I just read this Stack Overflow blog post about feeling attacked by non-positive feedback <https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/07/18/building-community-inclusivity-stack-overflow/>, and found the pattern described to be very familiar from both WMF interactions I've observed and Wiki community interactions:
we introduced a new company-wide policy that I felt was relatively benign. > What happened next was that, from my point of view, the engineering team > completely lost it. … What had happened to my amazing coworkers that were > so kind and wonderful? I felt attacked and diminished. It seemed people > weren’t valuing my work or my judgment. > … As I went back through that Friday afternoon chat log, I was shocked to > see that no one had been hurling insults. … people had some well > put together arguments about why they felt this policy was a bad idea. … > I didn’t find people questioning my ability as a manager, throwing around > insults, or saying anything that that illustrated why I was feeling so > targeted. > … 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 > Joel Aufrecht (he/him, they/them) Program Manager (Technology) Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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