@DavidA I think that username has been nixed already.

→ 2 messages moved to Trashcan

I'm pretty sure personal attacks are against the rules in pretty much any community.

It's ... a question

We have been cool for a long time with username like "SE Sucks"

@MetaAndrewT. those days are clearly past

@Mgetz lol

Critiques of individual staff member's competence and general sniping at staff is not allowed in this room. I know these are heated times but this is SE's chat server and their house rules and we want to keep this room. Thank you for your understanding.

@Mgetz Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end. We'd answer questions every day.

@Bart flagged as "no longer needed"

I'm no longer needed? Well, that's harsh ...

yeah, I bought contact lenses, sorry ;(

no we definitely still need bart

I definitely still need bart

else I cant see

@Aza That's assuming a lot

There are a lot of reasons someone could have chosen that nickname that doesn't mean that. Bigotry can go both ways.

or making a joke in poor taste

in which case .. yeah actually no disagreement there

Let's see, I don't want to waste any typing to an answer, since I have the gut feeling it'll be downvoted / removed into offtopic anyway but here's my 2cts:

... do we really need to analyze the possible paths that lead to that particular username?

it already got reset anyways

SE as a company doesn't care about their core userbase anymore.

@Bart probably not

And frankly I'm annoyed my content is CC

Because the company it became doesn't deserve the knowledge / information that has been provided.

that is all, there was no other place to really type it, so /rant.

@Aza benefit of the doubt would mean you assume it's meant as sarcasm

I'm largely staying silent because nothing I say is going to matter anyway

a decision has been made

they aren't going to back down or reconsider

@Roberrrt you provided it to the community though. So even if you're upset with the company, they are not the only ones to benefit.

I can only hope cooler heads prevail inside SE and we can get out of this monumental mess (of their own making) without too much lasting damage

their is no point in wasting energy on it

call me a hopeless optimist

@Magisch you're a hopeless optimist

@Bart That makes me feel better Bart, thanks.

Still, the situation is appalling.

Bah.

@Magisch I wish I could agree, but my realism says they feel backed into a corner and won't back down.

We're in a phase of outrage fatigue

@Magisch phoenix will definitely rise, but not without the fire, obviously at this point

globally actually

@Magisch hopeless optimist

people can't sustain anger for long, it wears you out. See what happens when that happens in britain, the USA, basically a lot of places and things

yea I'm wasted after all these days of following this chain of incidents, I'll probably take a weekend off, this is like second work now lol

The nice thing about falling into a black hole is that if you miss, you're going to escape to infinity even without having to spend energy. Or at least, your constituent particles will.

I've chosen not to follow this chain of incidents for a week, and I felt more productive ;)

Another reason why going in with the stick in hopes that the fear of being beaten will make people accepting is not exactly a sure thing

Well... unless it's a spinning black hole and you approach it in the retrograde direction.

Yeah but its not just them who will feel the anger for their actions

@Aza Ignoring all feedback is always a bad idea

I would hate to be openly trans on SE right about now, you probably get 15x the usual amount of crap through no fault of your own

@Aza in my experience anger is almost always the result of misunderstanding and making someone else feel cornered

@Aza This only works if they can afford to see it through to the end

And even then, the collateral damage for the very people they seek out to protect is massive

It is quite astonishing that SE views people that have contributed extensively to this site to be less valued than the single individual they wish to shield.

Everyone is the hero of their own story

Inclusive if you follow their mantra.

Yuck

It's not much, but I added pronouns to my user profile to show my support.

when confronted with evidence or insinuations to the contrary, there are two choices: defense or introspection.

Three guesses what most people choose

@Aza as a minority I'm going to respectfully disagree

I'm the villain of my story.

Or at least an antihero

@JohnDvorak do you still get to wear a cape?

NO CAPES!

even horns / oversized ears are a liability

@Aza I'm not really in the mood, this whole thing has been draining enough. Small tweaks to the language to come off less harsh and this could have been severely lessed. There would always have been pushback.

Trust me. I have no objections to respecting someone's gender. I do have objections to being punished for forgetting someone's gender twice in close succession.

@Aza My 2 cents are: They should have resolved the situation with monica first, and then put some time between that and the new CoC, and get some other show of good faith and comittment to their apology post in between, and this would have nowhere near the backlash it does now

and most people would be less understanding and tolerant of the backlash

@JohnDvorak That's not the way this is going to work.

People would have still given crap, as you say they always do, but it wouldn't have been bolstered and amplified by a record high wave of anti-SE sentiment

@JohnDvorak well, until you're punished, right?

@Rubiksmoose Good to hear.

@Aza I do think they're at a point where they can't afford not to reinstate monica

@MetaAndrewT. I would object to the punishment even more after receiving it!

one way or another, she'll probably have a diamond again soon

@Magisch I concur with this, I also think that make it clear the goal was tolerance would have been better

@Aza I think you're underestimating how screwed they are if they don't fix this. SE isn't like other tech companies. Without its power users, this network just dies

@Magisch They won't, they've made a decision and they'll stick with it even to the bitter end.

Their greatest asset is the efficiency of offloading the curation and moderation to power users instead of sinking millions into developing systems for it or hiring people

They don't have the funding or capital to go another way

@Magisch You know what they say about hindsight. It's easy for us to Monday morning quarterback this thing, but we have no idea what was going on in SE for any of that or why these errors were made. That being said, yes it would have been so much better if they did something like that. Except maybe not necessarily putting Monica first (from a purely procedural POV). In some ways I feel like settling the CoC and moderator processes are going to be good stepping stones.

@Aza only out of inertia in the form of previously answered questions. The new stuff will be a dumpster fire.

And they made a (for the company) crucial mistake too

everyone can take the entire QA base and leave with it

@Magisch For me, I don't really care too much about the CoC, though I think Makato raises a valid discussion for SO, but the real issue is appropriate treatment for Monica.

The problem is power user activity is a thankless job that isn't becoming more thankful, and largely based on people's idealism. Not many new users get to that point

@Aza which is why they can't afford to kick out 40% of the user base and alienate the rest

You have more faith in the progressiveness of the developer community then I do then

@JohnDvorak Nobody is kicking out 40% of anybody. That kind of hyperbole is both inaccurate and not conducive to productive discussion.

Not all developers are bay-area progressives. I certainly am not.

There are also people who are supportive of using preferred pronouns who can be turned off by how the issue was handled.

That faith is probably well-placed.

@Aza (not to mention drastically overestimate the correlation between Meta vote % and the entire userbase of SE)

@Rubiksmoose If this blows over with no major destructive action from the company, then my fears are assuaged.

@Aza I'm going to take a bold move here and state that using pronouns, or being personal in the first place is not inclusive towards every other person using the site and stumbling upon an answer I wrote. If I use personal language to answer something, he/she/preferred etc, the answer wouldn't be objective and ambigious anymore.

@Aza I wish I shared that asessment, but only time can tell

The fact a CM just told me I have to include pronouns when that is being asked- even if I haven't used any personal language just feels odd.

@Roberrrt that's not what's being asked of you

Wait, did they? That would contradict the FAQ.

@Roberrrt citation needed

@Bart Cesar just replied to my question there.

I don't actually think the pronouns are the primary issue here too

they just get mixed in with the firing of monica because of poor timing

@Roberrrt I think you both are talking past each other there

Is there an SEDE query to see if we've ever used pronouns?

@Stevoisiak There is, 0.6% of all comments is gendered.

> Yes. Once someone states your their pronouns, please switch to using their stated pronouns where you would normally include a pronoun.

@Magisch Exactly

Honestly, Q&A posts are the least concern. It's almost always possible to write an answer without needing to mention "he/she/preferred" or even "you", because we're writing an answer for everyone, not only the OP.

Hey ya'll. Do we have data anywhere concerning the percentage of the user base that uses chat?

Still, we do agree that SEinc screwed up, don't we?

@Roberrrt Can I run it on my own comments? If I've ever assumed gender, I want to know so I can improve in the future

But yes, I don't see the outrage on the new CoC. Seems like a perfectly common sense thing to me. I'm being forced to phrase myself a certain way every hour of every day of my life

Some call it professionalism

@Stevoisiak meta.stackexchange.com/questions/335163/… this should help you.

@Aza Public slander of Monica was a pretty big blunder, don't you think?

Adding pronoun to the list of civility guidelines every one of us has to abide by makes sense

and is not a "sky is falling" type deal

There are improvements that could be made to the UI for moderation and communication that would go further toward the goal of making SE a welcoming place. For example tweaking the language of the default moderation comments would be a step, and the larger step would be rebuilding it so that a comment could be combined to address all of the issue in the question instead of picking just a single canned answer.

... I mean libel

Statement of pronouns is seen by a large number of people as a political statement in itself.

@JohnDvorak screwed up I don't know. But they are definitely not handling things in a manner where you think "at least it was dealt with competently"

to draw a real life parallel. I ask people not to touch me at meetings and when getting to know them. I expect them to abide and not touch me, even if touching people is regular and normal for them to do

@scohe001 nope

In the same way, a transgender person can expect to be adressed by their correct pronoun

@JohnDvorak @Aza I do think they screwed up a bit more than that, but we of course don't have to agree on that. Everyone has their lines and opinions and there are so many variables at play.

for most people it doesn't sound that urgent, but it's a small thing so why not concede it?

@rene welp. At least it's a straightforward answer I guess :/ thanks for the help!

There's nothing wrong with the minimum courtesy one has to show other users, and as stated, that is not the problem.

@Aza If firing Monica for asking a question about a future, potential CoC isn't a blunder, I think not fixing the situation afterwards & smearing Monica in The Register is certainly approaching the definition of blunder

I'd be happy to use them if there was any small reason to use pronouns at all on SO

@Rubiksmoose I didn't say they didn't have other blunders than hasty firing and subsequent defamation!

I do think the new CoC is absolutely ok. The rollout was mistimed, the situation with monica was pretty bad, but the reaction on meta is entirely disproportionate right now

@Roberrrt once again, if you never get into a situation where you have to use pronouns, you don't have to start using them. If you answer my question and I'd say "btw, I'm he/him" that does not imply you have to somehow edit your post to include that. There's probably nothing that will change for you going forward.

@Aza They called her a transphobe in public. Is that not "smearing"?

Let me remind everyone that Aza didn't make that decision and I don't think she has to defend or explain the reasoning of SE staff. I would prefer user here stop that interrogation

@Bart I'm still not trusting SE to actually follow up on that, but we'll see how that goes.

@SecretAgentMan The narrative that that is the reason for Monica's firing is far from agreed upon just FYI.

@Roberrrt Thanks, made one that's user specific data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1124191/…

Apparently I have 0 gendered commends on SO. :D

@Aza You might be right. I could have chosen those words more carefully. I think my intent though is still clear. (and I certainly don't think you had anything to do with, just to be clear)

And doing it in this way has made it so members of our community are getting harassed more then usual. Members this policy sought to protect. That is also pretty bad and needed to have been handled better but wasn't

then again

@Rubiksmoose thank you. I thought I'd read through everything but I'll stay tuned and try to be more careful how I phrase things.

I'm not convinced I could think clearly if I was a member of SE's staff and drowning in public derision for the past 2 weeks straight

I had a day of that at one point and was considering throwing my pc out a window

@Aza I don't object the change at all in the form that has been described here.

@SecretAgentMan I mean I don't blame you and it's tough. But there have been a lot of things that have come out from Monica and her supporters. But some of us have serious issues with some of the things they are reporting, but we don't feel comfortable revealing private TL information in that kind of detail.

The fact that SE has consistently messed up the implementation bothers me though

After the animated & tracking issues of ads before that.

@Magisch point taken

In all this, we must consider that the people we're pouring scorn on are still humans

@Rubiksmoose I appreciate you correcting me (if that's the right word, admonishing maybe).

If anyone wants to see if they've used gender pronouns on SO: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1124194/…

Humans that have limits like us, that crack under pressure like us, and that feel saddened when people they respected pour derision on them like us.

@SecretAgentMan I wasn't aiming for admonishment, only informing :) No worries.

@Magisch to make it worse those of us who called out this as happening have been tarred and feathered

I was confused why that was directed at me at first :P

@Mgetz vis a vis, plenty of misery to go around

@Rubiksmoose Even better! I appreciate you informing me.

@Aza I agree, but with so little trust in the company left, esp. after the debacle regarding the termination- I see this policy change more as a method to get rid of people.

But that might be a bit too dark and far fetched.

@Stevoisiak Darn people for talking when I'm trying to click things! My hooves can only move so fast.

Apparently I've made 139 gendered comments out of 11435 total

@Stevoisiak 2%, that's a lot more than I expected.

32 in total.

Let's hope its wrong.

But the Monica termination and their handling did not fill me up with confidence.

@Stevoisiak less than 1%.. for a total of 9

3.4% - some work to do still

2.1% for a total of 21

3.2% on meta

0% (I typically employ usernames)

I might be commenting something weird like .he. and be counted...

That. I'm assuming measurement error.

0.27% 3 out of 1101

i use them every day

491

I wonder if I could modify it to return a list of the gendered comments

(out of 23k)

I modified it to get the comments. data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/revision/1124205/1385520/…

@scohe001 there are some requests for the same in the past: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/284683/… and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/239347/…

@JasonAller Thanks.

FR: turn them into links, for context

@JohnDvorak data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1124220/…

Creation date could also be helpful for context

Thanks for making this!

@Stevoisiak it's sorted by ID, I believe

@Stevoisiak data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1124222/…

Thanks!

@rene that's...a bit of a bummer :/

I think we can all agree that this is by far the greatest question on Meta: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/296077/sandbox-archive

My latest transgression is from Feb 2016, where I assumed a user named "markzzz" was male.

and welp, time to do comments self-cleaning once again~

My second latest trangression of using generic-he was from jul 2013

Since then I've been theyified thoroughly.

but then, SO is not my main site, so I have to run the query on other sites...

I was surprised how often I used gendered pronouns on Arqade, but they all refer to video game characters with known genders. :P

Ah crud, I have one comment from 2017 referring to a user as he

Might be useful to compare the number to the number of comments that use they/them

@JohnDvorak I've apparently made an ass of myself more recently

@JohnDvorak data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1124233/…

@Aza How puzzling ducks

I'm puzzled

There's going to be a lot of false positives referring to objects

414 rows returned for me

@Aza bows then I'm glad I broke your streak!

Yeah, a comparison to "they" has too many false positives

"Typically, answers should stand on their own."

@Aza flags as offensive there are no good puns

My second last they - from 2018 - was actually referring to an unknown person!

I always try to write "user UserName", that way if their name is "wrong answer", "I don't like ewe", or another name where it is unclear to me what the gender is, I refer to them respectfully and use of the user's name doesn't lead to a confusing sentence.

My last one was using "they" for lines of code

@JohnDvorak semi-serious philosophical question: Can you deadname code? e.g. calling C++ as C etc.

The query breaks if there are 0 results

@Stevoisiak add an if exists?

Erm, the percentage

The list one is fine

"Help me, rene, you're our only hope!"

@rene I legitimately can't tell if you're joking or not

All we can do is wait. If Nick shows up we point at you ...

Oh wait, it broke because I was using a non-existent user with 0 comments

A divide was the result of zero error.

In Javascript, you can always divide by zero. In Javascript, you can even divide strings by zero.

Robot apocalypse - any situation in which a computer program executes you.

@RobertHarvey why would you expect anything different? There has been no indication at all so far that SE thinks they did anything fundamentally wrong.

@RobertHarvey ignored it, it's pro-forma

@RobertHarvey To calm the situation a bit

@RobertHarvey to say "We tried to be reasonable but you weren't, therefore this is why we can't have nice things"

I'm expecting a blog to shut down the metas any time now

@RobertHarvey It did calms things for a bit and halted the escalation for a day or two

Pretty insane that we have people justifying eye for an eye-like behavior in comments of questions on meta and seemingly nobody to even tell them off

@SébastienRenauld some have and have been getting flagged

@SébastienRenauld MSE is pretty much modded by SE employees only right now

Hey at least they aren't the Blizzard social media team.

Regardless at this point I don't have a lot of good faith left

@DavidA I'm wondering if what blizz did wasn't a very very subtle way of basically telling the Chinese off. They had to know it would happen.

@ModusTollens I flagged 5-6 comments in rmunn's question alone

People thinking they are literally allowed to throw vitriol because they perceive something as vitriol defies comprehension

@ModusTollens I'd suspect they are both understaffed compared to the drastically increased volume, and probably hesitant to intervene in some kinds of situations

If you want to rage at the world we have a system for that. It's called Twitter.

@DavidA yet another excuse to shut metas down

Oddly enough, there's very little mention of this there.