In Which Sanya Surprises Some People
The one time staff admits they make a mistake and people are giving them shit about it even though they stated some REALLY logical reasons and how they’re dealing with the errors - people are still fucking calling them out?
https://sanyawaffles.tumblr.com/post/162186304723/pinkonionfairy-staff-hi-tumblr-weve-heard < This is where they did it, in the original post.
Nope. Not gonna cave to this.
I’m gonna throw Tungle a bone here, they for the first time acknowledged, in my knowledge at least, that something they implemented was broken and reasons that happened and how they plan on fixing it.
Look, I hate Tumblr. I don’t even know why I’m here. But I come from a background in computer technology - specifically programming and basic web design, and knowing some simple stuff I know what they’re claiming is actually more likely the case.
Algorithms aren’t perfect because humans code them. And they have to be improved on by humans. What amounts to most technological fuckups is human error. Look at great disasters of all sorts: The Challenger Disaster. The Piper Alpha Rig. Chernobyl. Titanic. Peter Molyneux in general. The Columbia Breakup Over Texas.
… okay in seriousness what I’m getting at is humans create computer machines, and program them to do stuff. At their heart computers are dumb adding machines. They aren’t some self-replicating AI that can reprogram. Not Tumblr at least.
Tumblr’s staff are humans. Their coders are humans. And while I do often quip at how miserable staff is, the fact they admitted this was being error-prone is one of the first major things where I’ve seen them admit fault, and continue to try and fix the errors and why things were happening.
It’s also a great thing: Widely people were being reasonable with their protests, some a bit more crass and sarcastic, others more sincerely bothered and upset. And it got results.
Results we’re gonna see over the next week I hope.
Tumblr could have implemented it better. But they admit that and are working on that.
For that, I give @staff credit. I appreciate them listening to our concerns and their relatively quick response. Which probably part of that was their investigations to make sure exactly what went wrong.
… so the irony is @staff does more fact-checking than their userbase. Something is to be learnt here, ladies, gents and other guests to my blog.
Let me be frank: if you’re still complaining now and not giving Tumblr a chance to make this right (within a reasonable time frame) - you are just complaining because it’s hip and cool to do. You don’t want a solution. You want blood. You want to be angry. You probably preferred them to have stayed quiet so you could complain further without looking like a bunch of childish gits.
I like to be a realistic optimist: yeah, not everything is good. But not everything is a total pile of shit either.
I want to add I feel another thing can be learned by @staff - the importance of timing. The bad timing on rolling this out made it seem to the LGBT folk who are more zealous (they exist, they’re the ones complaining primarily I bet) that this was some censorship issue. Even I admit that was my initial mindset - albiet more of a crackdown on the site in general, not necessarily LGBT stuff.
The timing made it seem all the more plausible. What kept them from testing this out more and releasing it a month later to avoid any controversy is something I sincerely wonder. Did they not think that through?
I mean, I’m throwing them some scrap here, I’m not completely relieving them of any guilt. But they did seem sincere in their collective blog post.
Tumblr Staff has a lot to learn, but so does Tumblr Userbase. Stop throwing shit at walls for the sake of throwing shit at walls. It proves to me that the enemy isn’t the staff. It’s the userbase that continues to make this site hell.
All I can say is: shame on you.
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