@NullUserExceptionอ_อ that's not exactly helping

there used to be a time when community had a voice

still does, we're not being silenced

it's up to the company whether they want to listen or not, though

that's debatable... and we aren't being heard either

and it's up to you whether you value that listening enough to leave over it or whether you stay on

the only SE employee I've seen on MSE lately is @Shog9

Well, I think I'll leave this particular beehive unpoked.

poke poke

(According to Google Ngram Viewer, the word "unpoked" has a frequency less than 0.00000002%.)

that's exactly the problem

we shouldn't feel like we are walking on eggshells whenever we talk about this issue

yet here we are

I don't feel like I'm walking on eggshells at all.

But I don't want to precipitate an argument.

Not here, anyway.

it was also hardly an issue, until some people decided to make it an issue

@NullUserExceptionอ_อ data.stackexchange.com/meta.stackexchange/query/1128944

Nobody decided to make it an issue. It's been an issue for a very long time.

Also, what's the big deal about walking on eggshells? There've gotta be worse things to walk on. Like, LEGOs

Stomp on those egg shells. Bust 'em up. They're good for the soil.

I meant to say how often do pronouns actually get used?

All right, I'm poking the beehive.

I see this as being very closely analogous to accessible construction.

Wheelchair ramps and elevators and all that.

I always used the singular "they" (if ever), and then started moving towards rephrasing my sentences so I avoid pronouns altogether... that's become my natural writing style.

but apparently it's no longer acceptable

Should be fine

you just can't not use pronouns for some people, while also loudly declaring that you're not using pronouns for those people

Some folks are saying stuff like, "All buildings with stairs should also have wheelchair ramps or elevators."

@Shog9 didn't all the drama with Monica happen because that's what she wanted to do, but it was in violation of the new CoC?

Some folks are saying, "You can't force people to build stuff they don't want to build! That's slavery!"

Nobody knows why Monica was dismissed.

Some folks are saying, "There was never a problem before this mandate for wheelchair ramps came along."

yeah I don't think this analogy works

I think of it the same way I think of oxford commas. Yes, oxford commas make sentences ugly, as though a fly had been crapping all over it. But you don't want to just make a rule that says "no oxford commas" - sometimes it's convenient to write ambiguous sentences, and a liberal application of commas is a quick fix for that. So instead you say, "either write unambiguous sentences, or use oxford commas to reduce ambiguity, you hack".

Anyway, I'm going to dinner. Talk to y'all later.

IOW, leave the choice up to the writer.

Mandate only that their writing achieves good results.

@AGirlHasNoName it's hard to do that when she's come out with her side of the story but SE has been silent?

Honestly, it'd have been better if we'd been a bit more silent. We aren't normally proponents of talking about folks behind their backs. Let's bring that back.

@TannerSwett I think a better analogy would have been: there used to be stairs and ramps or elevators, and you could freely choose which to use

then some folks demanded not only a climbing wall to be built, but that people who previously used the other options now have to use the wall if they are asked to do so, with no regard for their ability to actually climb it

except the climbing wall is about a foot tall and yeah some people might trip over it the first few times but it's not hard to get the hang of

Once there was a stairs. It worked great - there were no restrictions on who could use it. Men, women, kids, folks in wheelchairs, folks on crutches, folks in hospital gurneys... Everyone was welcome, and everyone was treated equally on those stairs.

Then folks started complaining...

@Shog9 I find it strange you're active on a Sunday...that's rather unusual

I'd argue the wall is much more than a foot tall

how many pronouns have been added to English in the last... few hundred years?

define "added"

there's no single governing body for what qualifies as "English"

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog it's because of the weather

@Shog9 "added" = incorporated into regular use by native speakers

yesterday I saw a hazel flowering... (on the Northern hemisphere)

@Shog9 That's absolutely true: a missing Oxford comma once cost a company $5 million.

pronouns are a linguistically closed class

@NullUserExceptionอ_อ depends on who you are probably. I've never heard a new pronoun used in spoken English in my lifetime. I see quite a collection used on tvtropes.com

So... if you're a troper, loads. If you're someone I talk to, zero.

If you're you... Who knows?

@NullUserExceptionอ_อ that's... fairly meaningless

it just means it's really hard to get people to use new pronouns

There have been two pronoun shifts in English: in the 1200s, "ye", formerly strictly a second-person plural, was adopted as a second-person singular formal pronoun. In the 1600s, "you" (a pronunciation shift of "ye") replaced "thou" as the general second-person singular pronoun.

so, basically pronouns have remained unchanged in the last 400 years or so

in a language like English

And, will likely not change much for another few centuries. Making this entire line of debate rather pointless.

In the unlikely event that you're ever asked to use something unusual, you can just use it; otherwise, you can worry about something more likely, such as getting struck by lightening while being attacked by bees and thus prevented from cashing in your winning Powerball ticket.

@AGirlHasNoName in a sense, all English is made up.

no you're made up!

Realistically, this stuff usually only matters on SO when you're quoting someone. Which is already an activity that has a lot of special rules and guidelines attached to it. And also an activity that may require you to violate English norms on occasion: if you're quoting bobince, you might have to use Zalgo text; if you're quoting E E Cummings, you might have to not capitalize stuff. So quoting already requires care; this is a small addition.

For the non-coders among us who may not be familiar with the bobince Zalgo reference, please see stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/4014959 There's some Zalgo text at the very end of that answer.

it's semantically incorrect. Should be contained in a shape with lion <body> and prefaced by the <head> of a man

"that's not hurtful" is a generalization, "that's not hard to do" is a generalization, human language is a generalization, and we cannot get out

@Shog9 As a Python coder, I approve of oblique Sphinx references.

I donno, always seems right on the edge of indignation to me

Not to be confused with someone living in Digg nation, which is in dire straits and yet can no longer get any money for nothing

@Shog9 Hi, I read through your experiment changing the required votes from 5 to 3 and found it quite interesting. I was wondering if you'd run the analytics again after the moderator resignations to see if they'd had any effect on the queue lengths as well?

@david I believe Julia is looking into this

Though... I would not expect to see an immediate effect there

@Shog9 I'm not actually sure how much of the queue work is handled by mods and how much is done by regular users

and i believe SO is going to be less affected than some of the smaller sites

ah, thanks! this will be an interesting read

@NullUserExceptionอ_อ I agree. And I'll even agree that one can be critical of neopronouns for linguistic reasons, without that criticism having any implications regarding trans or non-binary people. However, in the current emotion-charged climate on SE we have to choose our words carefully when discussing neopronouns (or even singular "they"). We cannot ignore the sociopolitical dimension.

lol @ users destroyed

wow okay, so moderators only handle a tiny fraction of the queues

@david kinda by design

As a hint to how hard it can be to attribute cause & effect here... The # of flags raised can go down because folks are discouraged by mods not handling flags quickly enough and give up flagging... Or because mods are handling flags very quickly, and thus fewer are needed to bring problems to their attention.

tldr: Its all really messy. ALL of it.

@AGirlHasNoName It... is not

mmf. Now I want coffee.

Yanno what is fine?

Hot soup on a cold day