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An Update to Our Community and an Apology

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Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#411

Post by matheusmoreira »

lesstenseflow wrote: post #255

Reading some of Monica’s commentary on this, it pains me to conclude that she doesn’t know just how bad the situation is. She appears to have approached the issue in question respectfully and highlighted her concerns diplomatically, and she believes there must be a “big misunderstanding” because of the extreme response with which she was met. Surely all parties are interested in reaching an outcome everyone can live…

> The reason her questions and were met with summary punishment was due to the fact that the moral crusaders she was attempting to engage with do not tolerate ideological noncompliance.

> If you get crusaders like this in your org, you should consider it an existential threat.

Completely agree. This destructive behavior alone should be reason enough to reject these people, regardless of the merits of their cause. Nobody should be excluded for questioning some rules or debating some definitions or whatever.

I won't delete my account but I will refrain from contributing to the site in the future.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#412

Post by matheusmoreira »

jodrellblank wrote: post #149
forgotmypwd123 wrote: post #30

>Last week we made an important decision for our community. We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change their behavior. Hang on a sec... >their behaviour. Wasn't monica fired for suggesting she used gender neutral pronouns generally? Because they said she should use the preferred gender specific pronoun when known? And…

> Wasn't monica fired for suggesting she used gender neutral pronouns generally? In the comments to the linked question, Monica Cellio says StackOverflow have not told her what parts of the CoC she was violating. I don't think it's public knowledge why she was demodded. (Is 'fired' an appropriate word to use, when Monica wasn't an employee?)

> (Is 'fired' an appropriate word to use, when Monica wasn't an employee?)

Ben Noordhuis wasn't an employee of Joyent either but that didn't stop them from symbolically firing him:

> While we would fire Ben over this, node.js is an open source project and one doesn't necessarily have the same levers.

https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#413

Post by solinent »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #355
solinent wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means both, cis-gendered and not. If you look at "her" for example, it just means cis-gendered females or anyone who identifies as a female. If, during conversation, we wanted to specify through a pronoun what gender a person was, there is no way to do it purely with pronouns anymore, since non-cisgendered people will sometimes use "they" so to distinguish between cis and non-cis you need to explicitly state it. O…

I think what is confusing me about this is the need for categorization of something that by definition does not have a categorization (non-binary). Why would a new set of pronouns be needed to categorize such a non-homogeneous group when neutrality already captures everyone between the normal binary categorizations?

Non-binary is literally the categorization, I wouldn't say they avoid categorization at all. See, by "they" I could mean anyone, so it doesn't necessarily refer just to non-binary people.

If I had two colors on a spectrum, lets say blue and yellow, we wouldn't call the middle of the spectrum "color", we'd call it "green".

> Why would a new set of pronouns be needed to categorize such a non-homogeneous group when neutrality already captures everyone between the normal binary categorizations?

I think this is the issue, it doesn't necessarily capture them directly. I think there is merit in having a pronoun, but it shouldn't be forced by law (as it is where I live). It doesn't arise naturally probably because there are many different categorizations in the middle and most people are on the poles, which I think is fine.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#414

Post by PhasmaFelis »

anon12345690 wrote: post #405
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American Psychiatric Association and the DSM-5 on gender dysphoria: https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Prac... Notable points: Gender nonconformity is explicitly not a disorder. Gender dysphoria is, but only in "the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition." Approved treatments for gender dysphoria explicitly include "transition" and "hormone therapy, related…

yep, all political activism: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2019-05-31/... evidence of banning by sensitive/offended people: https://www.christianpost.com/news/twitter-banned-psychologi... you really think not picking a gender is not a disorder? yep thats right there next to flat earth then

Your first link doesn't actually support your argument at all. And Twitter doesn't affect the DSM, the ISD, or the worldwide medical consensus.

As I said, you're allowed to believe whatever you want. Science doesn't care about your feelings.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#415

Post by golf2 »

xenocyon wrote: post #83
djsumdog wrote: post #16

-542 before it was locked. That's incredible. People are really really afraid to talk about this particular topic (which they don't mention in the statement), because this type of call-out to be banned happens a lot. The book "The Coddling of the American Mind" is an amazing book that documents how this is happening in academia, and it's happening on the software world too. Most people in our industry, in the US, EU…

Saying that most people don't agree with extreme positions is a bit of a tautology, since positions are defined as "extreme" if few people agree with them. There is therefore nothing universal or fundamentally meaningful about this label, and the same position (e.g. support of interracial marriage) may be considered a perfectly normal or a radically extremist position depending on the time and place.

Take a drink when Hacker News brings up interracial relationships impromptu.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#416

Post by GRMule »

fencepost wrote: post #266
shadowgovt wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have been making an interesting point, but the "preferred pronoun of the week" bit at the end kind of kills it. Have you ever met someone who changes their gender identity weekly, or asks people to use a derivation-free nonsense word to refer to them?

I added that bit of snark because a big part of this seems to have been a new (pending) Code of Conduct that apparently could be read as "you're not allowed to use phrasing that would normally be recognized as gender-neutral, you must use individuals' preferred pronouns." I know I'd question that if it meant that (while moderating) I was going to have to go look into what someone's gender pronoun preferences were les…

I can't find those leaked transcripts anywhere

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#417

Post by thredj3941 »

jlarocco wrote: post #99
thredj3941 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does the stack network ( https://stackexchange.com/sites# ) have any advantages? I see a lot of complaints, about questions closed as redundant etc, and about moderation, but what keeps someone from putting a better version up? In particular unlike quora, the reputation of the person answering doesn't seem as important. most people would accept anyone's answer as long as it works. so what's the important network…

Maybe I don't understand your question, but there's a huge network effect of people browsing the site and answering questions. Anybody can put up a Q&A site, but to gain traction the site needs answers. It does raise the question of what happens when StackExchange shuts down. There's a lot of knowledge stored there, hopefully it's not lost.

you're right, I simply wasn't thinking clearly about:

>there's a huge network effect of people browsing the site and answering questions

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#418

Post by wool_gather »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #155
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #36

The title is misleading, this is not an apology. As a former operator of a (much smaller) community website, I understand the motives behind SE actions. They want to avoid discussions about gender-neutral pronouns and other contentious topics completely. There are only risks and no benefits for SE business in such discussions.They actually do not want discussions, just questions and answers. Jeff Atwood once wrote a…

For anyone interested, I think this is the section about stifling discussion, in his introduction to Discourse: https://blog.codinghorror.com/civilized-discourse-constructi... At Stack Exchange, one of the tricky things we learned about Q&A is that if your goal is to have an excellent signal to noise ratio, you must suppress discussion. Stack Exchange only supports the absolute minimum amount of discussion necessary…

> IDK, seems like Jeff Atwood no longer has much interest in SE and presumably the site is slowly imploding.

Well, he left the site and the (SE) company in 2012 to start Discourse, so yes. But I agree with the second half of your sentence ("imploding").

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#419

Post by fencepost »

GRMule wrote: post #416
fencepost wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added that bit of snark because a big part of this seems to have been a new (pending) Code of Conduct that apparently could be read as "you're not allowed to use phrasing that would normally be recognized as gender-neutral, you must use individuals' preferred pronouns." I know I'd question that if it meant that (while moderating) I was going to have to go look into what someone's gender pronoun preferences were les…

I can't find those leaked transcripts anywhere

IIRC I saw references to them being posted to reddit, but I didn't bother even going to look. I have enough problems keeping up with discussions in communities I'm part of without adding chat logs from a community of technical people in the middle of a controversy.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#420

Post by keanzu »

flippinburgers wrote: post #191
MauranKilom wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wasn't monica fired for suggesting she used gender neutral pronouns generally? It's more nuanced from what I understand^. I gather that Monica expressed the desire to find an alternative to using singular they - such as universally using pronoun-free language. Mind you, this was all in discussing a future code of conduct change and its eventual enforcement. The topic is just very delicate, and in my eyes there is no…

As I understand it she wanted to avoid using any specifically gendered pronoun and be general in her responses, but was told that she must use the preferred pronoun. Totally draconian if you ask me.

Sounds like compelled speech

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compelled_speech

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