practice it across most of their products and their continued practice of it legitimizes it in the minds of other web companies. Again, I'm not saying any of this does or doesn't apply to Khan Academy. I'd guess based on the community nature of the product it is not nearly as bad as I've seen elsewhere, but I think the sorry state of customer service across the industry is directly responsible for these sorts of public shaming posts and the people making them aren't being irrational all things considered, the service/software companies as a group are bringing it on themselves.