[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Concern about tone of recent list messages

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

Over the past few days, I've heard from a few of our end users here in 
Massachusetts. They are people who don't typically post to the Evergreen 
list, but they do subscribe to it and keep up with the discussions in 
the community. We've always encouraged our end users to subscribe to 
this list because we think it's important that they be informed of 
Evergreen discussions.  We also would like them to be active 
participants in the community and in setting the future course for 
Evergreen. I suspect that other Evergreen sites encourage there users to 
subscribe to the list  as well and, as a result, there is a whole slew 
of end users lurking on these lists who we never hear from.

The end users who contacted me this week were frustrated with the tone 
of some e-mails sent out as part of the discussion of problems with 
checkins. Many of the e-mails in that thread were very thoughtful and 
respectful as people identified potential problem points and described 
how they worked through similar problems at their libraries. However, 
some e-mails were laced with a bit of sarcasm and bordered on being 
disrespectful towards the people who are using the system on a 
day-to-day basis. The people I spoke to generally found that the tone 
was dismissive of the concerns of end users.

Although it is rare for me to hear complaints about the tone of e-mails 
on this list, I must admit it's not the first time I've noticed 
dismissive comments made about users. Typically, I don't see these 
comments on e-mail lists, but they are sometimes made in publicly-logged 
communication channels. I don't see these comments as much as I did when 
I first started working in the community, but they still come up from 
time to time.

I thought it would be worthwhile to send out a reminder to everyone that 
the e-mails on this list are read by all different types of people from 
the Evergreen community from front-line staff working on the circ desk 
to catalogers to the patrons served by our libraries. All of the 
discussions on the list and in the IRC channel are publicly logged and 
available for anyone to read.

We aren't always going to agree on what causes a problem or even agree 
that a particular problem is important. However, when a concern is 
raised, we do need to treat the people who have that concern, whether 
they are the original poster of the question or a lurker who feels the 
pain of the original question, with the respect we would expect to 
receive if we were the ones who raised a concern. While sarcasm has its 
time and place (and, believe me, I use sarcasm quite a bit, even if I 
don't show it much around here), I don't think it's advisable to use it 
when talking about the primary users of our software.

 From the comments I've received, a result of that discussion was that 
some end users a) felt undervalued and b) were less likely to 
participate in future list discussions. I don't think we want to 
discourage that kind of participation from our users. The more we hear 
from them, the better position we are in to make Evergreen better for 
everyone.

I love Evergreen, and I love the community that supports it. I truly 
believe that no offense was intended in any of the e-mails that were 
sent. I just request that everyone uses a little more care when 
responding to concerns raised on this list.

Thank you,
Kathy


-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier