Due to black holes

In the end, there won't be any effect on SOFU. The only sites where you might possibly notice somebody's trans is on sites that don't matter financially to SE.

@user58 I'll have to give that a read when I have more "drama" bandwidth. Thanks :)

There's no way 100% of mods will resign over this though. It's just not going to happen.

@JohnDvorak Point, another good reason why it'd just incur some drama and fade out

@Rubiksmoose @John is assuming sphere physicists.

Anyways, we get the clarification tomorrow, so lets see what it is and hope they have a way of getting it to stick

Even if 40% mods resign, that will be felt

I also don't believe that 40% of the user base will be upset over this. Call me naive or optimistic or whatever. I've seen it. It's just not that huge of a change at all.

@M.A.R. Oh well that makes sense then!

I would be surprised if 1% of the userbase ever read the full code of conduct

@Magisch aaand that's the other issue

most people go by their common sense on rules until something goes wrong

for what problems that causes, just refer to the hilarious inefficiency of the help pages

If your CoC goes against common sense, many people will fail to follow without misintent.

@JohnDvorak Of course it would, but that's not going to happen either. Most of the mods that did resign resigned over other issues (or in addition to the change) from what I've seen. And even at peak drama we've been nowhere near 40% resignation.

I think currently we are at 1.5-2%

Don't forget that the total number of mods resigned is a strictly increasing function in time

Fine. Non-decreasing.

Can someone confirm if we're allowed to blanketly use anonymous pronouns, e.g.: they? If not, I'm concerned that the "correct pronoun" is a potentially moving target and it's setting us up for failure and chatty comment sections. SE ought to consider a profile option, not just something squirreled away in a profile description and let us use a specialized tag in comments, e.g.: [they:M.A.R.] or [their:M.A.R.] which gets expanded on render to the desired pronoun.

@user58 was Interpersonal.SE re-enabled for appearance in HNQ since?

@JohnDvorak AFAIK it hasn't really been increasing that much the last few days. And at least a couple got reinstated. But yes, I realise that it is not static.

I would like some official way of declaring pronouns

so I can make an userscript that reminds me of them so I don't have to clickthrough or guess when using them

@Magisch I agree... chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/7955801#7955801

@canon if you don't know the pronoun, using a gender-neutral pronoun is entirely correct.

@MadScientist We shouldn't have to bother looking it up or the back and forth of being corrected, making the correction, and having to remember those things... lest we be penalized for forgetting that particular user's preference a week later.

(for chat anyways)

@canon you don't have to correct it, you generally can't do that in comments or chat messages anyway. You just have to use the correct pronoun continuing the conversation.

For some reason it doesn't seem to be working in this room though.

@user1306322 Yes.

I found this discussion, seems to be the most recent one, interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3599/… but couldn't find an official update about re-enabling

@Rubiksmoose Is there an @match chat.meta.stackexchange.com there or something? I can check locally in a few minutes

@user58 As an ancilliary question, has someone raised if they plan on making a profile option to declare pronouns?

that would make compliance easier from a not forgetting and being proactive perspective

@Magisch It's been raised.

@user58 Yeah that was my guess as well. Haven't had a chance to look yet.

> // @match *://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/rooms/*

@user58 and people fought it... for reasons I don't understand.

@Rubiksmoose did you reload the page?

I consider it vital to widespread adoption and compliance of the change that there is some check on just faulty memory

I know I forget I don't even know last names of half my coworkers

@user1306322 Weird. I did and it still didn't work. But now it works!

glorfindel's script is pretty neat though

@Rubiksmoose good to see yet again the community trying to work around (and on behalf of) the company

If all we get out of the discussion is more people who can feel comfortable participating in the network because their identities are more respected I'd class that as a win-win scenario

@AndrasDeak Yeah well pros and cons I guess. Plenty of userscripts are useful for only a small number and aren't value added enough for the company. And plenty have been the basis for officially added features.

If done right, mild inconvenience and the learning curve will fade as it becomes natural for more people to do

I'm afraid I still don't get why we care about anyone's identity. For all you know I'm a poorly coded chatbot in Siberia.

@canon because it's all people here, and people are tied to their identities

if you come outside your server room you have to accept that you're surrounded by humans

@canon It starts to matter on sites where you have to reveal your gender or biology

@AndrasDeak your online presence doesn't have to be. Remember when the internet was anonymous? I blame Facebook...

you can blame whomever you want

Whatever you do, don't put the blame on you. Blame it on the weather man.

No, no... I blame Facebook for deanonymizing the internet.

Andras is right. Even if we were all anonymous, we still are ourselves

And some people have been diminished and denied recognition and respect for their identies their whole life

to them that basic courtesy matters a lot more then we can imagine

especially since there are plenty of people who will readily tell them they[the other people] "don't believe" in their identities

@AndrasDeak nice edit, was about to correct :D

(that being said I think building frameworks around broadcasting pronouns in chat is overkill and won't fix the real problems)

I'm firmly on the side that it is well worth our mild temporary inconvenience to enable them to feel comfortable and welcome in our communities

we do this for all kinds of other scenarios already

writing professionally, not using swears, all that involves some level of code switching and effort to be more pleasant

so why not here? it's not a big effort, and after a while it'll become automatic

Yeah, but the real problem is not not knowing pronouns. It's being homophobic/transphobic/enbyophobic/etc., and decent people are already treating these minorities right, and indecent people will just be agitated by it. But we can always try.

Some consider that an insult to God to use a pronoun that disagrees with one's biology

I recently ordered a thing from a german site and when signing up one of the profile questions was "How to address you" with options something like: Mr. Ms. Mrs. Dr. Prof. Eng., etc

@JohnDvorak How do you know the biology of the person on the other side of the screen?

@Magisch and one difference is that not using swearwords and all the other fluff need only one point: yourself. Using pronouns needs constant active attention to every other user whom you're talking about, some of them not even present.

@AndrasDeak improving it starts with recognizing the problem in its depth and severity though

@Rubiksmoose it becomes obvious on sites where the biology becomes relevant to the question

from my friends in europe I hear it's pretty common to have doctor or engineering titles displayed prominently before people's names, so the site can also support such functionality in profiles, for those who wish to click someone's username to find out how to address them

@Magisch we've heard multiple apologies recognizing the problem ;)

@AndrasDeak I don't think we'll have a one strike and you're out system. Probably just "don't be deliberately disrespectful"

doesn't affect my point

I don't think anyone would oppose to just"don't be deliberately disrespectful".

I've been happily defaulting to "they" unless I knew the gender of whom I was talking about. Apparently that will no longer work, even though my impression had been that this is fine.

@AndrasDeak I really don't think that'll be true

@JohnDvorak well that's what we called Be Nice and it didn't cut whatever standards the company had

default they is probably fine unless someone tells you

at which point blatantly ignoring their request is no longer fine

And if there's a setting in the profile where people can write their pronouns...is that telling me or not?

If there is, it'll be trivially easy to display next to the usercard, and thus no effort at all to remember

no?

@AndrasDeak That will be fine, and even recommended under the "new" guidelines.

@Magisch No. I'm terrible at remembering things about people. Starting with their name.

I'd rather not have to keep checking someones's profile when talking about them. Even if I remembered to and the profile was actually available to be at a scroll and click.

@AndrasDeak If you're addressing someone who talked right before them and their name says "Magisch (he/him)" then it's not really hard to acknowledge that

I dont think anyone will jump you if you forget

@JohnDvorak And for the 99% of other sites? Why would you question whether someone asks fo you to call them "he" or "she" or "them"?

And even if its just in the profile, I already know someone will write an userscript to display it

in fact, that already exists

Nobody is going around hiding their pronouns somewhere hard to find and then jumping at people who don't remember to look

@Magisch for the main site?

Forget, maybe, but not dispute

@user1306322 maybe not, but thats entirely possible and will probably happen in a day or a week

ok so this script could be a live example of desired officially supported functionality

@Magisch I suspect trolls might start doing that if we end up with a one-strike system

Like I said way back when right before this all blew up... you don't have to be worried that you'll be stepping on eggshells. Nothing's really changed; it's just a slight re-word of the CoC to make it clearer. The intent and spirit hasn't changed at all. You are not going to get punished for honest mistakes or acting in good faith.

@JohnDvorak that would be stupid and common sense is still part of the equation

@user1306322 "It's DOCTOR Frankenstein."

Every time that concern comes up it never manifests because nobody actually does that

@user58 that would be reassuring

Common sense is not so common ~~ Voltaire

My hunch is this all will boil down to forbidding deliberately and knowingly disrespecting people's request

@user58 How about good-faith laziness with sticking to neutral pronouns?

If people start getting suspended for honest mistakes, I'm hanging up my diamond and walking out. I don't forsee it happening.

time will tell

@canon Unless someone's explicitly asked you not use "they" and you intentionally ignore that, not an issue.

If mith says It wont be a big deal, I'm confident assuming it wont be

I like the idea of refusing to acknowledge gender of any type.

for me, anyways

the past year has made the CoC seem more like a beating stick than a shield

but I guess it's also up to the mods which one it is

@user58 how often do people actually object to being called "they"?

I'm still afraid people will start walking out for religious reasons

@canon for oneself, I think the ideology is called "agenderism" (could be wrong) but for others it might be considered disrespectful

I've seen it about three times in the past week... but that's a bit of a statistical outlier, I think, because of the recent drama.

@JohnDvorak Doesn't matter how many... this isn't an argument of practicality.

This is a "war" of extending basic human decency when requested

probably cooked a lot hotter then its eaten. It'll become natural soon enough

@AndrasDeak people shouted at the company "do something", they didn't read carefully enough what people really want and did something, very heavyhandedly, and now for the first time they're actually starting to get into the nuances, but personally I haven't seem many nuanced examples of their work recently, so we'll see what they come up with next update

@Magisch We should be treating everyone with decency all the time. I simply disagree that using a neutral pronoun is a form of indecency or abuse.

I would like to see it somewhere in the new rules about consulting with mods to set the discussion to dates outside of major holidays observed by many users and mods

@canon it's all up to how people feel. If a certain person feels distress by some way of communication, you can try communicating differently within reasonable bounds

@user1306322 That'd be nice, but kinda really difficult for this month in the Jewish calendar. I'm out almost more than I'm in this month (like today, I was offline and fasting for 25 hours).

And the point I think is that "they" is not a "neutral pronoun", it's one of multiple possible non-binary pronouns. So the people who ask not to be addressed by it suggest that it's not universally "neutral"

@AndrasDeak it's more anonymous than other options. If I have to drive a nail, I'm reaching for the nearest suitably hammer-like implement.

What if I intend to use a plural they, and a mod thinks that I'm using singural they referring to someone who expressed he/she didn't want to be referred to as such?

@canon yes, and what we're talking about is subtlety beyond "hammer or screwdriver"

@AndrasDeak I'd drive a nail with a screwdriver in a pinch. ;)

we need driverless nails with autopilot asap :p

@JohnDvorak Then that's easily explained. I don't think you should be overly concerned.

its not like mods are suddenly going to toss all semblance of common sense and assumption of good faith aside

these are still our mods

the same we elected and trusted to not be jerks with ambiguous rules for years

@Magisch challenge: there has been a wave of resignation, and those remaining are therefore postselected to be okay-enough with the new policy

I don't think the concern is with the elected mods but rather with diamond staff who look indistinguishable from mods to most users

That too

Yeah, but I still don't really participate on any site where there's a mod I wouldn't trust to have the necessary restraint

we'll address that problem when it comes up

@canon Well a certain (now ex) moderator has publicly stated that she is hurt when people use "they" to refer to her. It just comes down to respecting people.

If you think SE staff has the manpower, coverage or even willingness to get into the nitty gritty of sanctioning harmless technicality-over-spirit CoC violations, I think you'd be mistaken

they're stretched thin as is

There's an important distinction being lost with the resignations. Most of the moderators who stepped down did so not because of the change to the CoC, but because of the way that a fellow moderator was treated by SE. That's a huge difference. There were those who stepped down because of the change itself, but very few.

also, none of our CMs are jerks either

@user58 good point!

@Magisch In fact, they are really wonderful and competent people.

They are very good at what they do.

@Magisch all it takes is a tweet

I hope they stop doing that

...

suddenly there will be a child-with-magnifying-glass-in-the-sun kind of focus on whatever the "issue" is

Maybe they will, David's post is hopeful in that regard

@Rubiksmoose If they is used consistently, it can't very well be interpreted as othering. If you call 99 people by he/she and single one user out as they, then yes; it's othering.

@user58 I don't think that's lost at all. It was very clear to me.

@AndrasDeak To you, but I've seen plenty over the past week to indicate that to a lot of people that isn't clear.

fair enough

@AndrasDeak 58 is right for once. Everyone seems to keep saying it but then ultimately ignore it and try to weigh the decisions and actions against the ethical/moral validity of CoC.

Witness this historic event, for it will not be long before 58 is wrong again.

🙄

What's your pronoun @Magisch?

@canon Well, if it's not because the gender is unknown. Intent is still import.

wut

@KevinB just an answer to "does a meta user argue when there's nobody to hear it" ;D

@AndrasDeak If we're the meta user to whom you're referring, the correct means to address the crown is, galactic president mcawesomeville canon. We appreciate your deference in this matter and hope to see you soon for tea.

meh

royal we all the things

...y'know, mocking doesn't really help things. I get that you're trying to joke around, but... come on.

To be fair, it was joke in response to a demeaning comment. And it certainly was meant to be light-hearted.

I apologize, I didn't mean it to be demeaning. It was entirely a joke along the lines of this which I thought was a koan, but apparently isn't

Well, we're all sorry now, @user58. Our solemn vigil continues.

*places fingertips together* *solemnly stares over top of glasses*

NEVER GET INVOLVED IN A LAND WAR IN ASIA

...or go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line?

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Have I... have I already been poisoned? :(

My way isn't very sportsmanlike. ;)

What else not to do xkcd.com/1890

@202324 Any

but yeah, not a good look

@AndrasDeak I will bring a lid to a Meta fire if I wish to, thank you very much

oil is on the house ;)

Morning

@AndrasDeak there's a userscript I use that picks it up

just need to add say a he/him, she/her they/them or whatever you prefer somewhere in you chat profile

I know, that's how it came up

@AndrasDeak Yes. I mean No. I mean yes. I mean VOTE TO CLOSE UNCLEAR.

*is put on hold*