A few benefits I see to the critic even in the status quo:
The post generally ends up stronger, because it’s more accurate. Even if you only got something minor wrong, readers will (reasonably!) assume that if you’re not getting your details right then they should pay less attention to your post.
To the extent that the critic wants the public view to end up balanced and isn’t just trying to damage the criticizee, having the org’s response go live at the same time as the criticism helps.
If the critic does get some things wrong despite giving the criticizee the opportunity to review and bring up additional information, either because the criticizee didn’t mention these issues or refused to engage, the community would generally see it as unacceptable for the crtiticizee to sue the critic for defamation. Whereas if a critic posts damaging false claims without that (and without a good reason for skipping review, like “they abused me and I can’t sanely interact with them”) then I think the law is still on the table.
A norm where orgs need to answer critical questions promptly seems good on it’s face, but I’m less sure in practice. Many questions take far more effort to answer well than they do to pose, especially if they can’t be answered from memory. Writing a ready-to-go criticism post is a way of demonstrating that you really do care a lot about the answer to this question, which might be needed to keep the work in answering not-actually-that-important questions down? But there could be other ways?
You’re not wrong, but I feel like your response doesn’t make sense in context.
The post generally ends up stronger, because it’s more accurate
Handled vastly better by being able to reliably get answers about concerns earlier.
To the extent that the critic wants the public view to end up balanced and isn’t just trying to damage the criticizee
Assumes things are on a roughly balanced footing and unanswered criticism pushes it out of balance. If criticism is undersupplied for large orgs, making it harder makes things less balanced (but rushed or bad criticism doesn’t actually fix this, now you just have two bad things happening)
If the critic does get some things wrong despite giving the criticizee the opportunity to review and bring up additional information, either because the criticizee didn’t mention these issues or refused to engage, the community would generally see it as unacceptable for the crtiticizee to sue the critic for defamation
I’m asking the potential criticizee to provide that information earlier in the process.
A few benefits I see to the critic even in the status quo:
The post generally ends up stronger, because it’s more accurate. Even if you only got something minor wrong, readers will (reasonably!) assume that if you’re not getting your details right then they should pay less attention to your post.
To the extent that the critic wants the public view to end up balanced and isn’t just trying to damage the criticizee, having the org’s response go live at the same time as the criticism helps.
If the critic does get some things wrong despite giving the criticizee the opportunity to review and bring up additional information, either because the criticizee didn’t mention these issues or refused to engage, the community would generally see it as unacceptable for the crtiticizee to sue the critic for defamation. Whereas if a critic posts damaging false claims without that (and without a good reason for skipping review, like “they abused me and I can’t sanely interact with them”) then I think the law is still on the table.
A norm where orgs need to answer critical questions promptly seems good on it’s face, but I’m less sure in practice. Many questions take far more effort to answer well than they do to pose, especially if they can’t be answered from memory. Writing a ready-to-go criticism post is a way of demonstrating that you really do care a lot about the answer to this question, which might be needed to keep the work in answering not-actually-that-important questions down? But there could be other ways?
You’re not wrong, but I feel like your response doesn’t make sense in context.
Handled vastly better by being able to reliably get answers about concerns earlier.
Assumes things are on a roughly balanced footing and unanswered criticism pushes it out of balance. If criticism is undersupplied for large orgs, making it harder makes things less balanced (but rushed or bad criticism doesn’t actually fix this, now you just have two bad things happening)
I’m asking the potential criticizee to provide that information earlier in the process.