(I apologize for the double post - I want to be able to link this in my signature, so I'm getting the words down while I have them in my brain.)
I try to be responsive to plan feedback! Writing plans can be a lot of fun and they generally get better with suggestions. Having done this for a while, I've become aware of things (listed below) which make me likelier to implement requests and suggestions. All of the listed recommendations should be possible to incorporate in your suggestion or request regardless of what it is.
- Make a clear effort to engage in good faith - be polite, and talk about plan elements you like.
- Vote for my plan while making the suggestion, or clearly outline what the requirements for your vote are.
- Make all your suggestions/requests in one post - back-and-forths can be frustrating.
- Clearly explain the motivation for your request - be more detailed than you think necessary, or look over your suggestion and ask if you've left any assumptions as subtext/unwritten.
- More specifically, if you disagree with something I have in the plan, please try to explain what chain of logic you believe led me to include it in the plan, and why you think the reasoning is flawed or suboptimal. (This way, I either know why we disagree, or I can clarify anything that's being miscommunicated.)
- Ask questions about my intentions instead of assuming them. What you read may be distinct from what I intend to communicate, and being told that problem is entirely on my end is frustrating.
- Give me suggested phrasing which keeps the plan under wordcount, and do a grammar/spelling/style check of the plan.
- My gold standard for this is that you quote my plan and makes the changes inline in a different colour. (Feel free to use strikethrough etc., but text diff tools abound.) This makes it very, very easy to copy and paste the changes, instead of needing to copy the individual change, find it, paste it in, etc. etc.
- Give me suggested phrasing which will explain the motivation of the addition to the QMs in the plan (i.e. 'ask Gaku to X' should be 'tell Gaku we wish to accomplish Y, so we want him to do X', as this both gives Gaku room to accomplish our goal and adds context for the QMs).
None of those are necessary. I am categorically
not saying that I'm going to ignore suggestions that don't come with votes or suggested phrasing or anything else. However, if you do those things, I'll be predisposed to incorporate your idea. I will note that I'm not guaranteeing that I'll make the changes if you do all those things, but it will help.
Please feel free to fork my plans if you have large changes you want to make; ideally I'd like you to link my plan if you're copying a significant chunk of it verbatim. Go ahead and fork them for minor changes, too, but if it's a good enough suggestion I might just absorb it.
Finally, please stop and take a moment to consider whether or not your suggestion is antithetical to the core of my plan. If my plan is something like 'talk to Noburi and then go train with Akane' and what you're saying sums to 'talking with Noburi is a bad idea and I think that training with Akane is a waste of time', that is less an actionable suggestion and more a request that I take my plan down. Sometimes that might be the best thing to do - I've written some bad plans! But in general, if I've gone to the time and effort to write a plan, I sat down and thought about it. I like to think that I'm sufficiently thoughtful and intelligent that any plan I've written will represent a course of action with at least some merit. A comment to the tune of 'your plan is fundamentally bad' is deflating even when it's true and delivered kindly...and my experience is it's rarely delivered kindly. I've generally found little good comes from internet conversations which consist of going back and forth over fundamental value disagreements. I encourage you to post your own plan or talk about the merits of your ideas, but if you can do it without intimating that my plan has no value, I'd appreciate it.
