In general, I am in favour of public criticism within movements/communities, and think it is usually underproduced. In general, I would prefer public-criticism-without-prior-warning to no criticism, if those are the only choices available. However:
I think prior consultation significantly increases the social value of criticism, and that there should be a pretty strong norm of doing so, at least on the Forum (perhaps less so on social media groups). As such, I’m not sympathetic to excuses of the form “I didn’t have time to do this” in this context, unless the post is, for some reason, very urgent.
Excuses of the form “I didn’t think reaching out in advance would be productive”, meanwhile, are quite prone to self-serving biases and the horns effect, and should be avoided, with the possible exception of cases where the target of criticism is flagrantly dishonest and manipulative.
In this case, there are several important places where criticism either concerns actions that have since been reversed (the blog post) or depends on speculation about the non-public motives of ACE staff (Anima International). These seem like cases where giving ACE the chance to respond would be especially valuable.
Being afraid of retaliation is potentially a good reason not to share in advance, but (a) the sharing could still be done anonymously, e.g. from a new Gmail account or via a proxy, and (b) if this was the reason, it’s dishonest to say that the author “[has] not had the chance to share a draft of this post with ACE”.
In sum, I think there’s a decent probability that I do disapprove of the author’s posting this without discussing it with ACE in advance – but, until/unless I hear their reasoning, I am not sure.
In general, I am in favour of public criticism within movements/communities, and think it is usually underproduced. In general, I would prefer public-criticism-without-prior-warning to no criticism, if those are the only choices available. However:
I think prior consultation significantly increases the social value of criticism, and that there should be a pretty strong norm of doing so, at least on the Forum (perhaps less so on social media groups). As such, I’m not sympathetic to excuses of the form “I didn’t have time to do this” in this context, unless the post is, for some reason, very urgent.
Excuses of the form “I didn’t think reaching out in advance would be productive”, meanwhile, are quite prone to self-serving biases and the horns effect, and should be avoided, with the possible exception of cases where the target of criticism is flagrantly dishonest and manipulative.
In this case, there are several important places where criticism either concerns actions that have since been reversed (the blog post) or depends on speculation about the non-public motives of ACE staff (Anima International). These seem like cases where giving ACE the chance to respond would be especially valuable.
Being afraid of retaliation is potentially a good reason not to share in advance, but (a) the sharing could still be done anonymously, e.g. from a new Gmail account or via a proxy, and (b) if this was the reason, it’s dishonest to say that the author “[has] not had the chance to share a draft of this post with ACE”.
In sum, I think there’s a decent probability that I do disapprove of the author’s posting this without discussing it with ACE in advance – but, until/unless I hear their reasoning, I am not sure.