@PM2Ring I think this is the result of a brewing scandal on meta that the decided between "go big or go home" and went too big for anyone's good, out of fear of losing control or something, not as a well-calculated decision

a number of people want to stir the pot and make it seem like there are more intentional bad actors than there are, hanlon's razor et al

I just returned from browsing what a community in another language thinks about this whole issue, and it's interesting how their perception is different, and how the overall mood is over there

a lot of users sincerely don't understand what the big problems are, considering the national differences and lack of interaction with LGBT folks and lack of public info on that topic

to them this new CoC is very bewildering, and i can understand that point of view

the same old tired jokes are being made there, of course, but the atmosphere is not as strict as on english-speaking side of things

I can also see this difference when I work with my colleagues irl, the jokes being said out loud would get people fired in the US

I've been thinking about what can be said to make them understand what they're doing is probably not cool, but without going into any detail or making it depend on any specific thing that can be missing from any specific cultural background

and I kinda came back to "be nice" but a bit expanded:

@user1306322 I get this feeling here a lot, too. I'm in a conservative part of germany, in a mid size company with very conservative bosses in a conservative industry with coworkers who are all at least a decade older then me.

"Do you think this behavior is exemplary? Would you like to be talked to / treated in the same way?" -- if not, it's probably not nice

I think just this works on its own in many cultures and backgrounds well enough

so maybe my proposal would be to cut back on the specific restrictions in the new CoC and replace them with something like this, to call for introspection where it's unclear whether a certain comment or action would be acceptable, and maybe that would be enough

@user1306322 Yes. To me the spirit of the CoC is to ensure equal respect for all, which is fine and laudable. But a lot of people are reading it as that the CoC is demanding them to give full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, and they aren't prepared to go that far. Maybe with more work many of those would be more accepting, but there are plenty who have no intention of budging from their position, for cultural or religious reasons.

@Blue the way I see it, most people won't even notice any change, because it's going to be moderators enforcing these new rules, and they are understanding people who know it's not right to throw the book at people this way

so far those who have felt pressured resigned or suspended their activity, so maybe not

The parallels between this mess and WP:FRAM are really quite striking.

@DavidA what's that?

@Blue Though, a significant part of that userbase is moderators

And a lot of smaller communities may become unhealthy

@user1306322 en.wikipedia.org/w/…

I've scaled back moderation on SU cause how stressful this is

I can't imagine how bad it is for folks who lost many mods

Yeah. The possibility this is intentional scares me

@Blue I haven't really thought about the long term picture of what the ideals of the SE community might become if the current CoC remains... It was my assumption that the majority of users would still act in the spirit of "be nice" and assuming good intent. Perhaps this is now at a great risk.

But eh. No one would be that evil right?

@Blue Thanks. But on the issue of enforcement, that will mainly fall to the diamond mods, and only escalating it to the CMs when all else fails.

Basically, against the background of a D&I initiative, an admin had an interaction with someone that resulted in the Wikimedia Foundation directly banning him/her for a year for on-wiki conduct, but nothing aside from bad language was really found. The Wikipedia bureaucrats raged and undid the ban, but the WMF dug in their heels even more. Eventually the WMF was overruled, the admin was unbanned, but he failed to become an admin again on account of his attitude.

thanks for that example

@Blue It's already having that effect

The issue that I see is that the policy as written and clarified in the post comes off as trying to legislate acceptance, not tolerance. Everything else (ignoring a lot here honestly) is largely derivative.

@Blue IIRC, you mentioned that in Indian English, students are still taught that the correct gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun is "he", not singular "they". Is that the case, or am I mis-remembering.

@Blue Ah, right. Good point.

@DavidA yeah it was blatantly obvious that that had been someone with political connections in the WMF pulling strings

@PM2Ring The issue there is that historically he was the gender neutral singular. In fact I've seen legal documents referring to a woman as he

if not for one line saying something to the extent of "he is the daughter of such and such" you wouldn't assume the subject was female

@Magisch yeah I left out that part because bad things sometimes happen to people who talk about it.

a chilling effect, eh

@DavidA I have a feeling they'll be thinking twice before trying something like that again

It looks like they'll get their global ban privileges restricted by the community consultation anyways

Regarding the health of the smaller sites, it would look bad, assuming that SE is trying to paint a picture that the community is one big happy inclusive family.

@Mgetz Well, sure. When I was a kid, that was what we were taught. And it was normal for married women in formal correspondence, eg the wife of John Smith would be known as Mrs John Smith, and she would identify herself that way.

screw it, let's just all go back to thee and thou

Thou dost maketh a good point. ;)

(rouxls kaard flashbacks)

I thou I thou a puttytat. I diiid, I did thee a puttytat.

English does have a singular gender neutral pronoun: it

@PM2Ring actually yea what's up with ms vs mrs, I always found that very peculiar about English language to differentiate women by marital status like that

@SzabolcsPáll that's actually not a pronoun

@SzabolcsPáll That is a pronoun, but it is not a personal pronoun. Personal pronouns have the attribute that they can be used instead of a name

@Mgetz it is a pronoun though ... not that I'd advice using that ...

it is for things

@Bart no it's not, I just checked. It's a noun

@bruglesco that comment seems gone but did you also flag the post for a mod to point out the behavior that you find troublesome? If you feel insecure by using a flag consider the /contact so only SE staff gets to see your message. We're happy to help flagging rude or abusive comments but we can't make users stop their current wrong doings let alone block them.

@Magisch technically in "it's me" it's a pronoun, right? Anyway, technical grammar question there ... as you were.

and I do regard myself as a thing, as should everyone who does think they exist

@SzabolcsPáll I'm going to assume you're going for the "humorous" angle there. Just a word of warning that it might not come across as such at the moment.

@Bart probably, but me is abstract

wait no

I don't know enough about grammar theory to answer that

I recommend elu

@user1306322 It goes back to the Bad Old Days, when women were essentially considered to be the property of men. So "Mrs" means she belongs to her husband, "Miss" means she still belongs to her father.

@bruglesco okay, glad you did that. I did ping a CM as well so I assume your concern gets the attention it needs.

regardless it is considered a non-personal subjective and thus would be insulting to most

@PM2Ring hmm... I wonder what the general public would say if explicitly asked for opinions on that today though.

(not that I think it makes sense to do this here, especially not now)

@Magisch grammar is a terrible weak spot in my knowledge. I use correct grammar because I know it to be correct, but I don't know why it is correct in many cases. :D

Yes, someone yelling "it" at you feels horrible.

Most of my english is conversational. I don't know many grammar rules, I had a D- in english until 10th grade

@Magisch I think most native speakers that are not english majors fall into that category

@Bart I'm just trying to shed light on some hidden linguistical features of the english language, didn't intend to offend anyone. All of my words are in "good-faith"

@bruglesco Can we surround them with rainbow unicorns or would that be considered unwelcoming?

@SzabolcsPáll I can't speak for others but I wasn't offended. English is transitioning right now. It would be nice to have an accepted genderless personal pronoun for cases where gender is irrelevant.

@bruglesco 🦄🌈🦄🌈🦄🌈

@Bart also using the expression ".. a word of warning.." is rather intimidating.

@Mgetz I have "disable emoji" addon installed so this was a confusing message >.<

sometimes people post empty messages and I wonder what that's about for a bit

addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/no-emoji if that's also not your thing :p

@Mgetz that would indeed be nice. Lets hope this whole thing will go into that direction instead of where it is heading now.

@bruglesco What situation are you referring too?

I am already working another situation and want to be sure I don't miss yours @bruglesco

@bruglesco Also keep in mind there are only 2 active mods to deal with all the flags

@bruglesco I am working with this person as we speak. It is not being ignored, but I would ask for a bit of patience. Keep flagging if the behavior continues.

that is all I can say about it.

In Fram's case, he (or she... nobody really knows) came down on some editor for bad writing and making factual errors over the course of years. It looks like dealing with vandalism and other stuff can wear down a person's empathy.

@MisterPositive thanks for doing this, it's reassuring to hear someone working on the issues amidst this silence and speculation

@bruglesco Thank you. @Snow and I are on it. Other Moderators are helping too.

Gotta run, please keep flagging bad behavior.

@SzabolcsPáll Ok. I'm guessing from your name that you're from a Hungarian family. Do you speak Hungarian? I know that Hungarian doesn't have gendered 3rd person pronouns, so it must seem a little odd or quaint to use them in English.

@PM2Ring indeed it is, but in hungarian I had learned how to talk without pronouns to avoid the formal/informal (which is kinda missing from english). On the other hand I also speak italian where refering to someone as "The {{surname}}" is common usage (except for "the" in italian has both male, female and neutral) so it's a good example of commonly accepted objectification of a person (as well as a bad example of being gender neutral)

@SzabolcsPáll Right. Japanese also has multiple levels of formality built into the grammar, which can be very difficult for non-Japanese people to master when learning the language. You virtually have to spend time living in Japan to get it right.

And I think Spanish also does the "The {family_name}" thing.

@SzabolcsPáll Good, I like being intimidating ... but in all seriousness, all I'm saying is that what you mean to be lighthearted or in a jokingly manner might not come across as such in the light of recent events. So just keep that in mind. I have to myself as well on occasion :)

Courtesy move as per request. We don't have a non-invite friendly bin so just imagine this as the friendly bin

@PM2Ring mmh?

@Caleb meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334550/… is the best I've got so far, but I'm not happy with it.

@202324 I was continuing my reply to chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/7962523#7962523

@Magisch does it still say "you have been invited to Trash"?

@PM2Ring that's unpolite in Spanish, if I understand correctly

@SzabolcsPáll Does Italian have neuter? I didn't know that.

@user1306322 no, thats why we use the gallery trashcan

i c

@202324 Ah, ok. Thanks for that info. I studied French at school, but I also studied linguistics for a while. So I know a little bit about a lot of languages. :)

@Bart I'm delighted by this whole thing since it came out in the media the first time. If anyone finds my delight on the subject offensive I'm more than happy to bear the consequences.

@PM2Ring you can ask Spanish SE.

to get an expanded answer.

@SzabolcsPáll The community is torn apart. We have had... much too much drama.

What exactly here is... delightful?

@SzabolcsPáll What the puppy said. True, there is an old saying "There's no such thing as bad publicity". But there's also "Mud sticks".

@PM2Ring no such thing as bad publicity for corporations perhaps, not for individuals

@JourneymanGeek I'm not talking about the recent events in this community but generally politics about linguistics. As for this community I'm seriously considering becoming a passive (anonymous/guest) user of the site, as I see it less and less appealing since the IPO

also have you seen Blizzard publicity lately?

@SzabolcsPáll ayy, welcome to the club!

@SzabolcsPáll I've been on SE for nearly a decade

Joined SU shortly after the beta

@Blue Because it distracts from the real issues while creating strife

Rather than deal with the real day to day issues against trans people we argue about pronouns while quite a lot of states still allow a "Trans Panic" defense

@Mgetz well said, there are so many "unjust" things in life to get offended by, language should really not be on the list.

I was under the impression that wars were fought over control of resources, territories or the sake of loot. And religion or language were just the excuse used by the ruler to get the populace to support such war.

@SzabolcsPáll it can be

but in the scheme of things in the US... it's rather small

@bruglesco at same urgency, small issues must be favored

@bruglesco It's an international community. In all of its complexity the current changes and debates are very much an almost exclusively north america and online thing. I could bet you right now maybe 1 person in my entire company even knows diverging pronouns exist

Although, thats no reason not to address it

just a source of some consternation

^ that's a new word for me en.wiktionary.org/wiki/consternation

@Magisch it's not about addressing it, but about enforcing something on a community where most member don't care or don't even see the issue.

@SzabolcsPáll It would be like that, wouldn't it. An issue that disproportionately and exclusively affects a minority in the community wouldn't really be on everyone's radar

thats not a reason not to do something about it

@bruglesco I just hope. in $time, I can have a sensible discussion with someone about it.

@bruglesco Yeah, that's the unfortunate reality isn't it :/

@bruglesco thanks for letting me know. I updated it elsewhere, but for $reasons it hadn't propagated. And it was never meant to be an attack on anyone.

@djsmiley2k I'll try to help

I assume we all want to move on from that (friendly bin)

@djsmiley2k I don't think chat.mse and chat.se profiles are auto synced

ty @Magisch

@JourneymanGeek discuss elsewhere please.

@Magisch what I meant is not that minorities should be ignored but that once a community (of any sort) is not deciding on it's own based on the opinion of it's majority (you know, like, in a democracy) that community will be inevitably torn apart by it's internal conflicts

@Magisch basically this. SE is an international site and using English as the main language.

When on SE, do what SE (ask us to) do.

@SzabolcsPáll So you are against benevolent dictactors and prefer democracies even if uncaring.

SE has never been a democracy

Indeed, that is my point

@bruglesco I would like some advice. I don't personally care how people refer to me. Do I set something, do I not set something, is setting something supportive?

the most we want is the old "special relationship" between the company and core users to be restored

And my democratic country is... not so democratic, but more of democrazy

demonstration (riot) everywhere

@djsmiley2k if you're having trouble finding the right words, consider using an anonymous account to ask a question on SE or look over at reddit threads which are many, there are helpful comment threads to read and learn from

@JourneymanGeek You could have that with the old CEO who was a dreamer and this was his dream. But not with the new one who is a hired professional.

@user1306322 I was about to write "I have no chosen prenoun, call me what ever you want" then realised that might come across as sarcastic or.... anti-choice? I don't even know anymore.

@bruglesco Ok, thanks.

@JoseAntonioDuraOlmos eh, This seems a bit of a interegium so to speak

@djsmiley2k you don't need to set something, but don't be mad when someone's using a pronoun that you feel unsuitable for you.

Does that mean that Joel might be back as CEO?

@MetaAndrewT. they'd have to try hard..... but lets not have this discussion now.

naw

@MetaAndrewT. It makes me sad that within 10 years, I've gone from seeing Riots on the TV and being like :O, to being like :-| normal life.

Fun fact: for decades, electronic devices have been based on complex integrated circuits, aka chips, technically known as VLSI, Very Large Scale Integration. One of the authors of the definitive VLSI engineering textbooks is Professor Lynn Conway. Around the year 2000, she came out as trans. So we have a trans woman to thank for the wonders of modern technology. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead_%26_Conway_revolution and ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/conway.html

@djsmiley2k Better than experiencing a war for independence, I guess...

@MetaAndrewT. I cannot wait for the robot uprising :/

@JoseAntonioDuraOlmos I prefer non of those, but I wasn't trying to share my preferences, rather point out a statistical assumption about the effect of a chain of events on a particular social structure.

@djsmiley2k personally I don't have an avatar or name here, and people refer to me as "they" when grammatically appropriate, which I don't object to, and it's never been a problem for me so far. If asked, I'd choose to not have a pronoun associated with me primarily to remove any chance of wrong assumption about my gender role for the purpose of stereotyping. In my opinion it's a legitimate choice. People see no obvious gender - fewer assumptions. But this is just me. Others' mileage may vary.

normally I would just hide in the logged out land but this time I think it's important to speak up about nuances and share my experience, this is why I'm active although usually I lurk and hide

and I always know you from Anime.SE :/

sure, that's not a problem

@user1306322 That's a good point, but just by objecting to being refered to as one vs another could also trigger stereotypes, so I guess in that case the best way to achieve the goal of not being labeled is by accepting/ignoring all pronouns.

You can imagine how that made girls on IRC feel.

I guess the rise of linking everything back to 'real' accounts, and so to real people, has some downsides which are only coming out now.

heh, blame China's law for that ;p

@user58 heh, many of the IRC channels I was in had people of every sort ;p

other than FBI agents

@user58 it didn't bother the few I knew. Some would even make jokes and say 'I'm a FBI agent' when the a/s/l line was used.

@djsmiley2k for one other tangentially related example, I recently discovered the world of online multiplayer gaming with all voice and text chat disabled, and it's been a dramatic improvement from the default

Yes, people really did say "a/s/l ?"

hi

@user1306322 I recall playing online on my xbox 360, gears of war, that was some of the greatest team play I ever had, with utter randoms. Of course, there was some god aweful trolling too.

hello

Hi there.

On the 360 you had audio chat. And tbh the trolling was genuinely 1-2 people in every say 50 or so.

These days, it seems to be a lot worse, and I don't know why :/

I was about to blame "social media", but...

Hah, and in everquest I role played a ogre, troll? I can't remember the race now, who had a awesome broamance with another random troll. (like actual trolls, we were green...).

To quote AVE's kid...

in my 10 or so years of playing team fortress 2, my experience was that in the first couple years there was some attempt to co-operate with teammates via text and voice chat, but for the last 5 years it has been only salty text and incessant insults, and annoying blaring music over mic, so yea, the time has come to turn it off :I

@MetaAndrewT. I certainly don't think it's helped?

"People are monsters"

@JourneymanGeek arduino vs evil?

@user1306322 yup. Where did we go wrong? :/

@MetaAndrewT. more like "antisocial media". :-(

@JourneymanGeek especially Chell.

@user1306322 guy on youtube. Swears and takes things apart. Not always puts them back together.

Anyone here a Python expert? :/ I'm running out of ideas, and the people on IRC are being... vague (trying to get me to learn) but I've burnt out to that point where I don't know what's wrong anymore.

@JourneymanGeek I'd quote slipknot but it's not family friendly.

@JourneymanGeek yes, that's the one. "AvE" is the correct capitalization, as I recall from the youtube subscriber plaque video

@djsmiley2k ask Stack Overflow

I'm guessing stack overflow has more than a few python chats.

@djsmiley2k Probably because the people it bothered silently left.

@user58 Maybe. I don't know. I wasn't them.

heh, one of the girls I met on IRC was my first proper kiss, too lol.

@djsmiley2k You're welcome to ask in the SO Python room chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/6/python but please read our room rules first.

ty

@Blue idk I think it's different from one place to another, like I remember in my early days of using "the big internet" I was given a DC++ client with a local city block chat and there were many friendly chat nights and guys were jovial with gals and it was all nice and fun. On the less connected online communities it doesn't feel as friendly.

the second time I experienced a culture shock was when living in another country. The first time was when I accessed the internet for the first time...

maybe it's because of the age groups using these platforms, like kids are loud and aggressive, and adults don't have the time to be like this so they just don't use social media in this way. Maybe perception is skewed this way by gaming.

@MetaAndrewT. yea that brings back a couple warm memories

perhaps Blue meant online communities and you mean irl?

@Blue we have that on our website

I know in practice the bosses are not as progressive as they claim

I mean, there's some truth to that at least. The first programmers were overwhelmingly women until the field became prestigious and well paid

That can't be explained away with inherent preferences. Even preferences are shaped by something, be it only exposure

err... like... Kartini's Day?

Hey @GeorgeStocker

Hello!

It's pretty unfair you're taking all the heat for the pronouns in post decision of the CMs

but them's the breaks on MSO I guess, where we shoot the messenger first and ask questions later

That’s the job. If we all pretend like it’s nothing then it’ll never get resolved. Someone has got to stand up and make it an issue to resolve.

That just happens to fall on me

@TimPost Hi, could we discuss the reason one of my answers was deleted?

@Fermiparadox Direct contact with the Community Team can be sought at : meta.stackexchange.com/contact

wooo mandatory cybersecurity training!

Pinging CMs in chat over this is inappropriate and this room is not a space to contest answer deletions anyhow

@Mgetz oh man

the one I had last year was horrible

still not as good as the videos the DNI put online

Awesome, thx. Didn't know

@JourneymanGeek this isn't horribad, it's just boring for me

I kept wanting to punch the presenter. he's the second most annoying person I have seen on the internet

there's... cybersecurity training?

yup

thisyear they let us take the questions first...

last time I know, our company's homepage got hacked...

and... used modern password generation methods (well passphrases)

Hey, "used modern password generation methods" is a good password

@JourneymanGeek like gfycat urls from 4 words?

I was thinking correct horse battery staples

but yes

@JourneymanGeek Speaking of which, the xkcd forums (running on phpBBS) got hacked, and have been offline for a couple of weeks. :( forums.xkcd.com/index.php

I am aware

@Mgetz woo, video recommendations to accompany my dinner

@MetaAndrewT. the ODNI has good reason to make those videos... so it amuses me when people downvote them as they are actually good videos

I've been an xkcd forum member since the early days, so it's a bit disconcerting for them to not be there.

i mean... php, amirite?

oh no here we go again

@Blue i have no problem with CoC talk. room mods, not so much.

@user1306322 no, you'll be retroactively informed about which of the rules you broke though

Just... use common sense, look at the starboard and room description, and try not to bring up contentious topics.

No

@IanKemp uhm. That seems a bit salty

@user58 especially if they're topical

@IanKemp Well... yeah. And I guess it's fairly old php too. I have no idea how old the server software is, or how often it gets upgraded.

Most fora get set up and just keep running

That video is not aware of some unsafe behaviours. Putting your suitcase, which has been rolling over floors stepped on by thousands, over your soon to used bed is asking for illness.

@JourneymanGeek is being upset with policy decisions that a large number of users are also upset with, also verboten now?

@IanKemp its not just what you say, its how you say it.

"When you're upset, have a chance to take a walk..."

@JourneymanGeek and as the recent debacles have shown, it doesn't matter how reasonably you say something, you'll be ignored if your point doesn't fit the narrative. so, why bother being reasonable?

@MetaAndrewT. if I walked every time I was upset these past few weeks, I'd lose a lot of weight

lol

@IanKemp cause, then we're as bad as the folks we're mad at

and I need to take more walk... (weekends room camper)

cause being the best we can be, no matter what matters

and if you'd walked to high altitude placed you'd lose even more weight, but probably not mass :p

@JourneymanGeek and what has the moral high ground got us so far? more ignoring?

@IanKemp I shall say this only once ...

no need, i'm off to take a walk

of shame?

it's probably not difficult to walk down a mountain and gain weight while losing mass

@user1306322 have you ever walked down a mountain? Easy isn't always the case