[HN Gopher] So you've made a mistake and it's public
___________________________________________________________________
So you've made a mistake and it's public
Author : abbe98
Score : 489 points
Date : 2020-11-13 17:11 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (meta.wikimedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (meta.wikimedia.org)
| Zelphyr wrote:
| Something that I would include with the apology part (the text
| may have covered this and I missed it) is that apologies don't
| have but's.
|
| "I'm sorry I funded Wikimedia Antarctica but..."
|
| Everything you say after the but negates everything you say
| before it and now you're only trying to justify your actions.
| Simply, "I'm sorry I funded Wikimedia Antarctica." and proceed to
| describe what you learned: "I neglected to look at relevant data
| before doing so. I see how that affected my thinking and I'm
| committed to doing that in future deals."
|
| I can't stress how much more impactful my apologies have become
| with people simply by leaving out that "but". Even my
| relationship with my wife has improved because of it and I've
| noticed she's started to leave off the "but's" as well, which
| really makes me appreciate her apologies a whole lot more.
| maccard wrote:
| I make an effort to do this too, I've found that it's made me
| more cynical of apologies on occasion. I almost feel like I'm
| waiting for a "but".
| trynewideas wrote:
| > These elements are required for your acknowledgement to be
| also valid as apology, see Apology#Which elements should be
| included in an apology for the details.
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Apology#Which_elements_shoul...
|
| > When the offender takes full responsibility for one's
| wrongdoing, a simple statement saying "I am sorry." may help
| build the trust. This is particularly true if there is a story
| of good relationship with the offender; In most cases however,
| it will be insufficient.
|
| It doesn't explicitly address "I'm sorry, but..." phrasing, but
| does suggest limiting apologies to specifically acknowledging
| what was done (and the pain it caused), accepting
| responsibility, and expressing regret.
| JackFr wrote:
| My wife and I follow that and have tried to teach it to our
| kids. An apology with a 'but' isn't an apology.
|
| Two more worth thinking about: Explain vs. excuse. While your
| feelings and justifications may explain your bad behavior they
| do not excuse it.
|
| Not your fault, but still your problem. The (wrong) idea that
| an unexpected circumstance can excuse bad behavior, because
| it's not your fault.
| js2 wrote:
| People confuse explanations with excuses. It's okay to provide
| an explanation as long as you're not excusing the thing you did
| was wrong. For example:
|
| "I apologize for shouting at you. I was short on sleep and
| frustrated about something else. I was wrong to take out my
| frustration on you."
|
| vs:
|
| "I apologize for shouting at you but I was tired and
| frustrated."
|
| An explanation can make the apology stronger because it
| demonstrates that you realize what it is you're apologizing
| for.
| textgel wrote:
| I think a major point missing in amongst the discussion so far,
| and one that's causing a lot of crosstalk is whether you should
| even be apologising at all.
|
| For example.
|
| Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of
| forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against
| the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which
| can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the
| kickback against apologising that we're seeing is coming from the
| numerous public examples of this tactic and the follow-up where
| any good-faith apology will be used to make a further example of
| the heretic.
|
| If you are dealing with this kind of thing then the tactic of
| take-cover and let the storm pass seems sane (pearls before swine
| etc). But if you're actually dealing with a genuine person or
| group who you've genuinely wronged then a real apology is
| warranted.
|
| One other thing I'd add; if you have wronged someone and you've
| apologised and made genuine efforts to make amends. While it is
| on the other person to decide whether or not they will
| accept/forgive, it is not a requirement to indefinitely
| debase/lower yourself in the pursuit of obtaining their
| forgiveness. You can make efforts up to a point but you are not
| required to destroy yourself until they grant it. If the
| situation is unsalvageable then that's what it is.
|
| For studys sake on how this can get out of control, there are
| numerous examples of shitty parents holding a past wrong over a
| childs head indefinitely in the raised-by-narcissists subreddit
| which illustrate the tactic in use by malicious types there.
| bosswipe wrote:
| Progressives are widely known for things like increasing the
| minimum wage, expanding access to health care, or legalizing
| drugs. I've never heard progressives pushing for forced public
| apologies.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| AFAIK, Cortes is a Progressive[0], and a congressperson,
| which puts her in a position of power. She encouraged her
| supporters to create a list of Trump supporters so they can
| be denied employment in the future[1]. Jennifer Rubin, likely
| also a Progressive[2], said: "any [Republican] now promoting
| rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the will
| of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should
| never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty
| position or be accepted into 'polite' society. _We have a
| list_."
|
| More than apologies, these two at least, are looking to
| punish.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez
|
| [1] https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/aoc-activists-
| hint-b...
|
| [2] https://www.wctrib.com/opinion/columns/4036749-Jennifer-
| Rubi...
| justatdotin wrote:
| maybe baseless allegations of fraud exceeds the domain of
| "So you've made a mistake"
| [deleted]
| textgel wrote:
| Willful blindness is a common tactic too; perhaps a
| psychological extension of the progressive safe-space
| doctrine but I couldn't be certain.
|
| Another one that interests me greatly is the frequent use of
| the narcissists prayer in debate, have you ever heard it?
|
| It goes as follows.
|
| That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if
| it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my
| fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did... You
| deserved it.
|
| I suppose I'll start the ball rolling.
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/14/rosetta-
| come...
| cowpig wrote:
| > if you're actually dealing with a genuine person or group who
| you've genuinely wronged then a real apology is warranted
|
| A pitfall of this mentality, at least in my experience, is that
| people I hurt are usually much better judges of whether I hurt
| them than I am.
|
| Something I learned that helped is: you can hurt someone
| without being wrong. "I regret that my actions had this effect
| on you," is a good place to start a conversation when I'm not
| (yet?) convinced I would have done anything differently in
| hindsight.
|
| Often, simply acknowledging that someone has been hurt by my
| actions, and trying to understand why, has yielded far better
| outcomes than sticking with my judgment. Both in that they
| affected party feels better, and in that I get to add a new
| dimension to my understanding of social dynamics.
|
| It often doesn't matter how legitimate someones' complaint is
| according to my personal worldview; what matters is how the
| affected feel.
| pvarangot wrote:
| > A pitfall of this mentality, at least in my experience, is
| that people I hurt are usually much better judges of whether
| I hurt them than I am.
|
| It would be easier if people just talked more about their
| feelings even if they don't understand me. If I hurt someone
| and they just say something like "look I feel weird because
| of this and this that happened between us", then I can
| process and understand what went wrong. I spent some years
| running teams and doing management and I used 1v1s for this
| to really good results.
|
| I do that and a lot of my closest friends also do that. I
| think people that expect you to read their feelings are the
| ones that are going to get hurt if they spend time around
| because they have unrealistic expectations. I can only feel
| my feelings, or get empathetic with people that have opened
| up to me before. I can't be apologizing all the time just in
| case, that's also ridiculous and even though a lot of people
| do it in, specially in California, I think it comes down as
| condescending and sometimes even egotistical.
| grawprog wrote:
| >Something I learned that helped is: you can hurt someone
| without being wrong
|
| >It often doesn't matter how legitimate someones' complaint
| is according to my personal worldview; what matters is how
| the affected feel.
|
| I can't get behind this. Why am I responsible for the way the
| chemicals in someone's brain react if I say something that
| unintentionally hurts them? If i'm doing nothing wrong as you
| say and someone else is offended, or sad or hurt, that's
| honestly their problem.
|
| People need to take responsibility for their feelings instead
| of making everyone else take responsibility for their
| feelings.
|
| Why should I ever be responsible for the way someone feels
| unless i've done something intentionally to make them feel
| that way?
|
| People's feelings are their own business, nobody else has the
| unintentional responsibility of random people's arbitrary
| feelings.
| textgel wrote:
| You're absolutely right about not knowing being a problem;
| unfortunately I'm guessing it's a bit of an art, at least
| with respect to the "be careful of bad-faith actors" replies
| you've received, or at least a heavy dose of knowing the
| other party.
|
| I do however find that if I actually take time to think about
| what's happened, a genuine wrong that might have been caused
| in a rush/unthought out moment is (usually) pretty obvious
| when looked back on in hindsight; there's usually an "aaah
| shit yeah that'd piss me off too" moment.
| mseepgood wrote:
| > "I regret that my actions had this effect on you,"
|
| That's just a variation of "I'm sorry you're so impatient" or
| "It's too bad you have no sense of humor.": https://meta.wiki
| media.org/wiki/Apology#Acknowledgment_of_th...
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/celebrity/people-
| are...
| Aunche wrote:
| I don't disagree with anything you said, but I don't think
| this applies to the original comment. The majority of people
| who demand an apology aren't the victims. They're just random
| people on Twitter who are just looking for ways to attack
| people they don't like. It may have been a mistake for
| someone to wear a mildly racist costume on Halloween a decade
| ago, but there is no reason they should be expected to
| apologize.
| ponker wrote:
| "I'm sorry you felt that way" is considered worse than a non-
| apology by the current leading apology extractors.
| npatrick04 wrote:
| I agree with you, but he didn't say the word "sorry".
|
| Check out "Thank You for Arguing" by Jay Heinrichs. It
| covers the same basic steps, but recommends to exclude the
| actual apology part. It's also a great book for other
| reasons.
| nomdep wrote:
| That only works of you know you are dealing with people
| rariobal and with good intentions. We human tend not to be
| thos things when acting in large groups.
| ZainRiz wrote:
| It also requires the recipient to know they're coming from
| a sincere person with good intentions.
|
| If that perception isn't their, it comes across as a very
| different message ("I'm sorry you don't have a thick enough
| skin")
| BaronVonSteuben wrote:
| In a normal world I would agree with you completely.
|
| However, if you've offended some of the woke crowd then this
| may be worse than saying nothing at all. In your example,
| they would say you are rubbing salt in the wound with "I
| regret that my actions had this effect on you." If you aren't
| prepared to unambiguously denounce yourself, you may
| (unintentionally) make things worse.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I consider myself a progressive and honestly I think you have a
| point. I think it comes from a good place (it's a reaction to a
| history of things simply being brushed off, ignored and not
| addressed), but it's ultimately not a good way of dealing
| things.
|
| I think the happy medium is where people are held accountable
| for their actions (ideally apologising for them if they really
| have done something wrong, which often times they have even if
| the response to that is overly vitriolic), and then allowed the
| space to make amends and move on with their lives.
| inopinatus wrote:
| The "progressives" you're referring to aren't progressive.
| They're reactionary authoritarians, hijacking the ideals and
| preferences of whatever group they're attached to. You can find
| them in all forms of debased public discourse and lowbrow
| populism, with a history going back millennia, and uniformly
| distributed across the political spectrum. No-one called the
| Spanish Inquisition progressive.
|
| I hold a very special loathing of anyone that weaponizes
| process in order to control others.
|
| _" The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of
| passionate intensity"_.
| textgel wrote:
| This is a a good point; and one I wish I could give you a
| decent response to as this problem is such a big one and one
| that I've seen hit plenty of groups I once subscribed to, and
| evidently from history quite an old one too however I'm at a
| loss on what the correct response to the phenomenon is.
|
| The cheap response is to whine about "no true scotsman" but
| I'd love to see ideas on how to prevent groups actually
| getting corrupted in this way; it's probably in the "how do
| we create world peace" level of problems but the cycle is
| getting very wearing!
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| There are striking similarities between modern
| progressivism/wokeness and various church clergy throughout the
| ages. I'm glad you made that connection.
| textgel wrote:
| I honestly feel it needs to be described in such terms; the
| idea definitely isn't my own, I remember the ah-ha moment
| when the internalised-misogyny/toxic-masculinity = original-
| sin link was pointed out to me and the more aspects of it
| that I look at the more it aligns.
| [deleted]
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| > Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of
| forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes
| against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable
| demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think
| a lot of the kickback against apologising that we're seeing is
| coming from the numerous public examples of this tactic and the
| follow-up where any good-faith apology will be used to make a
| further example of the heretic.
|
| Well said. It's just a big witch hunt. If you don't apologize,
| you're in the wrong; if you do apologize, clearly you are a bad
| person because you were in the wrong, and the onus is now on
| you to demonstrate you're no longer that "bad" person. It's
| guilty until proven innocent and either way you lose.
|
| Not to mention how many of these witch hunters have never said
| or done anything wrong themselves, ever? If you're a saint,
| then sure, by all means call out people for their wrong doings.
| But I have a hunch that 99% of progressives would be EXTREMELY
| uncomfortable if someone said they were going to pull every
| tweet, post, interview, statement, etc that they'd ever made
| and scrutinize them for harmful statements.
|
| Finally, it's completely biased and partisan. The most famous
| example is Alyssa Milano, who really brought the Me Too
| movement to the spotlight, defending Joe Biden because he was
| "a good man". If you're not their friend, you don't get the
| same benefit of the doubt. The hypocrisy is unbearable.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > It's guilty until proven innocent and either way you lose.
|
| One could say it's guilty until proven guilty.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| > Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of
| forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes
| against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable
| demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think
| a lot of the kickback against apologising that we're seeing is
| coming from the numerous public examples of this tactic and the
| follow-up where any good-faith apology will be used to make a
| further example of the heretic.
|
| This is rarely about the apology itself, but about establishing
| that something wrong has happened to begin with. The fact is, a
| lot of pretty messed up stuff routinely happens and is simply
| taken as a given. The apology is simply a marker that some
| behavior will no longer be considered acceptable. It's hardly
| even a measure of accountability, unless someone is so
| egotistical that taking responsibility is personally harmful to
| them.
| textgel wrote:
| A common tactic seen by progressives during attacks on their
| victims is to hype up the crime by either making vague claims
| such as that they "are pretty messed up" and hoping that
| regular people apply their reasonable measure of "pretty
| messed up"; to outright lies where they equate the commited
| heresy with an actual real world wrong.
|
| One charming example is this one of Morgan Freeman during the
| metoo saga where he was "Sexually harrassing a reporter live
| on TV."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4NnkHXmNEc
| [deleted]
| mainstreem wrote:
| >This is rarely about the apology itself, but about
| establishing that something wrong has happened to begin with
|
| Feh, don't even give these struggle sessions and the petty
| tyrants that perpetrate them that much credit. It's about
| establishing that something ideologically condemned by those
| demanding an apology has occurred, and nothing more. Morality
| is secondary to ideological purity among the types demanding
| apologies.
|
| Fuck 'em, I say.
| willeh wrote:
| This is purely my personal opinion, but the wikipedia community
| seems like one of the most toxic communities on the web. The
| people contributing to WP - the editors - seem more concerned
| with coming up with Kafka-esque processes to introduce to the
| community than making the actual work of making an encyclopaedia.
| Perhaps the only area where editors are as zealous they are about
| creating obscure processes, is in policing what content should
| they should fit into the their volumes. Truly, it is a
| bureaucracy expanding to meet its own needs. One that attracts a
| certain group of people, who have a certain view of social
| interactions, that necessitates certain procedures for social
| interactions, giving rise to articles like this one specifically.
|
| For the rest of us cooking up an apology from a recipe is feel
| insincere, an apology is a ritual sure showing how its done ruins
| the illusion. On a higher level this type of process-over-vision
| thinking has ruined the goals and ideas of Wikipedia, a site
| which in the 00s seemed world-changing and lead it to it's
| decline in the 10s and to what I predict will be its fall in the
| 20s.
|
| I hope to be wrong about WP, I hope for a new wave of optimistic
| idealism to swallow up tech again, bringing about a new era of
| amateurism. But with the professionalisation of even the free
| software community I have, I must admit, all but given up hope.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I agree, sort of. The project is absolutely massive and is a
| constant target of "reputation management" campaigns. They have
| the difficult task of managing this thing with a volunteer
| workforce. What else can they do except make a process for
| everything? There are certainly editors that revel in the
| process, and that's too bad. I think the admin would act if the
| project started going down the drain.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > the wikipedia community seems like one of the most toxic
| communities on the web.
|
| That's unfair; there are plenty of even more toxic communities,
| you just don't hear about them as much because they're less
| prominent and easier to ignore or forget.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I think it's important to draw a distinction between mediawiki,
| the software, and all of its associated (GPL, BSD, apache)
| licensed ancillary software, and the administration and content
| side of _wikipedia_.
|
| mediawiki is used by a lot of organizations for internal wiki
| stuff.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >The people contributing to WP - the editors - seem more
| concerned with coming up with Kafka-esque processes to
| introduce to the community than making the actual work of
| making an encyclopaedia.
|
| I wonder if this is natural. Those in the community who care
| more about just making a good encyclopedia are eventually
| forced out by those who are interested in power games and
| process. I've heard it mentioned before (I forget if it has
| some formal name or not) in regards to companies where the
| people who primarily want to prioritize the goal of the company
| are eventually replaced by those who primarily want to
| implement and navigate bureaucracy because they can outcompete
| them on the local level, even if the company is worse off in
| general.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Considering Reddit and 4Chan are things, Wikipedia is far from
| being the most toxic .
|
| Maybe the most elitist
| khazhoux wrote:
| Strong disagree. The vast majority of subreddits are fine.
| Toxicity is compartmentalized to specific subreddits, which
| you can very easily avoid.
|
| On the other hand, I find a community like Stack Overflow to
| be much worse because the BS can strike any time, any place.
| Between questions marked "Off-Topic", and snarky replies, and
| the non-replies ("We won't answer your simple question
| because you should not be asking that!") you can't avoid the
| negativity.
| pugworthy wrote:
| I also agree. I find both Twitter and Reddit to be on the
| most part delightful sources of information. I do have a
| certain self-made bubble in terms of who I follow, but it's
| a bubble full of creators, artists, and those that want to
| share what they've done in a positive way.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Exactly! Reddit's anonymity and the sheer scale of the
| site make bullying impossible (hard to imagine
| /u/subhumanbuttocks88 being victimized by
| /u/mandocalrissian).
| vlunkr wrote:
| Sure it makes targeted bullying impossible, but not
| general discrimination. There have been lots of
| subreddits removed for racism, sexism, etc.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Even then if you want to become a somewhat public figure
| with a presence on Reddit you can end up with a small
| team harassing you.
|
| The only winning move is not to play.
|
| In subreddits which are non political you'd still see
| people injecting nastiness.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Both sides on the spectrum are on the same thing.
| zo1 wrote:
| I think the title of most toxic should go to Twitter.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| yes
| krick wrote:
| That's a peculiar way to describe things. I would consider
| being "elitist" almost synonymous to being "toxic", and thus
| 4chan being about the least toxic platforms on the list of
| major English social media, far below Reddit, Wikipedia,
| Twitter, HN and so on.
| coward8675309 wrote:
| The world needs less optimism and idealism. They lead to
| disappointment, burnout, and bitterness. In healthcare doctors-
| to-be now often receive training and education that encourages
| thinking in terms of small victories and approaching treatment
| from a palliative care perspective, specifically when doing
| certain rotations. The more you expect a cure or a triumph or
| the achievement of some utopian fantasy, the faster you will
| exit many specialties.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I hope for a new wave of optimistic idealism to swallow up
| tech again, bringing about a new era of amateurism. But with
| the professionalisation of even the free software community I
| have, I must admit, all but given up hope.
|
| This wave exists, we're just old. Go talk to 16 year olds who
| are building virtual reality machine learning apps in their
| bedroom.
|
| Web is no longer the frontier. We're old and out of touch. The
| kids no longer hang out with us. Hence you see a lack of
| youthful idealism.
| joeryscript wrote:
| The web is still the frontier, we're just interacting with it
| in new ways.
|
| Those VR meeting apps still need to connect to other
| computers, and if you get serious about machine learning the
| cloud is invaluable. Phone apps are also usually less local-
| friendly than desktop apps.
|
| Just because kids aren't using email or websites as much
| doesn't mean that they aren't using the internet more.
|
| Although personally, I wouldn't cry if the internet matured
| into a sort of academic database. Mass-scale social
| connectivity should probably move to local intranets, like
| airdrop and local-area IM platforms.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Just because kids aren't using email or websites as much
| doesn't mean that they aren't using the internet more.
|
| For sure, everything uses the internet. But not the web.
|
| Point is most of us aren't hanging out where the kids are
| hanging out. And we don't have as much time to just hang
| out either.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| You're probably right. I've been reading HN for 10+ years now
| and just assume it's still the best location for hackers.
|
| So what's the newer, cooler, current version of what HN was
| in 2010?
| viach wrote:
| > coming up with Kafka-esque processes to introduce to the
| community
|
| Is there an example of public crowdsourced resource of the
| comparable to Wikipedia size which managed to generate
| meaningful content without such kind of processes/bureaucracy?
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Yes: Wikipedia ten to fifteen years ago.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| The Israel-Palestine wars of that time were quite something
| and probably deterred a good amount of people who could
| have produced suitable content. The conflict was handled
| ineptly and way too late. No surprise that many academics
| still won't go near Wikipedia, especially in areas
| involving geopolitical conflicts.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Only been a pleasant place for me. They're very anal about some
| rules (copyright, for instance) and that's annoying to me
| sometimes but overall I can't say I've been upset with any
| contribution experience.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The people contributing to WP - the editors - seem more
| concerned with coming up with Kafka-esque processes to
| introduce to the community than making the actual work of
| making an encyclopaedia
|
| This is one of the biggest challenges with building a self-
| governing online community: The people with the most time,
| energy, and desire to be in charge are often not the people
| with the most to contribute. As the bureaucracy grows, actual
| contributors are increasingly disincentivized from
| participating in the governance because it becomes such a
| distraction to actually producing content. At the extremes,
| these communities end up with highly-political community
| governance that spends much of their time with political
| maneuvering and focusing on a handful of fringe issues, while
| the actual content creators end up operating largely
| independently.
|
| If you ignore the politicking and realize it's mostly a
| distraction, there's often good work still happening on the
| core content.
| tmp538394722 wrote:
| > the editors - seem more concerned with coming up with Kafka-
| esque processes to introduce to the community than making the
| actual work of making an encyclopaedia.
|
| Yeah, there probably are widespread cultural problems.
|
| Hyperbole aside, I imagine most of "the actual work" (as you
| say) of maintaining any open source volunteer encyclopedia for
| decades has _got_ to be the community culture and processes,
| not any technical artifact.
|
| If you think the work of Wikipedia is "just" the words in
| articles, well, this is the same mindset of everyone's favorite
| debunked critique of early Dropbox.
| kodah wrote:
| > professionalisation of even the free software community
|
| Never heard it put like that, but it's pretty on point. The
| bigger changes I've seen in free software these days, all the
| way down to systemd, _feel_ very corporate. People try to argue
| whether it 's corporate or not but even that _feeling_ when
| enough people feel it is detrimental to free software culture.
| A culture which isn 't very much minded or respected by our
| corporate cousins.
|
| I do not understand peoples literal obsession with grading
| apologies these days. I've screwed up in big ways in my life
| before and I had to apologize. The harder work was eventually
| forgiving myself so that _I_ could move on. I cannot imagine
| how the expectation that someone is going to be waiting around
| to grade and critique my apology would weigh on me. I can 't
| even begin to imagine the mindset of someone who engages in
| that kind of activity must be, what other benign or symbolic
| things do you question in life? What other baggage have you
| carried all your life and used to wallop people over the head
| with?
|
| This "you owe me an apology" trend is wild. Certainly, if you
| screw up you should apologize if the situations suits it.
| Rarely are those situations so black and white though. Leaving
| this to the jury of the public to take sides, to form camps,
| and to inevitably invade with their pitchforks is the stuff
| that the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp controversy is fueled by.
| If someone has wronged you bad enough, take them to court, deal
| with it there, and leave it there. If things got to that point
| then no apology will make anything better. At that point,
| everyone has lost and we're just trying to maintain order.
|
| When I see people grading apologies on Twitter (and at times
| here) all I see is people propagating a reason to abuse public
| figures and at times companies. If someone has come to the
| point of writing a public apology, whether you think it's for
| damage control or not, it takes some level of humility and
| self-evaluation. Maybe that triggers nothing, maybe it begets
| change even in some small way, and maybe it leads to some life
| altering conclusions. Humans are not machines and we can't just
| cast people out because we don't feel the vibes of someones
| apology. For a culture like tech that likes to comment on how
| terrible cast systems and social hierarchy are, we seem awful
| quick to throw people into an "other" category because we feel
| some type of way.
|
| Personally speaking, I think people who grade apologies have a
| darkness of their own and that darkness begets darkness. The
| darkness that calls for a public apology and eagerly awaits its
| arrival for swift and empirical dissection is no better than
| the incurred darkness of the act itself.
| leijurv wrote:
| > The people contributing to WP - the editors - seem more
| concerned with coming up with Kafka-esque processes to
| introduce to the community than making the actual work of
| making an encyclopaedia.
|
| I might take a look at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges maybe
| reload it a few times. What percent of the changes are to
| policy space? (the article name begins with "Wikipedia:") And
| what percent are to regular articles / discussion of articles
| (article name is normal, or begins with "Talk:").
|
| I think you'd be surprised because the vast vast vast majority
| of edits are to the articles themselves.
|
| > Perhaps the only area where editors are as zealous they are
| about creating obscure processes, is in policing what content
| should they should fit into the their volumes.
|
| This is important. I'm not sure if you're referring to
| notability, or sourcing, but both are critical to making an
| encyclopedia.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_no...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Think about the kind of person who would dedicate a large
| portion of their free time, large enough to become a "mod",
| think about what kind of person wants that. That's the reason
| why these little tyrants are moderators online lol. No agency
| in real life.
| jzer0cool wrote:
| This is a nice outline for making one's own mistake.
|
| How do you all approach telling another when another are making a
| mistake? Usually the other person may get defensive or a conflict
| may arise.
| joduplessis wrote:
| I always remember this very old adage: don't be a dick.
|
| Sooner or later we all make mistakes, but very important to
| remember that if you're the one holding the pitchfork - your turn
| might be up next. So, be kind. And if you're the one making the
| mistake: figure out what/why/how. And try again.
| bhk wrote:
| Does anyone here work in an environment where every mistake
| warrants public shaming? Sounds like a hostile environment to me.
| What am I missing?
| miguelmota wrote:
| The wiki article reads a lot like what we do in software
| engineering post-mortems; timeline of events, what went wrong,
| why it went wrong, how it was addressed, what will be done to
| prevent it in the future.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| What's a mistake?
| Town0 wrote:
| Don't apologize.
| polote wrote:
| I find this very funny. You have made a mistake? then starts this
| algorithm and you are all done !
|
| > that you are sorry about the harm/damage/waste/confusion your
| mistake caused (being specific would demonstrate understanding);
|
| I have big problem with apologizes, you don't owe apologies
| because you made a mistake, apologizing will not change anything,
| you can easily not feel the apologies you are making.
| pachico wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, but, although I might entirely agree with
| what this page says, it's an opinion (as they state) and I kinda
| liked the idea that this foundation had no place for opinions.
|
| Just thinking out loud...
| cbzehner wrote:
| If this isn't an ironic commentary on current events...
| oritsnile wrote:
| I'm out of the loop, what current events?
| cactus2093 wrote:
| Probably the idea that you can pretend the truth is whatever
| you say it is, say whatever you want, never admit a mistake,
| and hundreds of millions of people will still back you up and
| continue to trust you. As seen by the president of the US
| ignoring election results, and countless other things done
| and said by that administration and their allies.
| djsumdog wrote:
| You realize this goes both ways. There are tons and tons of
| election irregularities. The presidential legal team has
| several lawsuits that are going forward and recounts going
| forward. There are literally tens of thousands of dead
| people who have voted in areas with very small margins.
|
| So your statement ... you're making a truth. You're saying
| what you want it to be, even though there is tons and tons
| of evidence against that point (that the main stream media
| is intentionally ignoring and refusing to cover).
|
| It goes both ways and our social psyche is now fragmented.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| If you say so dude, and hey I have nothing against the
| using the legal process as it's intended. However there
| really is not tons of evidence, you haven't provided a
| shred of evidenced, nobody anywhere has produced any
| credible evidence of any of this. If they had the
| mainstream media would be all over it because any scandal
| is very good for their bottom line.
|
| And I hope you'll retract your dangerous statements once
| the court cases are resolved and the recounts finished
| and not a single state is overturned.
| ineedasername wrote:
| This happens at work to everyone at some point. I've learned that
| dealing with it boils down to about the same as the linked
| article, but much shorter:
|
| --take responsibility
|
| --explain how it happened
|
| --explain the steps you're taking to prevent it in the future.
|
| (Luckily this final step has never been an issue for me, but: if
| it keeps happening, or you have to repeat this process too many
| times for different issues, prepare a resume and pursue some
| strong "professional development")
| draw_down wrote:
| > Understand that there is no point in pretending you have not
| made a mistake; pretending you have not made a mistake will make
| you look bad.
|
| Look bad to whom? The interests of the public and the person who
| made the mistake are not necessarily aligned. Fortunately or
| unfortunately, sometimes not saying anything may be the best move
| for the person who made the mistake. Is this guide written for
| the benefit of those who have made a mistake, or the people who
| seek maximum prostration after a mistake is made?
|
| In other words, maybe you don't like reading "non-apology
| apologies", but if it's the best move for someone in a given
| scenario, then it's what they should do. Perhaps they need to say
| _something_ to keep their job, or avoid triggering some unsavory
| clause in a contract somewhere, but they don 't care about
| "looking bad" (optics). It's certainly an unforced error to admit
| to more than circumstances require you to- if "mistakes were
| made" gets you where you need to go, then no point in bringing
| out the whole song and dance, right?
| [deleted]
| ggm wrote:
| The form of words of an apology is extremely important. The worst
| form (in my personal opinion) is the _qualified_ apology as in
| _IF I have offended I apologize_. It questions the need, it
| implies that its open to doubt.
|
| _I apologize unreservedly_ is far better.
| k__ wrote:
| The problem is, you aren't absolutely wrong, so you only made a
| mistake for a specific group of people.
|
| Look at JK Rowling.
|
| Would many people say that she made many public mistakes? Sure.
| Does she care? Probably not. Why? Because she thinks she does the
| right thing and many people think the same.
| triangleman wrote:
| I thought this would be a discussion of how to remove PII from
| Wikipedia from the edit history.
| chrononaut wrote:
| For those interested, there's a Wikipedia namespace article on
| that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Oversight
| macspoofing wrote:
| I'm not sure apologizing publicly has made anything better for
| any individual, especially in the current moral panic climate.
| Mobs don't accept apologies.
|
| Public apologies stamp official guilt on the individual and
| therefore serve as a license for the mob to further punish them
| because now they have admitted their fault and therefore are
| 'officially' guilty of the crime. Public apologies, therefore,
| are the metaphorical equivalent of blood in the water for
| attracting sharks.
|
| Maybe it's better to just ignore and maintain innocence because
| then at least there is some gray area? I don't know.
| beingHacker wrote:
| I will also agree with you accepting makes only weaker.
| Nowadays, being cool in the team means troll others and joke
| about your mistakes or put it under the carpet. When someone
| agrees for mistake and apologies for doing that it gives trolls
| food for the next year. This post says the right thing to do
| from book theory. I have tried this. it doesn't work in
| practical terms. I want opinion from troll camp (who have done
| trolling others for making mistakes)
| smsm42 wrote:
| Well, that depends on a situation. If you're in an environment
| where people are united by a common goal and assume good faith,
| then admitting you done goofed up (when you did) is the best
| way - everybody knows you realized your mistake and will try to
| do better, and people can move on - and usually will be glad to
| offer you to help fixing it. And they'd know they can count on
| you to own up to your mistakes - so they'd be ready to listen
| if you say something isn't a mistake.
|
| If you are in a "cancel culture" situation, then people that
| surround you are not you friends, and they do not have common
| goals with you. You can not win. Best thing is to get out of
| that situation ASAP, if you can not - minimize your losses in
| any way you can. And continue looking to get out of this
| situation, because you can not win, and you will surely lose
| sooner or later. Try to still be kind to others - you won't fix
| the broken culture, but at least you can have a little island
| of non-awfulness around you.
| microtherion wrote:
| I think I understand where you're coming from, but I see the
| "never apologize" philosophy as having an utterly corrosive
| effect on the person who made a mistake.
|
| What I try to do is apologize concisely, but then feel free to
| ignore people who want to drag this out into "that was not a
| REAL apology" / "now confess to your OTHER crimes" territory.
| fastball wrote:
| Things like this can be hard to ignore when, say, the angry
| mob is trying to get you fired.
| microtherion wrote:
| Admittedly, this can be a problematic situation, especially
| when part of the original mistake was speaking about
| something employment related without being a spokesperson
| for said employer. Another problematic situation can be if
| the mistake involves actual illegal acts. In those cases,
| discretion (omitting the apology or keeping it to an
| absolute minimum) may indeed be the better part of valor.
|
| But even in those situations, I see absolutely no upside in
| publicly denying your mistake at length, if in fact you've
| made one.
| fastball wrote:
| I think people in this thread are talking at cross-
| purposes.
|
| On the one hand, you have the people who are talking
| about when you genuinely make a mistake, and recognize it
| as such before public outcry.
|
| On the other end of the spectrum, you have people that
| maybe feel that they were acting / talking / behaving in
| a way that is normal but are being told that they made a
| mistake. In these circumstances, there is usually the
| issue that the nature of the mistake is quite subjective.
|
| In the former case, your strategy is probably a good one.
| In the latter, I think the "don't apologize" is probably
| the better way to go, for the reasons outlined by GC.
| bserge wrote:
| You don't apologize, you just own it.
|
| "Yeah, I made a mistake, shit happens, now I know better".
|
| Though looking at current leaders of industries and countries,
| you could get away with just pretending you did nothing wrong.
| cutemonster wrote:
| And talking (tweeting) about other unrelated things that make
| people upset but aren't about your mistake. Diverting
| attention
| NalNezumi wrote:
| The best course of action in public apology that includes
| potential mobs running rampant is to wait.
|
| If possible, do not immediately make any statement and if in a
| organization, make an "we are investigating" response. Most
| mobs are moved by emotions and herd mentality so just being
| silent for a while can disperse the worst of the mobs.
|
| Make an thorough apology (like the guideline here) later.
|
| Most internet mobs just move on to the next totem pole to burn
| in days so this seems to work (and is indeed how a lot of
| companies respond if they can't just fire someone and get over
| it)
|
| A real mob, such as campus students can be a bit more
| troublesome.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _No. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as Judge Brandeis
| observed. Proper handling of mistakes is a sterling quality in
| anyone, and particularly important in a leader or public
| servant of any kind. It pays long-term dividends._
| mcguire wrote:
| Let's pretend for a minute that you have a conscience and feel
| bad about the effects of the mistake---not just the effects of
| having the mistake discovered. What if you have harmed someone
| you cared about? Would you still apply the strategy you are
| advocating?
|
| Perhaps apologies do "serve as a license for the mob to further
| punish". Even so, what is the result to your life or to an
| organization of doing what you suggest?
| mannykannot wrote:
| Denying that you have made a mistake is likely to piss off the
| people who would otherwise be willing to move on. As the "mob",
| which may or may not exist in any given situation, is not going
| to be swayed by protests of innocence, the former are the only
| people you should care about.
| [deleted]
| core-questions wrote:
| > Denying that you have made a mistake is likely to piss off
| the people who would otherwise be willing to move on.
|
| Which is why you don't deny it either; you move on, avoiding
| the Streisand Effect as best as possible by not engaging.
| It's passive denial vs. active denial.
|
| I'm not saying this is moral or good - I'm only saying that
| it seems to work for people. It's a question of game theory.
| We can get better apologies if we start to accept apologies
| and move on with our lives, but the mob wants blood and these
| days the public apology only serves as an admission of guilt,
| absolving the mob of any evil when they pull the person apart
| limb from limb.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Then you risk being considered as though you explicitly
| denied it anyway - and the choice as to when and whether we
| move on is not so often yours to make alone. Do this sort
| of thing too often with the same people, and you are likely
| to get a reputation as untrustworthy - someone who might
| cover up a problem until it is discovered by others.
| mcguire wrote:
| There will always be people who disagree with you, and who
| will continue to make public attacks on you. They're not
| the ones you are apologizing to, or for. Pretending you did
| not make an error will eventually catch up to you, in the
| opinions of those who would view an apology to your credit
| and in the fact that it leads to you making more mistakes
| and not correcting them.
|
| " _...absolving the mob of any evil when they pull the
| person apart limb from limb._ "
|
| That's a little excessively dramatic, don't you think?
| jmartrican wrote:
| Agreed. Apologizing may keep the mob size small and
| insignificant.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Did it ever happen? Did anybody actually get out of being
| cancelled by mobs by apologizing?
| draw_down wrote:
| macspoofing is right. This stuff works opposite to how you
| and GP are describing.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| In the current "us vs them" of politics, apologizing does
| nothing to appease "them" while making you seem weaker to
| "us" and denying it means you will be given the benefit of
| the doubt by "us."
|
| If e.g. Kavanaugh had admitted assaulting Ms. Ford and
| apologized, do you think enough Democrats would have said
| "Apology accepted" and voted to confirm to make up for the
| Republicans who would be unwilling to vote to confirm someone
| who has admitted to sexual assault? As long as Kavanaugh
| denies it, everyone who votes for him can just publicly say
| that they believed his denial, whether or not they actually
| did believe it.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I think we are considering the situation where a mistake
| was made. I don't think the Kavanaugh situation applies -
| depending on your views on it, it is either situation of
| cynical rapist and hardcore liar, thoroughly corrupt evil
| man, denying his crimes, or an innocent man being falsely
| accused in a vile crime. In both situations, apology
| wouldn't solve anything.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Item #0 from TFA is "that there is no point in pretending
| you have not made a mistake." Both the GP comment and
| myself are disputing this fact. I think it's odious to do
| so, but there absolutely is a point in doing so.
|
| As far as Kavanaugh, obviously none of this applies if he
| is not-guilty, because few advocate apologizing for
| things you _didn 't_ do. However:
|
| There are a lot of middle-aged adults who did terrible
| things when they were teenagers. Among those, the ones
| who own up and apologized are excluded from many
| positions of power, while those that deny it are
| included.
|
| So for this particular subset of the population, we
| punish the best, reward the worst, and incentivize any
| fence-sitters to lie. Perhaps it's a bit OT, but
| something is clearly broken here.
| prepend wrote:
| I kind of skip apologies now and either look at changed
| behavior or set up some reminder to check for changed behavior.
|
| This is legally because apologies from companies are so full of
| doublespeak and low value language that it's a waste of my time
| to read, much less expect any understanding. Here's an example
| from Pichai [0].
|
| I do like the outage report style that some companies use [1]
| and think this is the way to repeat a problem and what you do
| to fix it. This takes the place of an apology or denial.
|
| [0] https://www.axios.com/google-ceo-apologizes-past-sexual-
| hara...
|
| [1] https://aws.amazon.com/message/41926/
| throw7 wrote:
| There's only one rule for apologizing: You apologize if you
| actually believe that you've done wrong. NEVER apologize for
| something you believe was done correctly or in good faith or
| for "PR" or whatever else.
| freehunter wrote:
| Not listening to this advice is 100% the reason why people
| don't trust a lot of public apologies: too many
| people/companies "apologizing" by saying "I'm sorry you got
| mad" or "I'm sorry you found out about this". If you
| apologize, mean it. If you don't mean it, don't apologize.
|
| Every time a person/company apologizes for getting caught, it
| demeans public trust in _everyone's_ apologies.
| laughinghan wrote:
| _I 'm not sure apologizing publicly has made anything better
| for any individual_
|
| Sure it has, for example Dan Harmon's public apology to Megan
| Ganz: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/11/16879702/dan-
| harmon-ap...
|
| _Public apologies, therefore, are the metaphorical equivalent
| of blood in the water for attracting sharks._
|
| What are some examples of public apologies that met all 5 of
| these criteria [1], but made things worse rather than better?
| Would you consider the possibility that maybe the apologies
| that made things worse were actually done wrong, but they could
| have helped if they were done right?
|
| More generally, apologies, restorative justice, truth and
| reconciliation, and related ideas seem to me like the obvious
| and only way to we can heal from injustice in our society.
| Refusing to admit fault seems obviously corrosive to society,
| and to a person's ego.
|
| [1]: https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/5/16710430/sexual-
| har...
|
| [Edit: man, I feel stupid for complaining about downvotes, but
| I am really not sure how I could have been more constructive
| with my disagreement in this comment. I cited examples,
| suggested an alternative explanation for observations my parent
| described, and didn't criticize anyone. What did I do wrong? I
| am ready and willing to apologize if I made any mistakes]
| Pryde wrote:
| Surely with regards to outcomes, there's a good argument to be
| made that one shouldn't admit guilt. But from a more, idk
| idealistic perspective, the world would be a better place if
| everyone promptly admitted fault and committed to doing better?
| I personally quite liked the advice given, and wish I had held
| myself to it more often in the past.
|
| I think there's definitely some truth to what you're saying,
| but I also wonder how much this is a problem offline, I've not
| encountered it heavily, but I'm also not a particularly online
| person.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >But from a more, idk idealistic perspective, the world would
| be a better place if everyone promptly admitted fault and
| committed to doing better?
|
| I'm not sure about that.
|
| I think there needs to be a distinction between a private
| apology to specific individuals for specific wrongs vs public
| apology to an undefined amorphous set of people. The former
| is certainly the right thing to do and it also offers hope of
| redemption because the wronged individual can accept the
| apology and forgive (or not). In the latter case, there is no
| acceptance, there's only the mob who wants to make an example
| of you because they now have 100% proof of your guilt.
| Pryde wrote:
| Fortunately I've never found myself in a position of
| sufficient power/responsibility to have to offer an apology
| to a group. Is there a balance to be struck between the
| difficulty the apologizer will undoubtedly face from rage
| mobs and the consolation some members of the wronged group
| may feel from the apologizer acknowledging wrongdoing and
| committing to do better in the future? I don't know that I
| could blame someone for avoiding a public apology, with the
| current nature of online harassment, but I think that's a
| question anyone who finds themselves in such a position
| should at least ask themselves. And of course, if everyone
| also adhered to the "What should I do when I see someone
| else is making a mistake?" section, then the world would be
| perfect and conflicts would be much more easily resolved.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _I think there needs to be a distinction between a
| private apology to specific individuals for specific wrongs
| vs public apology to an undefined amorphous set of people.
| The former is certainly the right thing to do and it also
| offers hope of redemption because the wronged individual
| can accept the apology and forgive (or not)._ "
|
| Note that those to whom you apologize may communicate that
| apology to "the mob", with the result that they have proof
| of your guilt as well as proof of your lack of
| forthrightness.
|
| In the ultimate case, if you are following your own advice,
| Machiavelli and my bitter cynicism suggest that not leaving
| live enemies behind you is the best strategy.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Yes, but do we live in that idealistic world? I would answer
| with a very firm _no_.
|
| The world would be a lot better place if everyone did (any
| number of things), but perfect compliance is just never going
| to happen. We cannot get people to not murder each other over
| shoes or sports teams. Any plan which depends on this
| compliance is doomed to failure.
| Pryde wrote:
| Yeah, I generally agree with you. Mostly just exploring
| thoughts here, the gp comment prompted a kinda unexpected
| re-examining of my hitherto un-examined ideas on the
| ethical basis of the advice in the post. I'd generally
| consider myself something of a
| utilitarian/consequentialist, and would normally accept the
| premise that apologizing in front of the Twitter mob would
| at best do nothing positive, but for whatever reason my
| brain wants me to say "apologizing is right, and
| consequences be damned"
| mcguire wrote:
| Might I suggest some research into Kant's categorical
| imperative, some time listening to your brain, and
| possibly the history of Joseph McCarthy?
| laughinghan wrote:
| I think you should also examine the possibility that gp
| is straightforwardly wrong, and that a good apology can
| make things better. Consider how Dan Harmon reacted to
| Megan Ganz calling him out on Twitter:
| https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/11/16879702/dan-
| harmon-ap...
|
| Doubtless many people have made things worse with non-
| apology apologies [1]. But your brain wants to say
| "apologizing is right" because when done right, it is
| right.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology
| DenisM wrote:
| People in strong position stand to gain by apologizing, while
| people in weak position stand to lose. One must consider one's
| standing before dabbling.
|
| In my own company I try to apologize every time I screw
| something up. I know my position is unassailable, and my team
| members should have trust that their leadership is in touch
| with reality.
|
| I am also cognizant of the fact that no hired employee has the
| same level of security, and it troubles me.
| dustinhayes wrote:
| I'm my experience it is up to the entire team or organization
| to cultivate such an environment. I do agree, it has to start
| somewhere.
| 0000011111 wrote:
| Apologizing is a good leadership strategy regardless of
| standing IMO. It shows that you are human which can help one
| gain and maintain report with fellow workers.
|
| Refusing to apologize has the opposite effect.
| thebean11 wrote:
| If others are looking for any reason to get rid of you, it
| might put them in a better position to pull the trigger.
| Obviously that doesn't describe the vast majority of
| situations though.
| ape4 wrote:
| Jeffrey Toobin: "I was fired today by @NewYorker after 27 years
| as a Staff Writer. I will always love the magazine, will miss my
| colleagues, and will look forward to reading their work,"
| khazhoux wrote:
| I think about the worst public mistake I've made, multiply the
| panic and embarrassment by about 1000x, and that maybe starts
| to approximate what must have gone through Toobin's mind when
| he heard his colleagues calling out to him on the Zoom video.
| First, the confusion -- "why is everyone calling out my name
| all of the sudden?". Then he shifts his attention back to the
| conference... "there's no way they saw me". Then "How did they
| see me!??!?". Then "can I deny this?" Then eventually... "I
| think my life is ruined." How do you look someone in the eye
| again, when you know they know? His life over in an instant,
| all because he misjudged the line-of-sight from his camera
| (while making the _horrible_ decision to "relax" while on a
| work call). One slip, and his world collapsed.
|
| Most of us skate right up to the edge of disaster on a daily
| basis, and aren't even aware of it. One distraction and you
| forget you had something frying in the kitchen; or you crash
| your car; or you reply-all by mistake; or you bitch about your
| boss on the team-wide Slack channel instead of the 1:1 channel
| you thought you were on.
| ars wrote:
| Yah, I don't know anything about Jeffrey, but reading about why
| he was fired - it's not right.
|
| Humans make mistakes. Over and over. People need to forgive.
| ExcavateGrandMa wrote:
| Wait what did I do?
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| Not all the mistakes are the same, no? I assume the focus here is
| factual inaccuracy, and the proximal cause of that is not
| following a rigorous sourcing and fact checking process. But the
| advice here also relates to mistakes of interaction -
| unsuccessful collaborations on a page, or non collegial
| communication. Hurting someone's feelings is different than a
| reporting error. Apologize or correct, right? Are there more
| flavors of mistake, and courses of action?
| screye wrote:
| In the age of social media I would suggest a different approach
| to addressing public mistakes.
|
| 1. Go silent.
|
| > Complete public blackout. No denying, no accepting. The people
| want retribution, not justice. The media blackout is essential.
|
| 2. Reflect on it privately and quietly.
|
| 3. If not in violation of #1, apologize to the individual
| people/entity affected in private.
|
| 4. Once the mob dissipates, address the issue publically in long
| form.
|
| > It is very important that it be a boring, long and solemn take
| on the mistake. Blog, interview, podcast, whatever.
|
| 5. Don't blame. period.
|
| 6. Set a roadmap to rehabilitation/mitigation.
|
| 7. Actually follow #6
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| This is a really great list.
| aflag wrote:
| I think you're thinking about a very particular kind of
| mistake. However, for mistakes that are not hitting headlines,
| the original list from the article actually works. Specially
| for technical mistakes. I haven't been in a position that I had
| to go silent about my mistakes, which makes me happy. After
| admitting my mistakes I feel much lighter.
| screye wrote:
| Yeah, the emphasis was on a public mistake and thus a public
| (external) reaction.
|
| I agree that there are far more constructive ways of dealing
| with internal (family or company) errors.
| aflag wrote:
| There are different degrees of public reaction. One thing
| is to admit a mistake in a public mailing list for an open
| source project. It's still a public/external reaction.
| However, it's a lot different than when you are a public
| figure and a mistake you made is the cover page of major
| newspapers. I think that, in those sort of situations, a
| more tactical approach may be desired, rather than a
| personal one.
| mcguire wrote:
| * Step 3 is probably a bad idea, if any attention is being paid
| to "the individual people/entity affected".
|
| * Step 4b is a bad idea; it has too great a possibility of re-
| raising the issue.
|
| * Steps 5, 6, and 7 are completely optional and probably not
| recommended. If Step 4a worked, keep in mind that the strategy
| you have got you where you are.
|
| * Given the above, Step 2 is a waste of time.
|
| This message brought to you by the International Society of
| Misanthropes.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Step 6 and 7 are absolutely crucial. People not accepting
| blame (even privately to themselves) and never changing is
| even worse than people aggressively and publicly demanding
| apologies for wrongdoing.
| fairity wrote:
| Crucial to who? GP is outlining a roadmap in the best
| interest of the accused.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Crucial to society. It's in the best interest of the
| accused that other people implement steps 6 and 7. And so
| realistically they ought to be implementing them too.
|
| My point is that we _shouldn 't_ just be looking out for
| our interests. We should be working co-operatively to
| look out for everybody's interests. Ultimately this
| benefits ourselves too, but that's not why we should do
| it.
| loosetypes wrote:
| I think I'd agree, especially with regards to the article's
| Step 3.
|
| Admitting fault can open one to liability (sometimes legally).
| Although perhaps it depends on how one defines a mistake
| versus, say, an outright fault that people could find morally
| wrong.
|
| An example that's not perfect (and I'm not arguing/defending
| one way or another) is Louis CK with the #metoo movement.
|
| It seemed to me that his response was sincere and correct on
| the personal level. He acknowledged those he'd wronged, made
| clear the victims were in the right, apologized, and expressed
| a desire to improve his behavior. For all that, he was
| demonized.
|
| To some extent, it felt like people were saying: "My god, you
| admitted it. You're worse than Harvey Weinstein - at least he
| had the decency to deny his actions."
| samatman wrote:
| So this one time, our main customer database fell over. The
| primary key wasn't wide enough, we hit 2 billion rows, and
| everyone panicked.
|
| We had been working unwise hours for several days, and we got the
| fix together, and I made a mistake: I pushed it directly to
| production.
|
| Man, my boss was really mad; no one had been getting enough sleep
| and we were all stressed. I apologized profusely and said it
| would never happen again. Fortunately, the fix was correct, so
| this could have been worse.
|
| Ok. Do you notice what's missing from this story?
|
| _We never addressed the flaw in our deployment which made it
| possible to push to prod without passing test._
|
| Apologies are for when you harm others. Some mistakes do, and
| some don't. A blanket policy that a mistake is an occasion for
| apology and navel-gazing is culturally harmful, because it casts
| mistakes as personal failings, when they are frequently the
| result of institutional or procedural shortcomings which can and
| should be addressed.
| mcguire wrote:
| Is there any point in addressing the "mistake" if no one has
| the need to take responsibility for it?
| grayclhn wrote:
| Yes, 100%. In the parent's example the system should be fixed
| so that no one can push directly to prod. Failing that, some
| sort of standardized checklist/process should be put in
| place. That's true regardless of who personally pushed
| something they shouldn't, and would be true even if no one
| ever made that "mistake."
| jjk166 wrote:
| Life is full of situations where no one acted unreasonably
| but something undesirable still happened. It's especially
| common for no one to see a potential problem, and thus for no
| one to be assigned the responsibility of dealing with that
| problem. If you have any stake in the overall success of the
| team, it doesn't matter whose fault something is, you just
| want the problem fixed.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| It's funny to see this just now. I've started contributing quite
| a bit to Wikidata as part of some work that uses it as a data
| source, and it's really the first time in more than a decade that
| I work in an environment where my work gets public scrutiny.
|
| Shame is a really strong emotion for me, and I feel terrible when
| anyone spots a mistake. At one point, I left the site and didn't
| return for three days because I saw there was a notification for
| me. Which turned out to be positive feedback.
|
| I feel far worse about my own mistakes than about those of
| others.
|
| What I don't get is people doubling down on obvious mistakes.
| Show some contrition and your standing will net benefit from you
| screwing something up. Trust me on this: I'm German and we have
| made that principle semi-official government philosophy. Whenever
| I see, say, Turkish nationalists deny the Armenian genocide, or
| Polish wikipedia deleting articles about local anti-semitic
| incidents, I wonder if they seriously believe their actions won't
| make them look both guilty _and_ somewhat stupid.
|
| Oh, while we're at it: Only by participating have I learnt what a
| vast enterprise the whole of Wikimedia actually is, and how
| almost all of it is open to the public. It's the only non-profit
| organisation at FAANG-scale (except Amazon I guess), and you
| might want to check out, for example, what Graphana looks like at
| scale: https://grafana.wikimedia.org/d/000000605/datacenter-
| global-...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I don't know. Years ago, I was on an email list and I did a lot
| of sincere public apologizing, in part because the internet was
| younger, so we didn't have a lot of stuff worked out. We were
| just stumbling our way forward as best we could.
|
| And the end result was that I became everyone's bitch. People
| would intentionally pick on me and be ugly to me and when it went
| sideways, the group as a whole would go "There she goes again!"
| and blame the whole thing on me and expect me to apologize and
| kiss everyone's ass.
|
| I am much less free with public apologies than I used to be,
| though I am still equally willing to own my actions (a la "I did
| x. That didn't turn out well.")
|
| There are some people in the world just looking for someone to
| blame and if they get it stuck in their warped tiny little minds
| for some reason that you are a good person to blame, good luck
| escaping their shit. Such people are a case of "The only winning
| move is not to play." and, unfortunately, you tend to find that
| out after the fact because they have burned you and will not stop
| burning you, no matter how above-board, high-minded blah blah
| blah you handle the situation.
|
| Some people are just hell-bent on proving "No one is actually
| that good" because they have baggage, so trying to do the right
| thing consistently just makes you a target of their shit and they
| really need therapy, but aren't getting it.
|
| Such people seem to be rather poor at letting things go and my
| impression is some of them will cyberstalk you for years after
| you try to leave whatever situation originally put you in contact
| with them.
|
| (Edit: No, this wasn't about my gender. This detail has already
| been addressed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25087829)
| kbenson wrote:
| I imagine there's a special extra level of problems that apply
| when the apology reinforces someone's stereotypical views of
| the apologizer based on the group they appear to be part of,
| whether those views are held consciously or unconsciously,
| which makes especially problematic. Most of those attributes or
| not readily obvious in an online forum, but some are based on
| pronoun and/or name (mainly gender and nationality, at least
| historically, and we're talking about _assumptions_ here, so
| they don 't even have to be accurate).
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It was a homeschooling/parenting list. Those tend to skew
| female and this one did.
|
| Though the reality is that I have never been on an email list
| that was mostly female membership that wasn't poisoned by
| sexism. There is inevitably one or two men who have figured
| out how to participate in the discussion without the entire
| group wanting their head on a pike and you can't disagree
| with these men because a zillion women will jump down your
| throat and it ends up being seriously ugly (yes, I tend to be
| the woman daring to disagree with such men and having other
| women act horribly to me).
|
| A more likely explanation is that when I was younger, before
| my health went to hell, I was fairly charming and likable. So
| I tended to be the center of attention and I think some
| people were jealous.
|
| It was also a situation where (oftentimes) I would read the
| initial email and give my advice on their problem without
| first reading any of the replies and then my advice would
| change the direction of discussion because it was so much
| better than what had already been said. I tended to stand out
| and there were some people just hell bent on trying to prove
| that I "didn't know everything" and "wasn't above making
| mistakes" and "wasn't always right" and this kind of garbage.
|
| Because I tended to stand out, the discussion on the list
| would end up revolving around everyone lining up to either be
| "for" or "against" me/my position and then I would hand
| everyone their head as the least worst answer because patting
| people on the head for agreeing with me was only going to
| deepen such problems.
|
| I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to let my
| comments stand on their own and do what I can to refuse to
| let it become about me. There is no 100 percent cure for that
| tendency (of people to make things about the person who said
| them), but I've learned some best practices.
|
| (Comment has been edited.)
| santoshalper wrote:
| I noticed in this comment that you spent a lot of time
| talking about yourself and specifically praising yourself
| and your contributions to this community. Having no other
| insight other than what you are providing me, it seems like
| you tend to make yourself the center of discussion and
| honestly, you come across as high-ego. People like that are
| often polarizing in communities and tend the shift the
| conversation from "what" to "who". Perhaps the best
| practice would be to learn to make your point without
| personalizing it so much.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Perhaps the best practice would be to learn to make your
| point without personalizing it so much._
|
| Yes, generally speaking, that's a best practice and one I
| follow as best I can. Unfortunately, it can't always be
| followed without hamstringing one's ability to say
| something meaningful and address more important issues
| than the tendency of the world to geegaw at me for
| existing.
|
| I wasn't asking for advice. Giving advice in a situation
| like this one tends to boil down to blaming the victim
| rather than trying to understand what they are saying
| about a larger social issue and patterns of behavior
| involving many people, not just themselves.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| People who are what santoshalper described as "high ego"
| are usually charismatic, and that makes a difference with
| everything.
| fairity wrote:
| I think the solution here is to choose values that are not
| conditional on what people think of you or what you've done.
|
| Then, when you apologize, you're never doing it to seek
| forgiveness. Apologies are simply an expression of regret that
| your actions didn't align with your values.
|
| How other people react doesn't matter.
|
| E.g. I'm sorry for A. I regret A bc I value B. B is important
| to me bc C. To better achieve B, I will be avoiding A in the
| future and striving for D and E instead.
| dheera wrote:
| I really don't get people who try to hold people to things they
| said years ago. People change, and opinions change.
|
| And the only people you need to apologize to are the people who
| you actually hurt, not random people on the internet.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| To preface, we're talking about people with jackasses-
| tendencies here. Normal, well-adjusted people don't like to
| make their colleagues feel bad.
|
| But as you say, it's also been my experience that apology
| and... "ownership"(?) are two very different things in American
| (Southern) culture.
|
| "I'm sorry I did X" seems to signal weakness and invite
| criticism, if people are already so inclined.
|
| "I did X. It wasn't the best approach / it was wrong / etc"
| seems to be perceived as stronger, while also taking
| responsibility for the mistake.
|
| My gut says bullies key to subconscious signs of weakness, and
| the former is interpreted as such. While the latter projects
| subconscious strength, even while communicating conscious
| guilt.
|
| We're all just apes in the end.
| nfoz wrote:
| As a Canadian, I was quick to realize that the mere word
| "sorry" has a different meaning to some people down south. In
| Canada I'll just say it casually to mean a polite "hope I'm
| not troubling you" or "sorry that happened to you", and never
| thought of it as immediately declaring responsibility let
| alone fragility. But in the US, I've been pounced on for a
| casual use of that word, as if I'd announced failure and that
| I _owed_ something to the other party.
|
| So I much appreciate what you're saying here.
| core-questions wrote:
| As a Canadian, you're missing out on the other critical
| half of the 'sorry'.
|
| You step on my foot. I look at you, and say "sorry", and
| pull my foot away. You abashedly also "sorry" and we move
| on.
|
| Am I apologizing? Hardly! The full sentence is, "Sorry, did
| you just actually step on my foot, what the hell?" and your
| reply is "Sorry, yes, I did do that, didn't mean to,
| apologies". Then the problem is solved and we move on.
|
| > But in the US, I've been pounced on for a casual use of
| that word, as if I'd announced failure and that I owed
| something to the other party.
|
| It is precisely the opposite in circumstances like the
| above!
| OJFord wrote:
| > Am I apologizing? Hardly! The full sentence is, "Sorry,
| did you just actually step on my foot, what the hell?"
|
| At least in the UK, that's not the full sentence, or it
| could be, but only with a change in tone ('SOrrY?!') - to
| me it's more like 'Oops my foot was in your way I think,
| so sorry'. (Said of course before you have a chance to
| think 'no hang on, I wasn't in the way, you weren't
| looking, this isn't my fault'.)
| freedomben wrote:
| Are you from the pacific northwest by chance? My wife is
| and she will constantly apologize for things that are
| 100% the other person's fault. It really bugs me and I
| usually say something like, "That wasn't your fault, you
| shouldn't be apologizing."
|
| On the flip side, when someone runs in to me or steps on
| my foot or something, I'll usually just look at them,
| giving them an opportunity to politely say, "Sorry about
| that." My wife tells me that it is _extremely_ rude when
| I do that, but that feels normal to me.
|
| I'm really wondering if where we grew up is playing a big
| part here?
| jeffmcjunkin wrote:
| Oregonian here. I joke that we're the Canadians of the
| United States.
|
| "Sorry" in regular conversation is a social nicety, very
| different from a sincere apology, even though the sincere
| apology may incorporate that same word.
| OJFord wrote:
| As a Briton, I sympathise. It's easy to say and then feel
| foolish by the reaction of the counter-party - that you've
| made something bigger of it than it is, or that you've
| inadvertently (been considered to having had) admitted
| guilt to something serious!
|
| 'Sorry' to me ranges from 'Excuse me', through 'ha-ha we
| both reached for that/side-stepped in the same direction at
| the same time', all the way of course to the serious 'I
| regret and apologise for what I have done' that it (solely)
| means elsewhere.
|
| On the flip side though, American's are constantly telling
| me that I'm 'so welcome' when they don't mean it (or
| because similarly to 'sorry' they're used to 'thank you'
| being more serious?) - so I think we're even. :)
| bartread wrote:
| > To preface, we're talking about people with jackasses-
| tendencies here. Normal, well-adjusted people don't like to
| make their colleagues feel bad.
|
| Exactly this, and one of the things I eventually realised is
| you have to simply ignore the jackasses.
|
| Realising that face to face these people are most likely not
| terribly formidable is certainly helpful but the main thing
| is to learn not to give a s### what they think regardless.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| There are situations where it doesn't work to just ignore
| the jackasses. Though, yes, these people are jackasses and
| I tend to be going "Can you get therapy already and leave
| me the hell alone?" (or "Can you drop dead already, you
| asshole." if it goes on long enough/gets bad enough).
| smsm42 wrote:
| Not starting with "I am sorry" looks like a good advice -
| framing matters. Start with description of what happened and
| how it went sideways, end up with regretting the harm caused
| - by the time you get there, you'll be perceived as a person
| who understands the situation and its implications, and is in
| control of it, and thus will be more inclined to accept the
| apology and move on.
| gabereiser wrote:
| The trap of the ego. Sounds like you were stuck in a boys-club
| when they needed reminding it was a woman who started
| programming.
|
| I've been fortunate to work at a few places where we had a
| really good diverse mix of people. It was there that we had the
| best ideas, the best teams, the best support, and the best
| place to work from an HR perspective.
|
| I'm sad to read this because this experience isn't alone. So
| many I've talked to have similar stories. I'm glad you didn't
| take their crap and you continue to do what you do.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Do you keep a blog? Find your comments interesting.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I run a bunch of different websites. You are probably being
| downvoted because my profile contains links to a variety of
| things by me, including my Patreon (which needs to be updated
| -- note to self: Put that on a To Do list somewhere for, say,
| next week-ish/before the end of November).
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| I find it helpful when writing apology posts to start it by
| writing down the timeline of events. Don't insert any commentary
| attempting to justify anything in this part, it just comes off as
| defensive. Instead just outline what happened though you can
| include the immediate cause of decisions you made.
|
| "Because I was worried about how people would react to X I
| decided to do Y"
|
| Then after that you can write all the stuff that they list in
| this post.
|
| I think it helps a lot to get the audience into the same
| situation you where in in their minds before understanding the
| context of how you actually screwed up.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I find it helpful when writing apology posts ...
|
| How many apology posts do you write? Why would you need to
| write any? I don't understand why any apology needs to be
| public.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| I ran a game company.
|
| There are lots of occasions where we made a change the
| players didn't like, or we screwed up in a way that led to
| economic damage to some players, or just had an operational
| issue that led to a bunch of downtime.
|
| Here is a random example of onee of these.
|
| https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2603061/page/1
| laughinghan wrote:
| Your apology posts are excellent and you deserve the
| positive response you get on them.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I like that.
|
| I'm quite good at apologizing, because I need to do it so often.
| I get lots of practice.
|
| The American abhorrence for admitting fault and/or apologizing is
| quite mystifying to me. It's really corrosive.
|
| I've spent 40 years, promptly admitting mistakes, and repairing,
| where possible.
|
| WFM. YMMV.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Perhaps this has to do with lawsuits.
| packetlost wrote:
| I doubt it. It's a cultural thing, and probably partly a
| manifestation of individualism.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Admitting fault when needed is a core aspect of being a
| good individual.
| krick wrote:
| That is, if you define "good" from collectivistic point
| of view...
| packetlost wrote:
| Correct, but a lot of people are either not good
| individuals, or improperly see it as a sign of weakness.
| fakedang wrote:
| Admitting fault is against individualism.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Partly, but when I posited that, some time ago, it drew a
| fair bit of ire.
|
| It's also something emotional. I grew up overseas, so I guess
| it never happened for me, so I sort of stand to the side,
| bemused.
| jandrese wrote:
| You see this a lot in corporate land. Never admit a mistake
| because it is a liability when you're getting sued. You often
| see corporations offering compensation for something they did
| wrong while at the same time explicitly not admitting fault.
|
| Even at the individual level you'll see advice like "never
| talk to the cops" because it could possibly be used against
| you in the future.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I think it is mostly about ego. In my country, lawsuits
| stemming from errors are very rare, but people would still
| die on random (mole)hills rather than admitting they were
| wrong. I am myself very unhappy when someone points out a
| mistake in my texts, only in last 5 years or so I have learnt
| to be more relaxed about it.
| Simulacra wrote:
| You might be right. There has been laws passed that make it
| clear use of the word "I'm sorry" does not convey guilt. [0]
|
| [0.] https://www.scmedicalmalpractice.com/blog/2015/08/does-
| sayin...
| izacus wrote:
| > Perhaps this has to do with lawsuits.
|
| This happens even in work environments where it's unlikely
| your coworkers will sue you. I feel like perhaps it's more
| about competitiveness - I've seen plenty of times people
| raised in US use any kind of admission of mistake as a
| bludgeon to get advantage, get more political capital or
| belittle someone elses project. I guess it's considered to be
| a good thing to grasp any advantage over others?
| caymanjim wrote:
| > The American abhorrence for admitting fault and/or
| apologizing is quite mystifying to me. It's really corrosive.
|
| I don't accept this premise. Americans don't have a lot of the
| cultural baggage that leads to this. If anything, Americans are
| quick to admit fault and address root causes. We don't have a
| cultural history of beating around the bush, saving face,
| deferring to elders who are clearly wrong, etc. Individual
| exceptions abound, but I think on the whole Americans are ready
| to admit fault most of the time.
| trynewideas wrote:
| The US is also a massive country comprised of isolated and
| distinct subcultures, with a much more dramatic urban/rural
| split than denser regions. An acceptable apology in one part
| of the US is a thinly veiled insult in another.
|
| Mistake 0 is assuming there's an "American abhorrence" or a
| tendency held by "Americans on the whole". It's difficult for
| any American, much less anyone outside of America, to have
| interacted with each of its distinct, and often wildly
| divergent, subcultures to find a genuine common thread.
| laughinghan wrote:
| The number of people in this thread arguing that apologies can
| only make things worse is shocking. Are these the same people who
| reject addressing war crimes with truth and reconciliation, and
| instead advocate "deny everything, make counteraccusations"?
|
| A proper apology--one that (1) acknowledges the specific harm
| caused, (2) acknowledges responsibility and remorse for specific
| choices, (3) explains how they hope to make amends specifically
| to the aggrieved party--seems to me to be self-evidently the only
| possible way to heal a community.
|
| Doubtless many people have delivered "apologies" that omitted one
| of those elements, or even all 3 elements ("I apologize if anyone
| felt offended"), and thereby made things worse for themselves.
| But to me it is self-evidently corrosive to a community and to a
| person's ego to adopt a practice of refusing to acknowledge
| mistakes.
|
| For an example of the good that can come from a proper apology
| for a serious harm, consider Dan Harmon's apology to Megan Ganz:
| https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/11/16879702/dan-harmon-ap...
| fairity wrote:
| > The number of people in this thread arguing that apologies
| can only make things worse is shocking. Are these the same
| people who reject addressing war crimes with truth and
| reconciliation, and instead advocate "deny everything, make
| counteraccusations"?
|
| I think you're misunderstanding their claim.
|
| They are not making a claim that denial is better for society.
|
| They are making a claim that denial is better for the accused
| (and only in certain situations).
| justatdotin wrote:
| IMO 'truth and reconciliation' should just focus on 'truth'.
|
| We don't owe war criminals reconciliation, but they owe us the
| truth.
| alex_young wrote:
| All solid advice.
|
| I would add:
|
| If this mistake happens in the business context, commit to a root
| cause analysis, perform such with all involved parties and
| stakeholders, use a methodology such as Toyota's Five Whys,
| identify areas for improvement, share your report, and resolve
| issues in a timely manner.
|
| The above will not only improve your processes so failures are
| less likely, it will also demonstrate a commitment to quality and
| improvement to all observers.
| neilv wrote:
| Not for public situations, but internally, and proactively...
|
| For my startups's new engineering hiring process, I recently
| wrote the boilerplate part of the email I send when requesting a
| first Jitsi/phone technical meeting, after a prospective team
| member has passed the initial meeting with the CEO.
|
| Part of this is to tell them the purpose and format of this
| meeting (e.g., no surprise coding test, start to get a sense of
| each others' abilities and what it'd be like to work together).
| But then the majority of the text is to convey the culture we're
| going for, and the professional mode it's safe to be in for the
| interview (which is different than some other places, and than
| some standard advice).
|
| I'm shooting for the engineering&ops culture to be what I call in
| the boilerplate "honest and earnest". And that it's safe and
| encouraged in this culture to say "I don't know", "that's a
| problem", "I made a mistake", "I need help", etc. And that it's
| safe and encouraged to be in this mode in the interview, as well
| (and I will be, too).
|
| In work (and in the interviews), I absolutely don't want people
| thinking they should be posturing or cultivating social media-
| like distorted images, avoiding pointing out system problems,
| getting into conflict of interest situations with personal career
| advancement vs. the interests of the team and our work, etc.
|
| I'm sure we'll refine this over time, but I believe that an
| honest&earnest culture avoids a lot of problems around mistakes,
| including helping to avoid mistakes in the first place, and
| avoiding compounding them when they do happen.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| > What should I do when I see someone else is making a mistake?
|
| > When you see others making mistakes, first help them see their
| mistakes and deal with them (e.g. by recycling this text, or by
| independently offering your analysis and answers to Steps 1 and 2
| above).
|
| > Remember you make mistakes too, and be tolerant of the time it
| may take people to accept that they have made a mistake. (But you
| don't need to allow them to insist they have not made a mistake.)
|
| I especially appreciate this. Far too often I see people reacting
| to people's mistakes with anger and hostility, instead of first
| trying to 1) understand the situation, and 2) help the person who
| made the mistake (if there even was one) understand the mistake.
|
| A little kindness goes a long way.
|
| [Edit: formatting]
| TriNetra wrote:
| The funny thing is, if you ponder for a while, you'll realize
| you'd have done some similar mistakes. But such reflection
| requires being honest to oneself and setting aside/rising above
| one's ego and doing an unbias reflection for few moments. Then
| a spontaneous smile will light up your face and unconsciously
| somewhere you've broken some string of ego otherwise holding
| you tightly all through your life.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Indeed. Whenever I get cut off on the freeway, I try to
| remember the times when I accidentally cut someone off but
| had no way to express "Oops, sorry!"
|
| We all get it wrong sometimes.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Someone oughta tell Tesla to make a "I'm sorry!" button
| that when pressed shows SORRY written in large LED jazz on
| all window panels.
| d_tr wrote:
| In my country we raise our hand to say "thank you", but I
| also do this to say "I 'm sorry" when there is no other
| safe way to communicate.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| It should be noted that you should contact them about their
| mistake in the most private way possible, then escalating
| slowly as the need arises. This follows the "praise in public,
| punish in private" maxim.
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18:
|
| _If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault
| between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won
| over your brother.
|
| If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you,
| so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two
| or three witnesses.
|
| If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he
| refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you
| would a Gentile or a tax collector.
|
| Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound
| in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in
| heaven._
| herodoturtle wrote:
| If he refuses to listen even to the church, then forgive
| him anyway.
| minkzilla wrote:
| This passage isn't as much about forgiveness as
| correction. You are supposed to forgive no matter what
| (77 times). But this is if someone is doing wrong and
| needs to be corrected. If no matter what they will not
| stop their bad behavior then depending on how serious it
| is they cannot be allowed to keep being a part of the
| community.
| aequitas wrote:
| This makes me think, it is opposite to what mostly is used in
| open source projects that have bugtrackers. Github is filled
| with countless 'mistakes' (issues/pr's) people made in the
| code they published. Should there be some kind of way to make
| issues private?
|
| Before I was into open source I was always afraid to show my
| code to anyone because of the critique I could expect. But
| some coworkers helped me get the confidence I needed to go
| open source (within the company, not public internet). Being
| completely open about everything and accepting critique
| publicly really helped me grow as a developer to also be open
| to others. I wonder if I would have made the same
| transformation if I was only critiqued in private.
| dustinhayes wrote:
| In larger projects bugs are rarely caused by a single
| person. With many people contributing to a problem in the
| way of code and reviews. The best way forward is for
| everyone to own the bug and own any potential solutions.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Bugs are not critiques. Working in software development,
| you learn extremely quickly that everyone writes bugs, and
| there is nothing to be embarrassed about. The openness of
| issue trackers even helps elevate that.
|
| On the other hand, it's not normal and not often practiced
| to go digging to see whose mistake introduced a bug and
| call them out in public on it - that would be what
| shouldn't be done at all.
| aequitas wrote:
| > Bugs are not critiques.
|
| Not only (technical) bugs are reported, but also design
| decisions and such. A lot of those things often come down
| to difference in opinion. I've seen some developers be
| really adamant about how a bug was actually a feature.
|
| > The openness of issue trackers even helps elevate that.
|
| I agree partly. For me it helped see things different and
| make a positive growth. But I can image some staying
| afraid to enter or be deterred really quick never coming
| back.
|
| >> This follows the "praise in public, punish in private"
| maxim.
|
| So like the previous poster said. I am wondering if
| Github et al. should not contain a private channel.
|
| I have a email on my Github page. And besides spammers I
| sometimes get questions regarding my projects. I don't
| know if it is due to people not understanding Github that
| well[0] or wanting to contact privately[1]. But for some
| reason they didn't open a public issue[2].
|
| [0] I've met a lot of technical people that just are
| afraid of Github because it is complex. Electrical
| engineers, mechanics, embedded engineers. People I figure
| would understand software development concepts.
|
| [1] Asking a stupid question publicly could also count
| toward making a public mistake depending on how secure
| someone feels about themselves.
|
| [2] There is of course also the discussion if issues
| should be your projects helpdesk next to being an bug
| tracker. And raising an 'issue' for something that might
| just be a question might feel strange for some.
| kbenson wrote:
| > I've seen some developers be really adamant about how a
| bug was actually a feature.
|
| And sometimes they are feature, and it's the users that
| are mistaken on what the project they are using is
| offering them. It's a fine line, I'm sure, but different
| projects have different goals, and those goals will align
| to a specific user's needs differently depending on the
| user.
|
| > So like the previous poster said. I am wondering if
| Github et al. should not contain a private channel.
|
| It might depend quite a bit on the project. In an open
| source project with many contributors, there isn't really
| any meaning to "private" other than "limited to a
| subgroup of the people that care", and those people may
| have little to nothing with the design and implementation
| of the items in question. In a project that is mostly
| driven by one author that controls it and accepts some
| patches, that might be a lot different, and criticism may
| be received differently.
|
| There's a whole spectrum there, and even if you provide
| the tools to allow different types of contact, what's to
| prevent people from using the wrong tool most the time?
| Rust, PHP, Perl, Bind, Apache etc aren't going to benefit
| much for a private list for first contact of regular
| bugs, but people would use it. Meanwhile someone's random
| personal project is still going to get people making
| public requests even if they prefer them private. In the
| end, I think we're all better served by a "public by
| default" for open source stuff, and for things people
| feel is actually private (security related items, for
| example), they'll look up a private contact or personal
| contact for someone related.
| [deleted]
| anuila wrote:
| I have trouble handling others' mistakes if I've corrected them
| before, they acknowledged the mistake, but they keep doing
| them.
|
| What am I supposed to do with people who won't learn from their
| mistakes (in the workplace)?
|
| I'm directly affected by them as they increase my workload, so
| I can't _just ignore them._
| derekbreden wrote:
| I recently had a coworker point out to me a grammatical error
| I keep repeating, flush vs flesh, that he had reminded me of
| a year ago.
|
| I recently pointed out to a different coworker some
| whitespace inconsistency in a pull request in a similar
| fashion as I had pointed out a while back.
|
| In digging deeper into both situations where I was the
| reporter or the reportee, the issue came down to legitimate
| lack of agreement on whether it was indeed a mistake.
| vonseel wrote:
| Yea, unless you're professional writers, and I don't mean
| coders, that's not the right kind of things to focus on in
| pull requests. I mean, if someone happens to be great at
| code but really terrible at English, like you can't imagine
| they passed high school grammar, maybe it's a good idea to
| help them improve. But the average college educated
| developer writes well enough to write succinct and readable
| code comments and documentation. Or should be able to.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Even when we learn from a mistake it may still happen in
| the future. Hopefully we have reduced its frequency but it
| can still happen.
|
| For example, I sometimes write "too be honest...". I've
| known it is wrong for decades, but occasionally am still
| not able to see it. Still happens about one out of every
| fifth time.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| The problem to be solved is why the person doesn't learn or
| change when they know about the mistake, not the mistake
| itself.
|
| You might start by directly asking, "Why do you keep making
| this mistake?" It might be because they're careless, or lazy,
| or maybe they really don't believe it's a mistake (they just
| acknowledged the mistake to get you to go away). Or maybe
| they just need a little help, such as automated reminders to
| get them to check for those mistakes.
|
| Sadly, there are people who will not learn from either
| kindness and teaching, or harshness and harrassment. In the
| workplace, you can make an appeal to the manager, but perhaps
| only after discussion with coworker has failed to produce the
| desired results.
| DenisM wrote:
| Do you also feel a general lack of leadership and/or
| authority? Many things are best resolved by bringing the
| hammer down, but if no one is qualified to wield it you will
| be wasting your life trying to protect order from chaos.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Ask them how you can help them not to make the same mistake
| again. Not knowing the specific situation makes it hard to
| offer specific advice, but in software there are specific
| tools (e.g. IDEs, linters, CIs, tests, etc.) that help people
| avoid known mistakes. Sometimes having better docs or
| specific checklist (e.g. "your bug must have these fields
| filled in before we can work on it") helps.
|
| If that doesn't help, ask the manager the same - emphasizing
| you are not attacking the person but looking for a way to
| stop wasting time on correcting the same repeating mistake
| which adds to costs and decreases productivity. That may
| generate some resentment (so trying to resolve it directly
| first is prudent) but if you avoid framing it as a personal
| fault it would usually help.
| harlanji wrote:
| I'm glad others out there see it this way. I made a minor
| mistake, and a former employer and manager used it to make me
| totally unable to work again by blowing it up as much as
| possible. It'll blow back on them eventually, but in the
| meantime I've been made homeless and lost all my friends. Since
| lawyers are involved and profit from my mistake looking worse
| than it was, there will never be an honest reconciliation. The
| court of public opinion is the only way they might be convinced
| to show some kindness.
| ppur wrote:
| Also see: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Apology
|
| Covers the apology "step" in detail and treats it as "a form of
| ritual exchange between both parties, where words are said that
| allow reconciliation".
| secondcoming wrote:
| Step 3 seems a bit much. What sort of mistakes are we talking
| about here that seem to require such hyperbolic displays of
| repentance?
| moduspol wrote:
| A tweet from ten years ago that was perfectly reasonable at the
| time?
| coward8675309 wrote:
| There are few more odious Internet pass-times than relentlessly
| harassing someone for some perceived infraction until they give
| an imperfect apology and then nitpicking until they ritually
| humiliate themselves exactly according to your wishes.
|
| This document is a would-be harasser's checklist for extracting
| forced confessions and atonement schedules.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| Modern day struggle sessions!
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| I'm curious, what kind of mistake are you envisioning in this
| scenario?
|
| While I do agree with you for some things, some mistakes may
| actually be severe and need correction in a public forum and it
| has nothing to do with harassement.
| textgel wrote:
| Plenty of easy and obvious ones. Dr Matt Taylor being
| attacked for an anime shirt is the first that comes to mind.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| I see. So people should not apologize for things they
| definitely did wrong because of situations where you feel
| other people have apologized and didn't need to?
| textgel wrote:
| Point out where I said people should never apologise, do
| it now.
|
| You asked.
|
| > I'm curious, what kind of mistake are you envisioning
| in this scenario?
|
| In reference to.
|
| > harassing someone for some perceived infraction
|
| And I just gave you one.
|
| But if we're playing the Cathy-Newman so-you're-saying
| game I notice you have a lot of opposition to free speech
| posts; what is it about these views historically
| literally held by Nazis that you find yourself in
| agreement with?
| hizxy wrote:
| Understand why you made the mistake and move on. Admitting your
| mistake publicly? Maybe..
| GCA10 wrote:
| Step 0 is admirable. I've come across business cultures where
| people got ahead (really!) by "outrunning their mistakes." Lots
| of rapid promotions and job transfers, leaving messes behind them
| -- and then blaming problems on their inept successors, or other
| saboteurs, etc. No accepting of responsibility.
|
| Most of those places eventually go bust, but they can ruin a lot
| of people's lives before the final collapse happens.
|
| Step 3.2 feels forced and a little Orwellian. Even something as
| hazy as invoking "bad judgment" -- and leaving the scene -- is
| often sufficient, at least at first. If errant people need a bit
| more time to process reality's sudden slap in the face, I'm in
| favor of giving it to them.
|
| Eventually a lot of them do reach a fuller understanding. Or they
| redeem themselves in other ways. In the right settings, a little
| bit of mercy can be very powerful
| tlogan wrote:
| This is why Trump is a genius. The step 0 should be: never ever
| admin the mistake. Since you will look bad even if you admit the
| mistake: it makes no difference.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Not sure why this is downvoted when its apropos. ^Trumps
| behavior is an effective counter example to the evolved list of
| rules, wikipedia puts forth as good autocratic
| process...insofar as wikipedia is more autocratic than communal
| by contribution.
|
| ^Obviously trump is not a genious
| aflag wrote:
| He was first elected with a minority and lost the reelection
| (which is uncommon in USA's history). Quoting the article:
|
| > But isn't it true that organization/individual X made a
| mistake and didn't follow this process at all?
|
| > Yes, it's true. And how did that work out?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Genius or psychopath?
|
| I'm sure a lot more people would be successful with absolute
| zero morals - e.g. Hazing your young son for _trusting you_ ,
| as told by Trump Jr
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| You will look bad even if you admit the mistake. But admitting
| to a mistake is _good_ - assuming people already know about the
| mistake, it 's _good press_ to do so. (Especially if you 're
| _revealing_ the mistake to them, when they haven 't already
| seen the mistake; if half of your mistakes are "oh, I messed
| up", versus the same number of mistakes but they come out in
| newspapers first... which is going to look better for you?
| tlogan wrote:
| >
|
| > But admitting to a mistake is good
|
| >
|
| Yes - if that is what you care about. But from what I see not
| so many people in the world care about "good". They just
| "want more".
|
| For example, when a customer reports a problem, and I admit
| that there is a bug and explain a workaround some of them
| will say: "you have buggy software, bla bla I will use
| Google". But if you say: "Strange. This might some very
| strange setup issue - here is the workaround" - no problem.
|
| Of course, some of our customers _love_ honesty but the
| vertical I 'm working in, honesty is not a thing.
|
| Depressing... I know.
| egsmi wrote:
| This only works if all involved accept their initial axiom, "So
| you've made a mistake and it's public...".
|
| In my experience getting consensus from all involved that a
| mistake has indeed been committed is the very hardest part of the
| whole process.
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