Dear Stack Exchange, Inc. • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#381

Post by theflyinghorse » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 3:53 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…

So you're telling me there's a dude named Dang out there with an incredible wealth of porn knowledge? That's really cool in the weirdest way and I bet you he can't even tell anyone about it for the rest of his life

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#382

Post by NeedMoreTea » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

xibalba wrote: post #361

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.

> "Where's Dave?" > "They're in the garage, I think" I am born and raised US, have lived all over west coast and midwest, and have traveled extensively throughout all regions of US. I have never heard people use the singular they in this pattern. Where are you from? Wondering if perhaps it is a regional dialect difference.

North West of England. My circle skews international, educated, Scots and perhaps city. I've not noticed it as specific to any of the many regional or international dialects. So I can't pick it out as Scots or Mancunian for instance.

It may fall under the generic UK North-South speech and language split.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#383

Post by dclusin » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

LandR wrote: post #258

LandR wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a link to the friends issues? Google isn't turning up anything. What was the issue with Friends?

Oh, I see. Apparently friends is problematic. Racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist and fat'ist (Is that an 'ist?).

Yeah there was some language and jokes in there that wouldn't be acceptable today. That was the gist.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#384

Post by fenwick67 » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

anon12345690 wrote: post #179

fenwick67 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty inaccurate and inflammatory.

why? its literally the points right here https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

"apparently anything on the site like a code example that talks about people like Bob and Alice cant use He and She" is wrong.

SE wanted people's correct pronouns explicitly used if they were given. Has nothing to do with rhetorical Alice or Bob, and SE didn't object to calling women 'she'.

Furthermore, the actual root of the controversy here is that Cellio was removed of her admin title too swiftly, and generally SE hasn't managed their admins very fairly or well.

Overall it looks like you're trying to spin whole scenario as "the LGBTQ+ snowflakes are whining again" and that's not the actual story here.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#385

Post by dingo_bat » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

abstractbarista wrote: post #317

mkohlmyr wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps my reading of the situation is way off, but at the risk of making a fool of myself: My understanding is that Monica wanted to use gender neutral pronouns throughout her writing as a general case, but that this was deemed "not good enough" (or indeed hateful) in the cases where someone has chosen specific pronouns. So I suppose this is what the GP is referring to. And I can't argue that it seems like a rather…

That is what this is about? There is something wrong with the way our culture is shifting. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Monica's choice. It is literally the most pacifist choice you could make. Anyone who feels "harmed" by her choice is only harming themselves.

I think it is because of pacifists like Monica that we are at this juncture. Free speech must be absolute. I should be able to say whatever I want and the person who gets offended can turn off their PC, visit another website. But no, reasonable people started considering insane demands like this (forcing others to use certain language), and that's a clear slippery slope.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#386

Post by notadev » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

In the early 2000s, Community Leaders (unpaid volunteers who 'worked' as moderators on AOL) sued AOL for compensation for their work under the Fair Labor Standards Act. They won $15 million.

All volunteers should do the same. StackExchange mods, Reddit moderators, etc. Stop working for free to advance the financial interests of these for-profit companies looking to exploit your labor.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#387

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

WorkLobster wrote: post #309

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could all of this been avoided if SE had a field in user profiles that is basically "Please use the following pronoun when referring to me: _______"? The user could fill this in with She, He, They, Qwotzl, whatever.

You'd need to ask for at least three grammatical cases: nominative, accusative and possessive. We considered trying this a while back with our organisation's personnel tracker, but concluded it needed a disproportionate amount of user effort. So we abandoned it in favour of just stating the user's name and/or singular "they" everywhere (in line with UK GDS guidelines[1]). [1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patt…

Which is partly why I find the pronoun database at "Pronoun Island" interesting/useful because its a database of most of the common substitute pronouns and almost all of their English grammatical cases.

Though, as you determined singular "they" is a simple enough implementation without needing a database lookup and keeping a pronoun database on hand.

http://pronoun.is/

[ETA: It's a small shame this particular DB is AGPL, keeping it from being maximally reuseful as a shareable standard library. Though data is not code and AGPL may not technically apply, but there's no separate data license such as a CC license mentioned in the repo, so one must assume AGPL-like conditions.]

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#388

Post by brodouevencode » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

onetime0001 wrote: post #32

I don’t understand why gender/pronouns is even being discussed. Someone’s personal feelings don’t really have any place in a question/answers site. It’s fine to respect a persons feelings and such when talking to a person but when answering a question or asking the question. The gender/pronoun is irrelevant.

Because for a lot of people part of their identity is wrapped up in how offended they can be and expressing it out loud.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#389

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #315

claudiawerner wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as to what part of the issue was about "social justice warriorisms", especially since Monica herself and most of the other mods who resigned were okay with the principle of calling people by the pronoun they prefer to be called by.

It was a matter of one party being insufficiently SJWist for another party. SJWism is a continuum, not a binary. I've read elsewhere that if a radical lives long enough he'll eventually be chastised for being insufficiently radical. I don't know if it's true, but I for one will find it hilarious in a decade or two when today's SJWs are having to apologise for deriding the idea of human-animal marriage or for opposing…

I consider myself a 90’s Clinton-era progressive, which means I’m pretty much dead to the 2019-era left. Just like Reagan-era conservatives are unrecognizable to “true conservatives” today. The camps are moving so extremely to each side it’s hard to identify with anyone politically anymore.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#390

Post by cookiecaper » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #263

pcl wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that?

There's two ways of reading this. You can read it from a technical perspective and take the message of something along the lines of "Don't invest your ego into unnecessary technical questions because it'll stop you having logical and productive discussions". But if this were written today in the context of something like this SE issue you could read it as tone deaf - a trans-man/women doesn't choose to face discrimin…

PG's essays contain a good amount of quote-unquote "real talk". His SJW-isms espoused on Twitter and the like are obviously only superficial, a defense mechanism widely recognized as a necessity among semi-known, substantially-wealthy persons.

This is pretty common amongst business leaders; comparing their statements against their serious work quickly shows that it's not all so warm-and-fuzzy.

Virtue signaling may be its own reward to the masses, but it serves a real function for the well-to-do in preventing or at least confusing a Marie Antoinette effect. If there's any "let them eat cake" to be found, they can point to an abundance of more recent "truth to power" statements that will create enough ambiguity to tamp down the fervor of the mob, if and/or when it comes to that.