Thank you for reading and for the in-depth response!
I want to say before I start here that I'm actually already planning a follow-up post based on some responses I saw before yours that would have also addressed some of the points and questions you raise. I'll still respond to those here, but just know that on some items I'll be posting in more detail later -- I'll drop a comment here when that post is up to let you know.
Secondly, a lot of what I say below comes down to "yes, these are problems; we're working on it but it's slow," followed by long explanations of what the holdup is. I do not mean these explanations to excuse or deny the problems but as insight into what's happening and why. Overall, I definitely agree that these are real issues and problems.
Also, it's long -- my apologies if I go over the obvious, but I wanted to err on the side of more information, both for you and for anyone else reading along.
With that said:
- When I use the support form to send e-mail to the AO3 or OTW, I usually hear nothing back except a "We received your message." Black-box syndrome, which is not encouraging to open discourse or positive feelings.
I want to first acknowledge that you're right about black-box syndrome in terms of the org overall -- like I said in my post, the org definitely needs to work on giving more and better updates along the lines of "yes we're working on this" and progress reports. This is an org-wide problem.
In terms of your Support requests specifically, I'm not certain from your comment if you're saying you only received the automatically-generated message that just confirms your ticket, or that you got a response from a human being that basically said "we're working on it" or "we'll consider it". If it's the former, I'm very sorry for that omission; the best thing to do in this case is to submit another ticket and mention the previous one -- things fall through the cracks sometimes, as hard as we try.
If it was the latter, I asked for a quick check, and the last known Support ticket under the name you used here was in January of 2011 (eta: except for your most recent one, looks like!) and did get a human response, so I'm not sure if there's anything since then (under a different name)? If you were not satisfied with the response you got, please feel free to respond (or submit a new ticket) and tell us why -- we do get these and try to address the issues. Otherwise, this runs into another facet of the black-box problem, which is Support's position in the OTW machinery. This is something I specifically want to cover in my aforementioned followup post, but the short version is that it's a similar position to tag wrangling volunteers and staff: caught in the middle between audience/users and the people who can actually effect change -- in this case, the Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee that does the coding and testing work. AD&T, in turn, is incredibly busy with both doing the coding work and trying to communicate adequately about all of it. That's why in many cases the only timely response Support can give is that they've passed it on to the appropriate places. There are concrete things we're working on to improve this, though, including a public Support Board and making the Feature Requests list and process public, both of which I'll cover in my followup post.
Again, the black box issue is definitely a problem. This isn't intended to excuse it, but to explain what's going on behind the scenes and what kinds of issues we're facing as we fight it, as well as what steps we're taking.
Frustrations/issues with posting in official spaces vs. Fast, engaged, and interesting discussion in unofficial spaces
The issue with substantive official responses is basically the same as what I talked about with respect to Support: they're embedded in a complex structure of resources, authority, and purview, and substantive responses generally require checking with multiple people/committees. Now, of course, this is not necessarily efficient -- though also far from unique; orgs with more resources can ameliorate this by having people on-call to speed things up. One issue more unique to us is that we're also culturally touchy about stepping on each others' toes for historical reasons, which is an area of trust and communication that is slowly improving.
There are several other things we can do to reduce the overall problem with official responses. One is defining lines of communication and purview more clearly, which we're working on. Another is integrating response preparation -- anticipating possible responses and having basic answers agreed upon in advance -- into post/announcement preparation, which is gaining ground but should definitely be encouraged more. Finally, it would be great if we could make sure that every committee or project had a person who specialized in outward-facing communication for that committee/project, and so could respond quickly and in an informed manner without having to go through a bunch of gates and channels. This is something we really should have, but the usual problem is the lack of personnel and/or training.
All this brings me to conversations in unofficial spaces.
One of the big reasons that these conversations tend to be faster and freer, and seem more productive, is because, acting unofficially or even anonymously, people are working outside the above system and feel much freer to act and respond as individuals. It cuts a lot of the red tape, and a lot of the strings: forecasts or assurances made in these spaces can be good, but they are are not binding*. It's a lot easier and less damaging for an individual to say "whoops, I had the wrong information/promised something I couldn't" than it is for an organization to say the same (though we definitely should when applicable!).
This, of course, has a flip side: while unofficial spaces offer freedom and speed, by the same token this robs org actors of their power. Just as the org machinery does not press down on our expression, so too can we not promise anything with the weight of the org machinery behind us. When commentary/discussions occur in official channels, they land in the middle of the machine, where everyone can act with the full weight of their roles and powers behind them. Even if an org actor brings something back from unofficialspace, these items often get less priority than items that were submitted to us directly, on the general assumption that officially-submitted items are directly waiting on official responses/action of some sort.
So! Having these unofficial spaces and conversations is, on the whole, healthy, and as I said in the post I think people should keep using them. They have unique strengths (and weaknesses) and are another facet of healthy culture surrounding an org. But!
Also as said in the post, the issue is about expecting -- or, perhaps more accurately, relying -- on these as paths to action.
I realize unofficial communication can feel more productive, but the whole reason I brought it up in my post was to point out that even if it feels more efficient in terms of effecting real change, it's more helpful to us -- and more efficient in the long run -- for people to communicate with with us directly. For real change to occur -- not only on whatever specific issues people want to bring to us, but also in the org's overall culture and approach to communication in the first place -- things have to consistently go through official channels.
Official channels are more efficient in the long term because everything there is tracked for the future and can be aggregated. We simply do not have the resources to go and collect all the best unofficial commentary, either as an org or as individuals (much as many of us try), and that is why we need people to bring it to us so that we can document it and incorporate it into our institutional history.
At the same time, I do think we should try to import some of the characteristics of those unofficial conversations to our official spaces -- most notably, the freedom to speak individually. That right there -- being hesitant to speak as individuals when we have our most official org hats on -- rests on a fundamental fear of making mistakes, and that is a toxic fear. This refers to both being afraid to make mistakes as individuals in official capacities and being punished for them somehow, and to being afraid overall as an org to be seen making mistakes. That's no way to grow, and no kind of culture to encourage. I think having a Code of Conduct and policies for what calls for corrective action and what that corrective action will be (both making huge progress!) will really help here, as it will clearly bind both individuals and the org as a whole to treating each other in clearly set-out ways.
I also think -- I hope -- that one of very reasons these unofficial conversations are coming faster, thicker, and better is improvement in OTW culture, communication, and transparency. People feel safer in talking about their work, both positively and negatively. More information is publicly available in the first place to feed and inform these conversations.
Finally, centralizing discussion/commentary a bit more is definitely an issue, and this is something I plan to talk about in my followup -- thanks for bringing it up!
All that said, again, black box syndrome continues to be a problem, and expecting people to work with the org machinery is only fair insofar as the org machinery is transparen and responsive. We're working on this, and -- I hope -- our audience can work with us on their end, too. This is what I mean by symbiosis. The more people use our official channels, the easier it is for us to prioritize improving them.
* (This is why I feel okay speaking so much about my work and even speculating about future directions here: even at the Board level, this is in the end a non-binding space for the org and the Board as a whole. Though I do consider it a binding space for myself as an individual, an individual Board member, and an individual part of OTW personnel -- if I say something here, I do want to be held accountable for it. If the only answer I can give to something is "I tried my best, but was we don't have the resources/I was outvoted/etc." or "I was wrong", then that is how it is, but I had damn better be ready to give an answer.)
- When I tried to volunteer late last year and earlier this year, I was brushed off.
I am so sorry that you tried to volunteer and felt brushed off. If you are willing to share feedback on the specific response you got and/or the process you went through, please let me know, and I can pass it on.
I want to address the issue of volunteer hiring in general separately from co-opting critics.
Judging by the time you applied, it's not unlikely that you were caught in the hiring freeze. Why is there a hiring freeze while I keep going on about not having enough people? It's because we don't have the resources and mentorship structures to take on new volunteers, either. Incoming volunteers need training and mentoring, and deserve to know what conduct is expected of them, what corrective and conflict resolution policies are, what recourse they have in the system. After the conversations about burnout we had late last term and early this term, and the flood of volunteers we got from one of the drives, we decided that we would rather turn volunteers away now and offer them a better, safer place later rather than risk burning through more new people in a system that is currently pretty broken. In the meantime, we're trying to slow down and build better structures. Our Volunteers & Recruiting committee is hard at work getting as much of the necessary structure in place as they can.
We do have some very limited at-need hiring going on right now because of things on fire (notably, we have a technical position interest form currently open). And I know that keeping the too-low number of people we have now also leads to burnout, but this was essentially a choice of lesser evils: existing personnel are at least already familiar with how we work. So in the end, a lot of the problems I've talked about here can only be fixed after we can bring in more people, and we are working on that just as fast as we can.
We could definitely have communicated better about the hiring freeze and the reasons behind it. And if you did not get caught in the freeze, I'm still definitely interested in hearing any feedback you have.
Co-opting Critics
I agree that co-opting constructive critics where possible is generally a good strategy! And this is actually how a lot of people advance in the org internally.
This is subject to the same issues as I mentioned above with collecting all the good unofficial commentary and with hiring new people right now. It also helps if people offer constructive and productive critique -- it's a lot easier to want to hire or promote someone when you can see that they'll offer solutions as well as criticism. So definitely not everyone has to play by these rules -- if someone just wants to criticize the org without offering alternative ideas, that's fine; you're under no obligation to think up and work on solutions. But org personnel are under that obligation.
So, definitely want to co-opt critics as we can and within reason!
Communications and the TW Letter
The primary reason the letter was not run by Comms is because the focus of the Comms committee is on external communication primarily, and inter-committee communication within the org secondarily. The letter to the wrangler list was regarded as a communication inside one committee, from chairs directly to the volunteers they manage, and we generally trust chairs and staff to manage their volunteer pools as they see fit (this being one of the primary points of the job). It's also a matter of resource allocation -- we can't expect a Comms committee with more than enough work to do (see all of the above!) to also supervise things we've already specifically tasked other chairs, leads, and staff with. Wranglers are in general regarded as org personnel, and in a major sense this was a reminder to wranglers of how personnel are asked to behave.
That said, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to ask someone from Comms to vet the letter as well if they had time, given the nature of both the letter and of the wrangler list (since wranglers do tend to talk publicly about stuff from the list, making it partially, if not officially, outward-facing communication) -- I just want to note that it's not part of official procedure, and why. The TW chairs did ask the staff for feedback on the letter, and the staff includes people currently working with Support as well as former Support staffers, so we did at least have people with some communication experience in addition to their TW staffing experience.
Thanks for reading and listening!
Sincerely, Consistent pusher of comment and post character limits
no subject
I want to say before I start here that I'm actually already planning a follow-up post based on some responses I saw before yours that would have also addressed some of the points and questions you raise. I'll still respond to those here, but just know that on some items I'll be posting in more detail later -- I'll drop a comment here when that post is up to let you know.
Secondly, a lot of what I say below comes down to "yes, these are problems; we're working on it but it's slow," followed by long explanations of what the holdup is. I do not mean these explanations to excuse or deny the problems but as insight into what's happening and why. Overall, I definitely agree that these are real issues and problems.
Also, it's long -- my apologies if I go over the obvious, but I wanted to err on the side of more information, both for you and for anyone else reading along.
With that said:
- When I use the support form to send e-mail to the AO3 or OTW, I usually hear nothing back except a "We received your message." Black-box syndrome, which is not encouraging to open discourse or positive feelings.
I want to first acknowledge that you're right about black-box syndrome in terms of the org overall -- like I said in my post, the org definitely needs to work on giving more and better updates along the lines of "yes we're working on this" and progress reports. This is an org-wide problem.
In terms of your Support requests specifically, I'm not certain from your comment if you're saying you only received the automatically-generated message that just confirms your ticket, or that you got a response from a human being that basically said "we're working on it" or "we'll consider it". If it's the former, I'm very sorry for that omission; the best thing to do in this case is to submit another ticket and mention the previous one -- things fall through the cracks sometimes, as hard as we try.
If it was the latter, I asked for a quick check, and the last known Support ticket under the name you used here was in January of 2011 (eta: except for your most recent one, looks like!) and did get a human response, so I'm not sure if there's anything since then (under a different name)? If you were not satisfied with the response you got, please feel free to respond (or submit a new ticket) and tell us why -- we do get these and try to address the issues. Otherwise, this runs into another facet of the black-box problem, which is Support's position in the OTW machinery. This is something I specifically want to cover in my aforementioned followup post, but the short version is that it's a similar position to tag wrangling volunteers and staff: caught in the middle between audience/users and the people who can actually effect change -- in this case, the Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee that does the coding and testing work. AD&T, in turn, is incredibly busy with both doing the coding work and trying to communicate adequately about all of it. That's why in many cases the only timely response Support can give is that they've passed it on to the appropriate places. There are concrete things we're working on to improve this, though, including a public Support Board and making the Feature Requests list and process public, both of which I'll cover in my followup post.
Again, the black box issue is definitely a problem. This isn't intended to excuse it, but to explain what's going on behind the scenes and what kinds of issues we're facing as we fight it, as well as what steps we're taking.
Frustrations/issues with posting in official spaces vs. Fast, engaged, and interesting discussion in unofficial spaces
The issue with substantive official responses is basically the same as what I talked about with respect to Support: they're embedded in a complex structure of resources, authority, and purview, and substantive responses generally require checking with multiple people/committees. Now, of course, this is not necessarily efficient -- though also far from unique; orgs with more resources can ameliorate this by having people on-call to speed things up. One issue more unique to us is that we're also culturally touchy about stepping on each others' toes for historical reasons, which is an area of trust and communication that is slowly improving.
There are several other things we can do to reduce the overall problem with official responses. One is defining lines of communication and purview more clearly, which we're working on. Another is integrating response preparation -- anticipating possible responses and having basic answers agreed upon in advance -- into post/announcement preparation, which is gaining ground but should definitely be encouraged more. Finally, it would be great if we could make sure that every committee or project had a person who specialized in outward-facing communication for that committee/project, and so could respond quickly and in an informed manner without having to go through a bunch of gates and channels. This is something we really should have, but the usual problem is the lack of personnel and/or training.
All this brings me to conversations in unofficial spaces.
One of the big reasons that these conversations tend to be faster and freer, and seem more productive, is because, acting unofficially or even anonymously, people are working outside the above system and feel much freer to act and respond as individuals. It cuts a lot of the red tape, and a lot of the strings: forecasts or assurances made in these spaces can be good, but they are are not binding*. It's a lot easier and less damaging for an individual to say "whoops, I had the wrong information/promised something I couldn't" than it is for an organization to say the same (though we definitely should when applicable!).
This, of course, has a flip side: while unofficial spaces offer freedom and speed, by the same token this robs org actors of their power. Just as the org machinery does not press down on our expression, so too can we not promise anything with the weight of the org machinery behind us. When commentary/discussions occur in official channels, they land in the middle of the machine, where everyone can act with the full weight of their roles and powers behind them. Even if an org actor brings something back from unofficialspace, these items often get less priority than items that were submitted to us directly, on the general assumption that officially-submitted items are directly waiting on official responses/action of some sort.
So! Having these unofficial spaces and conversations is, on the whole, healthy, and as I said in the post I think people should keep using them. They have unique strengths (and weaknesses) and are another facet of healthy culture surrounding an org. But!
Also as said in the post, the issue is about expecting -- or, perhaps more accurately, relying -- on these as paths to action.
I realize unofficial communication can feel more productive, but the whole reason I brought it up in my post was to point out that even if it feels more efficient in terms of effecting real change, it's more helpful to us -- and more efficient in the long run -- for people to communicate with with us directly. For real change to occur -- not only on whatever specific issues people want to bring to us, but also in the org's overall culture and approach to communication in the first place -- things have to consistently go through official channels.
Official channels are more efficient in the long term because everything there is tracked for the future and can be aggregated. We simply do not have the resources to go and collect all the best unofficial commentary, either as an org or as individuals (much as many of us try), and that is why we need people to bring it to us so that we can document it and incorporate it into our institutional history.
At the same time, I do think we should try to import some of the characteristics of those unofficial conversations to our official spaces -- most notably, the freedom to speak individually. That right there -- being hesitant to speak as individuals when we have our most official org hats on -- rests on a fundamental fear of making mistakes, and that is a toxic fear. This refers to both being afraid to make mistakes as individuals in official capacities and being punished for them somehow, and to being afraid overall as an org to be seen making mistakes. That's no way to grow, and no kind of culture to encourage. I think having a Code of Conduct and policies for what calls for corrective action and what that corrective action will be (both making huge progress!) will really help here, as it will clearly bind both individuals and the org as a whole to treating each other in clearly set-out ways.
I also think -- I hope -- that one of very reasons these unofficial conversations are coming faster, thicker, and better is improvement in OTW culture, communication, and transparency. People feel safer in talking about their work, both positively and negatively. More information is publicly available in the first place to feed and inform these conversations.
Finally, centralizing discussion/commentary a bit more is definitely an issue, and this is something I plan to talk about in my followup -- thanks for bringing it up!
All that said, again, black box syndrome continues to be a problem, and expecting people to work with the org machinery is only fair insofar as the org machinery is transparen and responsive. We're working on this, and -- I hope -- our audience can work with us on their end, too. This is what I mean by symbiosis. The more people use our official channels, the easier it is for us to prioritize improving them.
* (This is why I feel okay speaking so much about my work and even speculating about future directions here: even at the Board level, this is in the end a non-binding space for the org and the Board as a whole. Though I do consider it a binding space for myself as an individual, an individual Board member, and an individual part of OTW personnel -- if I say something here, I do want to be held accountable for it. If the only answer I can give to something is "I tried my best, but was we don't have the resources/I was outvoted/etc." or "I was wrong", then that is how it is, but I had damn better be ready to give an answer.)
- When I tried to volunteer late last year and earlier this year, I was brushed off.
I am so sorry that you tried to volunteer and felt brushed off. If you are willing to share feedback on the specific response you got and/or the process you went through, please let me know, and I can pass it on.
I want to address the issue of volunteer hiring in general separately from co-opting critics.
Judging by the time you applied, it's not unlikely that you were caught in the hiring freeze. Why is there a hiring freeze while I keep going on about not having enough people? It's because we don't have the resources and mentorship structures to take on new volunteers, either. Incoming volunteers need training and mentoring, and deserve to know what conduct is expected of them, what corrective and conflict resolution policies are, what recourse they have in the system. After the conversations about burnout we had late last term and early this term, and the flood of volunteers we got from one of the drives, we decided that we would rather turn volunteers away now and offer them a better, safer place later rather than risk burning through more new people in a system that is currently pretty broken. In the meantime, we're trying to slow down and build better structures. Our Volunteers & Recruiting committee is hard at work getting as much of the necessary structure in place as they can.
We do have some very limited at-need hiring going on right now because of things on fire (notably, we have a technical position interest form currently open). And I know that keeping the too-low number of people we have now also leads to burnout, but this was essentially a choice of lesser evils: existing personnel are at least already familiar with how we work. So in the end, a lot of the problems I've talked about here can only be fixed after we can bring in more people, and we are working on that just as fast as we can.
We could definitely have communicated better about the hiring freeze and the reasons behind it. And if you did not get caught in the freeze, I'm still definitely interested in hearing any feedback you have.
Co-opting Critics
I agree that co-opting constructive critics where possible is generally a good strategy! And this is actually how a lot of people advance in the org internally.
This is subject to the same issues as I mentioned above with collecting all the good unofficial commentary and with hiring new people right now. It also helps if people offer constructive and productive critique -- it's a lot easier to want to hire or promote someone when you can see that they'll offer solutions as well as criticism. So definitely not everyone has to play by these rules -- if someone just wants to criticize the org without offering alternative ideas, that's fine; you're under no obligation to think up and work on solutions. But org personnel are under that obligation.
So, definitely want to co-opt critics as we can and within reason!
Communications and the TW Letter
The primary reason the letter was not run by Comms is because the focus of the Comms committee is on external communication primarily, and inter-committee communication within the org secondarily. The letter to the wrangler list was regarded as a communication inside one committee, from chairs directly to the volunteers they manage, and we generally trust chairs and staff to manage their volunteer pools as they see fit (this being one of the primary points of the job). It's also a matter of resource allocation -- we can't expect a Comms committee with more than enough work to do (see all of the above!) to also supervise things we've already specifically tasked other chairs, leads, and staff with. Wranglers are in general regarded as org personnel, and in a major sense this was a reminder to wranglers of how personnel are asked to behave.
That said, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to ask someone from Comms to vet the letter as well if they had time, given the nature of both the letter and of the wrangler list (since wranglers do tend to talk publicly about stuff from the list, making it partially, if not officially, outward-facing communication) -- I just want to note that it's not part of official procedure, and why. The TW chairs did ask the staff for feedback on the letter, and the staff includes people currently working with Support as well as former Support staffers, so we did at least have people with some communication experience in addition to their TW staffing experience.
Thanks for reading and listening!
Sincerely,
Consistent pusher of comment and post character limits