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alcide 7 hours ago

Mozilla has offered to call the OP, too. I’m curious on the outcome.

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benatkin 7 hours ago | parent [-]

They said sorry for how you feel about it which is insincere and unhelpful.

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Incipient 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My partner has been picking me up on the specifics of wording.

Is there a slightly different phrasing that would make this better, or is it the sentiment that's crap?

"I'm sorry for how these changes impacted you"? Personally just the sentiment feels insincere to me haha.

	▲	kentm 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Don’t use passive voice in an apology. “We’re sorry that we made the change without consulting your team or considering your circumstances.” The change did not fall out of thin air. It was something they did. If they do not own it explicitly then it’s insincere full stop.
	▲	pseudalopex 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The sentiment is more important. But I'm sorry for how you feel suggests to many people the sole problem was their feelings. I'm sorry for how these changes impacted you suggests the changes could have been wrong.
	▲	mewse-hn 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I don't think it's the specific phrasing. They could have said "I'll contact you by email to try and understand your concerns" and it's still dodging the explicit, concrete list of grievances. However, "let's hop on a call" is just additionally dismissive.
	▲	4bpp 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Two things stand out, besides what has been already mentioned. * The infantile corporate-cutesy wording "hop on a call" is not appropriate when talking to somebody who feels that you deeply wronged them. It has the same vibes as cheery "Remember: At Juicero, we are all one big family!" signatures on termination notices, and Corporate Memphis. * In the first sentence, Kiki says "about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced". Why is this level of detail shoehorned in? Everyone in that conversation already knows what it is about. It's as if Kiki can't resist the temptation to inject an ad/brag about their recently introduced workflow for any drive-by readers. "I'm sorry you were dissatisfied with your Apple(R) iPlunger X(TM), which is now available at major retailers for only $599!"
	▲	petre 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The response was likely also written by AI so there is no point analyzing it. It just ads insult to injury.

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crazygringo 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How?

They don't know what exactly has gone wrong. All they can say sorry for is for how the person is feeling. Then they want to get on a call to learn more. Which is the start of helping.

The response is as sincere and helpful as it could be for an initial response from someone who wants to figure out what the problem is.

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rileymat2 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But he lists the problems? Pretty unambiguously.

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crazygringo 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The problems are nowhere near actionable. A lot more information is needed.

E.g. literally the first bullet: "It doesn't follow our translation guidelines". OK -- where are those guidelines? Is there a way to get it to follow them, like another commenter says works? Does the person need help following the process for that? Or is there a bug? Etc.

These are the things a call can clarify. It's the necessary first step, so why are people complaining?

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handoflixue 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> where are those guidelines?

It's entirely possible that such information is well-known to everyone involved in the translation community.

I would consider it outright insulting if someone who ostensibly "wants to help" doesn't know basic information like that - if the people making decisions about SumoBot are NOT aware of basic information like "where to find the local translation guidelines" then they are presumably not qualified to release a tool like SumoBot in the first place.

	▲	kentm 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yep agree with this. Nothing is more infuriating than someone Kramering into a space trying “to help” without spending any time or effort trying to understand that space. They should have understood the guidelines before turning on their machine translation in a given locality.

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kentm 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Turning off the machine translation and reverting all the changes it made seems pretty actionable to me. They can turn it back on when issues are addressed.

	▲	benatkin 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed. Turning it off would still satisfy marsf's requests: - I prohibit to use all my translation as learning data for SUMO bot and AIs. - I request to remove all my translation from learned data of SUMO AIs. Before fixing it and re-enabling it in some capacity, they could work with marsf to find a solution.

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BrenBarn 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They are actionable by entirely canceling the machine translation operations in that community,

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GuinansEyebrows 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

even if that were the case (others have explained why that’s not so), that would be an inappropriate time to apologize. you don’t apologize for how someone else feels. you apologize when you recognize that you did something harmful and when the harmed party is amenable to receiving it. otherwise, you’re really just being a jerk who’s only acknowledging that you don’t like how someone else feels.