Dear Stack Exchange, Inc. • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#351

Post by dxbydt » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

drusepth wrote: post #265

xibalba wrote: post #5

I suspect that the average user of SE will not care one bit about this whole drama. I do find it frustrating, puzzling, and sad how SE appears to have treated Monica Cellio. She provides an excellent summary (from her perspective) here: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

As a self-described "average user of SE", I find this drama pretty similar to drama I've seen circling around the Quora "community" for the last 6 months or so: confusing. I use both SE and Quora to get answers, especially to extremely-niche questions. I understand that some people do use them for community and that people do interact and know each other on both platforms, but it's hard to understand complaints about…

> If you took away the community entirely, would it be any less useful?

so for a while, due to strange quirk of circumstance, i had the inside track of a profitable adult website. it was your standard “streaming adult videos, no ads, charge hefty subscription” model. one morning the ceo says let’s do community. everyone’s going social. lets have blogs, message board, the whole shebang. Announcement made with much fanfare. The idiot audience thought community means they could talk to their favorite pornstar :) once the ceo clarifies that no, community doesn’t mean that, they turn on him like a pack of wolves. what do you mean, you want us to talk to each other ?! like random perv from oklahoma should message arbitrary perv from cleveland about which vid gets him off ? wtf ?!! the poor ceo’s got his back to a wall. he says, we’ll be the world’s largest adult community. the peeps are like, dude, largest community of pervs ? fbi will have a ball. half of us are scared our employer or our spouse or worse, teenage son hacks into our account. now you want us to have wacky avatars & actually talk to each other on a messageboard so whatever we say persists for posterity ? it quickly went downhill from there. they brought in a moderator, sort of like dang. he was supposed to police the crowds & tamp down on contentious disagreement. but hardly anybody participated, so they had to broaden dang’s role. so now everytime a video was posted, poor dang would have to watch the whole video and make insightful comments like “lady featured in this clip at 7:15 is the same lady in that other clip at 9:20” and so on. soon he became an encyclopedia of porn trivia. people actually started showing up on the community board just to poke fun of his wide acumen. Around that time i quit. But it was quite the experience. Community can be a major hassle.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#352

Post by NeedMoreTea » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

bmn__ wrote: post #286

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where's Dave?" "They're in the garage, I think" is common to hear, just as "He's in the garage, I think" Many will mix between the "he/she" and "they" in the same conversation. Quite often referring to their closest friends and family rather than pointed attempt to misuse a pronoun.

> ["They"] is common to hear, just as ["He"] > Many will mix between the "he/she" and "they" in the same conversation. That does not match my observed reality at all. All natural languages I know are gendered the same way English is. Singular "they" is already exceedingly uncommon by itself; and across all the languages, and in my whole life-time, never once I or a conversation partner used "they" instead of the spec…

All I can say is it matches mine. So we're at impasse I guess.

English speech varies. Even across the UK there are dozens of regional accents and dialects. Now add the many regional variations across the USA and other world Englishes. All with their own traits and habits, some more widespread than others. A deep rabbit hole with many forks then.

Common enough that I would not think it the slightest bit unnatural on hearing, or give it a second thought. I wouldn't give it a second thought reading it in a natural conversation in a book - not just in intentionally neutral business or net writing, so that's not going to be memorable. It's not an idiom I'd single out as localised to any one group or region. It would be memorable and feel odd reading if it were all that way in a novel's quoted conversation, or nearly all names with few pronouns like some telesales scripts seem to encourage.

Not as common as he/she certainly, but I dunno 1:4 or 1:8 or something. I couldn't say what proportion is names not pronouns either. FWIW My people skew international, educated, Scots and perhaps city in a part of the UK that's well north of London.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#353

Post by loxs » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #292

loxs wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the person responsible for firing Monica is "just doing their job", which is aligned with the political agenda.

Deciding to fire someone in such a questionable and unusual manner is never "just doing their job". Someone made a really poor call here, and is trying to excuse it with accusations and events that never seem to have happened. That combination, and the fact that it resulted in a major scandal for SE, makes it absolutely justifiable to fire the person responsible.

It's only because the events got out of hand, not because of the action per se. The same person has been doing this for many more cases where it was just fine and this is perfectly clear by the tone of the CTO.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#354

Post by koonsolo » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

blanche_ wrote: post #322

koonsolo wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a product/community of teenage game developers. The girls in my community do not want to reveal that they are girls, probably because they do not want to stand out. So basically everyone thinks it's full of boys (especially the boys), but in reality 50% are girls. So it definitely depends on the person and circumstances how they want to be perceived. With European names, I also saw plenty of times when wrong ge…

But that's their choice. It was used as an insult in a pretty straight forward way (I was there you know?) and I didn't mean honest mistake of guessing wrongly based on name or nickname. I have experience being told that I can not be a woman because women don't play wow on fridays.. yea or because I'm a programmer. This even wasn't a one time incident.

Alright that is pretty bad.

The same insult doesn't really work on men in that same setting, since we're not really a minority. So we're more armed against someone calling us "she".

But I can imagine it's hard to have to justify yourself every time for being a woman. Yeah that sucks, a lot of jerks out there and not much to do about it.

I stand corrected.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#355

Post by yummybear » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

anon12345690 wrote: post #74

Pfhreak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? Like, just accept people and call them what they ask to be called? Why make a big deal out of someone who prefers they or xe or he or she or whatever?

literally not the problem here more like people cant use Bob in an example and say He because "what if Bob is trans" comes up. cant even say "they" to be neutral because apparently "singular they" is offensive. this is dumb. its not a real problem for the site. the rest of us dont need to deal with all that because some people have nothing better to do.

“Bob, a cis heteronormative middle aged white man from Seattle, wants to send a message to Alice, a bicurious housewife from Kentucky”

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#356

Post by mcv » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #303

blanche_ wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ben would you mind then being called she/her then if that is so silly? I'm a hetero woman and I've been called a male few times when gaming and this is not silly, people are rejecting your identity and I can't even imagine how bad this is for trans/NB people.

People are not "rejecting your identity" if they use the wrong pronoun. That is an emotional interpretation of an error.

Some people are. There are people who intentionally use the wrong pronoun, exactly because they reject someone's transgender identity. We cis-gendered people may not notice this, but to transgender people, it is every-day reality to be confronted with someone who insists on denying their identity. Consider the stupid bathroom bills in a couple of US states for example.

So against that background, it's entirely understandable that they react more emotionally also to accidental mistakes. That doesn't mean overreaction is a good idea, but it's a backlash against a long history of having their identity denied. If we don't like the backlash, maybe we should work harder to address the original hatred that it's reacting to.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#357

Post by koheripbal » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

anon12345690 wrote: post #183

decebalus1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I feel I should care about this but I don't believe it's worth investing the time to go through walls of text of 'he said' 'she said' biased explanations. I'm probably better off..

how ironic lol, if you only knew that "he said" and "she said" is the whole problem because apparently you cant use pronouns anymore

...it's also somehow offensive to either avoid using pronouns as well as inquiring about them.

The only solution is apparently magic.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#358

Post by throwaway413 » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

dxbydt wrote: post #351

drusepth wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a self-described "average user of SE", I find this drama pretty similar to drama I've seen circling around the Quora "community" for the last 6 months or so: confusing. I use both SE and Quora to get answers, especially to extremely-niche questions. I understand that some people do use them for community and that people do interact and know each other on both platforms, but it's hard to understand complaints about…

> If you took away the community entirely, would it be any less useful? so for a while, due to strange quirk of circumstance, i had the inside track of a profitable adult website. it was your standard “streaming adult videos, no ads, charge hefty subscription” model. one morning the ceo says let’s do community. everyone’s going social. lets have blogs, message board, the whole shebang. Announcement made with much fan…

Dang, dang.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#359

Post by mcv » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #343

kevhito wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just recently at a gender-inclusivity seminar. The speaker asked everyone in the room to give their name, but specifically asked for NOT everyone to state their [preferred?] pronouns. Why not? Apparently the speaker is currently in a community were certain transgender members feel quite strongly that stating pronouns is itself problematic and hurtful. For those of us not quite up to date on social movements, an…

It's a unbelievable that we take the output of these seminars as gospel. They are just groups of people - with no more authority on what "proper behavior" is than the rest of us. ...and yet the community that supports them vehemently punishes anyone that strays from their constantly changing and often contradictory directives.

It's not gospel, it's a view. It's useful to understand people who have a different perspective. Their view may not be universal, but it's still a valid view.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#360

Post by damnyou » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

anon12345690 wrote: post #216

damnyou wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already all sorts of controls over what people can and can't say in professional settings. You can't use the N-word or keep asking someone out after they've said no in a workplace environment. These controls exist for reasons that should be obvious with a moment of thought. This is different from a public space where the rules are more relaxed (but there are still some controls). And you're welcome to be as…

yea theres a difference between what you CANT say and what you MUST say guess what, rules against what you cant say are fine but you cant make me have say something. thats tyranny. youre welcome to be as outraged as you want in your own home but you dont get to control my life because of it. its called freedom.

No, there are things you are forced to say in workplaces. For example, you can't act nice towards almost everyone on a team but ignore the only Black person.

That's exactly what trans people want, to be given the same respect as everyone else. If you use pronouns for everyone other than the only trans person on the team, they're quite rightly going to be upset.