As someone who works within the movement and participates as a volunteer from time-to-time, I’m sometimes frustrated with the imprecise nature of text-focused collaboration. There is a lot of nuance and subtly in how we communicate as people, and much of that is lost when we work together via text. It can lead to abuse, frustration and misinterpretation. Especially when it comes to giving feedback.
A colleague of mine shared this recent blog post from Stack Overflow, the popular Question and Answer site. The author describes how a rather benign policy change lead to feelings of being attacked and the cycle of frustration when conversations go awry.
This is something I consider daily when interacting here in Space, and across my many interactions with the Wikimedia community. I’d encourage you to have a read and let’s discuss ways we can remember that we’re all on the same side of the problem.
“The monster in this case is not one person, it was created when lots of people, even with great intentions, publicly disagreed with you at the same time. Even kind feedback can come off as caustic and mean when there is a mob of people behind it.”