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Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

strongloop.com

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Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#51

Post by aroman »

I'm sorry, but the entire notion that using masculine pronouns somehow implies sexism is complete bullshit.

That's how the English language works. "He" is used as both neuter and masculine. There is no "it" pronoun.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop fighting about this. Unless someone actually did something sexist, this is a linguistic bikeshed to end all bikesheds.

Childish community behavior aside, the entire argument is a moot point. There is NOTHING sexist about using "he".

If you feel otherwise, please, please educate me.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#54

Post by quinnchr »

mintplant wrote: post #31

From Joyent's blog post [1]: > But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. For comparison, here is bnoordhuis's comment from the pull request thread [2] that the post is referencing:…

Looking through the closed pull requests it does not seem like rejecting typo pull requests is in fact standard practice. There are multiple accepted pull requests that merely fix typos. Additionally, if you look at the context of the full pull request he's commenting on, he completely ignores the dozen's of other comments on the issue, simply stating they're rejecting it because it's trivial.

I'm not saying he's necessarily sexist, but he clearly doesn't care about combating sexism. Is it really that hard to say "we're not accepting this because a typo is not a significant enough change." Calling the change trivial is literally calling out using ungendered language as trivial. I promise you it is not trivial to a lot of people.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#56

Post by Brakenshire »

aviraldg wrote: post #47
Brakenshire wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually the other way around, the objection to the use of singular 'them/they' as a gender indeterminate pronoun is a relatively recent shift apparently originating from American English. It is a form which was otherwise well-established: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Generic_they (There are example quotes in the link from Shakespeare, Austen, Twain, and Bernard-Shaw)

I was comparing against Indian English, but point noted.

Ah, I wasn't meaning to tell you what the usage is in your country, just trying to make the narrow point about American English.

As an aside, do you mind if I ask, is there a narrative in India about protecting the Indian dialect of English, like you might get in Britain about vulgur Americanization, or in America about pretentious Britishisms?

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#57

Post by GrinningFool »

yapcguy wrote: post #32
rdtsc wrote: post #27

My understanding of Node.JS and libuv community is as an outsider. I don't follow what's going on unless it is on the front page of HN once in a while and other forums. But one impression I get from Node.JS and its surrounding community is arrogance and immaturity. This is from top to down -- companies sponsoring it (Joyent) and many of its vocal proponents. I see plenty of energy, enthusiasm, but mixed with immaturi…

Remember how vicious the Node.js "community" were to outsiders who critiqued event loop blocking? Whatever the technical merits, I think this incident will do significant damage to the perception of Node.js as a serious platform to build on.

Tempest in a teapot.

Most people using it will never come across this little storm.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#58

Post by Brakenshire »

dreamfactory wrote: post #39

Are these people illiterate? Are they not aware that in the English language masculine pronouns are correct for both gender-specific and gender-neutral uses? Mankind refers to everybody. It may seem awkward, particularly to over-literal types, but so is our spelling, grammar, and pronunciation generally.

Mankind is gender neutral, it's highly debatable whether he, him or his are also.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#60

Post by rok3 »

StavrosK wrote: post #34
itafroma wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original issue was a pull request[1] made to the libuv code base to change "him" to "them". It was rejected[2] by one of the committers, Ben Noordhuis, as being too trivial. That decision was reversed by Isaac Schlueter (another committer) and committed[3]. Noordhuis reverted that commit[4], chiding Schlueter for not following procedure, but that revert was quickly reverted itself. Bryan Cantrill of Joyent, one o…

When did Ben say pronouns should be gendered? I saw nothing on GitHub like that, yet the Joyent post mentions it more than once.

Doesn't look like he did; they appear to be inferring it because he considered the one word change trivial. While I disagree with his call I can't believe how quickly this blew up into a PR storm.

I'm shocked that such an unprofessional blog post made it to the Joyent company blog. It's destroyed what respect I had for them.

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