It's a combination of inability to read anything longer than a tweet and not wanting to put anything on record.

I'd say otherwise - it's a reach out to have a relationship. It's hard to have human relationships only by writing. Of course the best way to build it is to meet in person, but if impossible - it's always good to have a video call.

If someone is frustrated, the following chats won't do much really. They have already built a wall, and we need to meet around it, not throw our letters over it.

Who wants "a relationship" here with some manager who has just delivered the standard corporate nonpology? The problems are listed in the first message, start by fixing them.

Your claim is based on the very strong assumption that if you have a phone or video call with a person that you already hate, things will get better.

My life experience does tell me that this is often not the case: if people are already frustrated and have built a wall, it is better to use something more impersonal, like such an online text discussion.

True but organizations are not uniform, one person decided to take a destructive action and another one might want to fix it.

But I agree, if after receiving such a message someone is saying "let's hop on a call", there's little chance of things going right on the call.

Then at least try to sound like a genuine human that cares and not a PR response when reaching out. Offer a "you can call me if you want" vs making the call the expectation (it's phrased as a question but there is no other path offered).

How about:

**

First of all, I'm shocked to learn about what happened. We at Mozilla had no idea that sumobot is wreaking such havoc on your work. Please accept my sincere apologies.

It would be a great pity to have all your precious work done, so we'll do our best to fix it. I would be very grateful if you could schedule a meeting with me so that I could understend the issues you described better so that they are fixed asap?

Once again, I'm very sorry for what happened and I hope in spite of that you can continue doing great work for the Japanese Mozilla community. **

> It's hard to have human relationships only by writing.

I don't follow. Some of my most important friendships were built on forums and text-based communication. We never felt any need to have video calls. Some of them I met in person once, 15+ years after we started messaging each other, and we're great friends regardless.

I don't mean to say you're wrong in an absolute sense, but I can't relate to your post at all. Not a single one of my friends has video calls as their preferred method of socialization with online peers.

> It's hard to have human relationships only by writing.

No, it's pretty easy, actually, people did that since writing was invented, with mediums much slower than a modern mailing list.

It _is_ much easier to manipulate people behind closed doors, as well as lie about what happened there.

> I'd say otherwise - it's a reach out to have a relationship.

They HAD a relationship: it was 20 years of volunteer work. That relationship was broken by Mozilla's actions.

> not wanting to put anything on record

It is clearly this. Management hates written communication.

"We tried but this unpaid volunteer didn't cooperate by continuing to work for free"

Human communication consists of so much more than just words. Tone, loudness, speed, accent (a hint of the other person maybe not being a native English speaker), all that gets lost in pure text. And even voice calls lose a lot of context like facial mimic or gestures that convey emotions.

IME an n vs. m written discussion in a public forum can be clearer, more productive, and a hell of a lot more accountable than some potential n vs. 1 adversarial corporate firing-squad 'discussion' intended to reinforce whatever policy the n have already decided upon. IMO, much of the benefit of voice over text is likely offset by the latter scenario being real time with potential translation issues.

Decisions are not fixed. Changing the situation, could revert the decision. Why should someone silently accept a situation, when simple communication could improve the world for everyone involved? That seems like a very ignorant mindset.

Because so much nuance can be lost in writing, especially if both parties are working in a second language. There is a lot of value in actually talking to someone, especially in a fraught situation like this. Hearing the other person express genuine concern can do a lot to overcome the anger. Otherwise we tend to build up stories in our head about what the other person “really means” and those stories tend to be wildly negative.

There have been a ton of complaints on HackerNews about companies never letting them talk to a real person. Here's a company offering up a real person, and apparently that's still bad somehow. You can always just say "no" to an offer to talk.

Some people need AI to explain to them the meaning of words. /s