Seven weeks so far…

[maia_bob]

454 emails this week of which 303 are labeled OTW - !General and 134 are labeled OTW – Board. The proportion of emails to IM chats is moving towards more chats. My calendar says ~15 hour week. I didn’t make it to a single official committee meeting which kind of blows my mind because it feels like this whole week has been All-OTW, all the time. *reads transcripts*

One of things I couldn’t talk about last week (Six weeks so far…) and the week before (Five weeks so far…) was Meta and you're lucky I only joined the board recently or I would have been not talking about it for over six months. if you're interested, my personal decision making process went a lot like this:

I would like to emphasise that this is a Board decision, and while AD&T, Support and Comms are receiving the feedback, they are not the instigators. Keep communicating, this is important. Be kind, this is important too.

I am also open to continuing discussing it, this is an invitation to comment or PM me if you want to talk about it with me.

ETA: Also! HUGE thank you to J. who got up when I called him at 1:35am his time because the AO3 was down for logged out users. THANK YOU!

Comments

[facetofcathy]

Hi Curtis, I hope you (and maia_bob) don't mind me dropping this comment here, but frankly, trying to find official contact info for OTW people makes me cranky. I wanted to give you some feedback on the form of the post, not the content.

When I read the post the first time, I got to the line, "use of our resources is consonant with our purview and mission," and I burst out laughing. Sorry, but I did. Then, because I'm a bit cynical, I started wondering what truth you were hiding in the jargon weeds.

Today, I stumbled across a readability tool today: http://www.readability-score.com/

It uses the standard formulas most writers are familiar with and gives instant results.

So I tried the post in that readability test and it came out with a grade level of 11 and a reading ease of 56.

I tested the most recent news post about the support chat and it was a bit lower grade/higher ease.

Then I grabbed the first fic I could find on the AO3 with more than 1,000 kudos and 30,000 hits. Grade 5/Ease 86. I tried another and got Grade 3/Ease 87.

I think this a real problem with official communications. The posts are long, complex, often shy away from making points bluntly and plainly and do hide things in the jargon. Posts are also written like the expected audience is a US anglophone college grad.

I believe this is contributing to the form and amount of angry pushback you're getting sometimes, and this time in particular.

There are varying levels of language skills in your audience, non-anglophones, people like me who are very much not college grads, young people, etc, and I don't think this post hit anywhere near even the median reading level of AO3 users.

Put that together with the Hi! So glad you commented!! Here's some boilerplate text in response!!! replies and the post is bound to piss off and alienate people who are much less cynical than I.

I'm saying, therefore that not just straight talk, but some straight-sounding talk is needed by users.

Thanks for your time Curtis, and I wish you all the best.

[maia_bob]

That's a cool tool - thanks for sharing it. I get 7.3 / 77 for this post but less for other posts, I need to work on that.

[maia_bob]

...and now I'm reminded of xkcd's up Goer Five again.