I think it is entirely possible that people are being unkind because they updated too quickly on claims from Ben’s post that are now being disputed, and I’m grateful that you’ve written this (ditto chinscratch’s comment) as a reminder to be empathetic. That being said, there are also some reasons people might be less charitable than you are for reasons that are unrelated to them being unkind, or the facts that are in contention:
I have only heard good things about Nonlinear, outside these accusations
Right now, on the basis of what could turn out to have been a lot of lies, their reputations, friendship futures and careers are at risk of being badly damaged
Without commenting on whether Ben’s original post should have been approached better or worded differently or was misleading etc, this comment from the Community Health/Special Projects team might add some useful additional context. There are also previous allegations that have been raised.[1]
Perhaps you are including both of these as part of the same set of allegations, but some may suggest that not being permitted to run sessions / recruit at EAGs and considering blocking attendance (especially given the reference class of actions that have prompted various responses that you can see here) is qualitatively important and may affect whether commentors are being charitable or not (as opposed to if they just considered the contents of Ben’s post VS Nonlinear (NL)’s response). Of course, this depends on how much you think the Community Health/Special Projects team are trustworthy with their judgement / investigation, or how likely this is all just an information cascade etc.
It seems reasonable to assume that the people at Nonlinear are altruistic people.
It is possible for altruistic people to be poor managers, poor leaders, make bad decisions about professional boundaries, have a poor understanding of power dynamics, or indeed, be abusive. The extent to which people at NL are altruistic is (afaict) not a major point of contention, and it is possible to not update about how altruistic someone is while also wanting to hold them accountable to some reasonable standard like “not being abusive or manipulative towards people you manage”.
Instead, as I see it, the main, or at least most upvoted, response here has been to critique stylistic mistakes made in their almost impossible task of refuting very damaging claims from anonymous sources in unknown contexts.
The claims in question from Alice/Chloe/Ben are not anonymous, the identities of Alice and Chloe are known to the Nonlinear team.
Independent of my personal views on these issues, I do think the pushback around ‘stylistic mistakes’ are reasonable insofar as people interpret this to be indicative of something concerning about NL’s approach towards managing staff / criticism / conflict (1, 2, 3), rather than e.g. just being nitpicky about tone, though I appreciate both interpretations are plausible.
I’d like people to imagine what they would do in a similar situation if they were faced with similar accusations. How would you successfully persuade people that you didn’t do the things you were accused of, and that the context was not as portrayed?
I think (much) less is more in this case.[2] I think there are parts of this current post that feel more subjective and not supported by facts, and may be reasonably interpreted by a cynical outsider to look like a distraction or a defensive smear campaign. I think these choices are counterproductive (both for a truth-seeking outsider, and for NL’s own interests), especially given the allegations of frame control and being retaliatory.
There are other parts that might similarly be reasonably interpreted to range from irrelevant (Alice’s personal drug use habits), unproductive (links to Kathy Forth), or misleading (inclusion of photos, inconsistent usage of quotation marks, unnecessary paraphrasing, usage of quotes that miss the full context). I disagreed with the approaches here, though I acknowledge there were competing opinions and I wasn’t privy to the internal discussions that lead to the decisions.
I think a cleaner version of this would have probably been something 5 to 10x shorter (not including the appendix), and looked something like:[3]
Apology for harms done
Acknowledgement of which allegations are seen as the most major (much closer to top 3-5 than all 85)
Responses to major allegations, focusing only on factual differences and claims that are backed up by ~irrefutable evidence
Charitable interpretations of Alice/Chloe/Ben’s position, despite above factual disagreement (what kinds of things need to be true for their allegations to be plausibly reasonable or fair from their perspective),
Lessons learnt, and things NL will do differently in future (some expression of self-awareness / reflection)
An appendix containing a list of unresolved but less critical allegations
Disclaimer: I offered to (and did) help review an early draft, in large part because I expected the NL team to (understandably!) be in panic mode after Ben’s post/getting dogpiled, and I wanted further community updates to be based on as much relevant information as was possible.
This footnote added in response to Jeff’s comment: I agree that it’s likely not double counting, because the story there appears to be one where Kat left the working relationship, which is inconsistent with the accounts of Alice / Chloe’s situations, but also makes it unlikely that the “current employee of NL / Kat” hypothesis is correct.
There are also been previous allegations that have been raised.
I was initially concerned that I might be double counting information if that comment turned out to be from Alice or Chloe, but it is dated 2022-11-14 and and I interpret it as being from a current employee. Ben’s post has:
Alice travelled with Nonlinear from November 2021 to June 2022 and started working for the org from around February, and Chloe worked there from January 2022 to July 2022.
I think it is entirely possible that people are being unkind because they updated too quickly on claims from Ben’s post that are now being disputed, and I’m grateful that you’ve written this (ditto chinscratch’s comment) as a reminder to be empathetic. That being said, there are also some reasons people might be less charitable than you are for reasons that are unrelated to them being unkind, or the facts that are in contention:
Without commenting on whether Ben’s original post should have been approached better or worded differently or was misleading etc, this comment from the Community Health/Special Projects team might add some useful additional context. There are also previous allegations that have been raised.[1]
Perhaps you are including both of these as part of the same set of allegations, but some may suggest that not being permitted to run sessions / recruit at EAGs and considering blocking attendance (especially given the reference class of actions that have prompted various responses that you can see here) is qualitatively important and may affect whether commentors are being charitable or not (as opposed to if they just considered the contents of Ben’s post VS Nonlinear (NL)’s response). Of course, this depends on how much you think the Community Health/Special Projects team are trustworthy with their judgement / investigation, or how likely this is all just an information cascade etc.
It is possible for altruistic people to be poor managers, poor leaders, make bad decisions about professional boundaries, have a poor understanding of power dynamics, or indeed, be abusive. The extent to which people at NL are altruistic is (afaict) not a major point of contention, and it is possible to not update about how altruistic someone is while also wanting to hold them accountable to some reasonable standard like “not being abusive or manipulative towards people you manage”.
The claims in question from Alice/Chloe/Ben are not anonymous, the identities of Alice and Chloe are known to the Nonlinear team.
Independent of my personal views on these issues, I do think the pushback around ‘stylistic mistakes’ are reasonable insofar as people interpret this to be indicative of something concerning about NL’s approach towards managing staff / criticism / conflict (1, 2, 3), rather than e.g. just being nitpicky about tone, though I appreciate both interpretations are plausible.
I think (much) less is more in this case.[2] I think there are parts of this current post that feel more subjective and not supported by facts, and may be reasonably interpreted by a cynical outsider to look like a distraction or a defensive smear campaign. I think these choices are counterproductive (both for a truth-seeking outsider, and for NL’s own interests), especially given the allegations of frame control and being retaliatory.
There are other parts that might similarly be reasonably interpreted to range from irrelevant (Alice’s personal drug use habits), unproductive (links to Kathy Forth), or misleading (inclusion of photos, inconsistent usage of quotation marks, unnecessary paraphrasing, usage of quotes that miss the full context). I disagreed with the approaches here, though I acknowledge there were competing opinions and I wasn’t privy to the internal discussions that lead to the decisions.
I think a cleaner version of this would have probably been something 5 to 10x shorter (not including the appendix), and looked something like:[3]
Apology for harms done
Acknowledgement of which allegations are seen as the most major (much closer to top 3-5 than all 85)
Responses to major allegations, focusing only on factual differences and claims that are backed up by ~irrefutable evidence
Charitable interpretations of Alice/Chloe/Ben’s position, despite above factual disagreement (what kinds of things need to be true for their allegations to be plausibly reasonable or fair from their perspective),
Lessons learnt, and things NL will do differently in future (some expression of self-awareness / reflection)
An appendix containing a list of unresolved but less critical allegations
Disclaimer: I offered to (and did) help review an early draft, in large part because I expected the NL team to (understandably!) be in panic mode after Ben’s post/getting dogpiled, and I wanted further community updates to be based on as much relevant information as was possible.
This footnote added in response to Jeff’s comment: I agree that it’s likely not double counting, because the story there appears to be one where Kat left the working relationship, which is inconsistent with the accounts of Alice / Chloe’s situations, but also makes it unlikely that the “current employee of NL / Kat” hypothesis is correct.
Perhaps hypocritical given the length of this comment
Acknowledging that I have no PR expertise
I was initially concerned that I might be double counting information if that comment turned out to be from Alice or Chloe, but it is dated 2022-11-14 and and I interpret it as being from a current employee. Ben’s post has: