User flair for personal pronouns
I'm suggesting a user flair-type option for people to select and display their personal pronouns.
This option would be accessed via a user's settings page. It would say something like "select your pronoun". The user would select their pronoun from a list. The selected pronoun would display discreetly beside their username wherever they post and comment.
The basic minimal version of this option would have three selections:
- him
- her
- them
We don't need to display the longer "he/him", "she/her", "they/them". Most English users know the subjective, objective, and possessive cases for these various pronouns; the important piece of information is the gender itself.
I've chosen pronouns instead of genders because there are many possible genders to include, but only three existing English third-person pronouns.
A slightly more advanced version might show four selections:
- him
- her
- them
- other
The even-more advanced version would include a text box for the user to enter a pronoun:
- him
- her
- them
- other (Please specify: ________)
The user could type something like "zhe" or "hir" in that text box, which would then be displayed beside their username instead of "him"/"her"/"them".
This option would be totally voluntary. Not every user should be required to provide this information, and not every user will want to provide this information. But for those users who want to inform people about their gender, or for those users who want to stop people making assumptions or prevent people having to ask questions about their gender, this would be a handy option.
I am personally against this, for one reason: This site isn't about me, it's about the discussion. I like that a username is all I have to go on. Your words should stand entirely on their own without, and background information about you should not matter (unless someone is asking "people in X industry, what is Y" type questions). For that reason I don't really care what pronouns you prefer; everyone is just "they".
Here, I am not a "she". I am not a "he". I am just a username.
This is what I wanted to say - It's a step towards unnecessary personalization that ruins pseudonymity on this website. All personal information or any kind of attributable data on you does on websites like Tildes is open you up to other peopople's biases.
Tell that to the people who send me messages asking me what my preferred pronoun is. I've received two of these in the time I've been here, plus there have been public comments hinting that people would like to know my pronoun, or directly asking me. I'm trying to reduce this clutter and noise and effort.
I think we would be better to discourage that behavior unless it is relevant, than to give into it.
This isn't the first time a user has blown up something minor and uncommon into a discussion about implementing site-wide accommodations.
OP has received two PMs about preferred pronouns... in over 4 months since they joined the site on June 1st. This entire thread is borne out of discussion from the last week - it's not like this is a well-established trend that has gone on for months. Threads that belabor trivial details of the site are a bigger problem than the issues they discuss, IMO.
They are a prolific user, yet the occurrence of this supposed problem is limited to a couple PMs and some comments in a recent thread. If it barely registers for a power user, then it's probably irrelevant for average users.
How do I discourage people from politely sending me messages to respectfully ask me what my pronoun is?
I don't know. I guess it would have to be more of a change in Tildes culture, but I don't know how you would do that.
If I may ask, why did they want to know? Was it relevant to some conversation or did they just ask out of the blue? Edit: Nevermind. I'm assuming it had to do with this thread.
When referring to specific people in a discussion, it's essential that you know which pronouns to use for them. If I wanted to refer to @Algernon_Asimov, it's cumbersome to refer to @Algernon_Asimov by @Algernon_Asimov's name every time I want to refer to @Algernon_Asimov. It's a lot easier to use his pronouns (and I sincerely hope I remembered them correctly). In practice, I use 'they' until I'm shown (and can remember) otherwise.
It's also important to some of us. As a trans person who is commonly misgendered or not gendered in face-to-face or voice conversations, it makes me incredibly happy when, out of the blue, I see someone on the Internet use feminine pronouns to refer to me. There was actually a thread a few days back where @Algernon_Asimov mentioned me and said 'she' and I literally couldn't stop smiling for a few hours, because a relative stranger in the Internet remembered me and my pronouns! That or he just guessed correctly. Either way, I was over the moon! :P
Personal pronouns are both convenient and, for some of us at least, emotionally significant. I like the idea in principle at least.
I don't really get the point of wording it this way except to prove a point. In practice you can just use "they" like you said.
This. I assumed from your female-looking username ("Lynn" is a girls' name). Also, I think there was a hint or mention of your pronoun somewhere that I'm half-remembering. I combined those to guess that you're a "she".
Well shucks, and here I thought you remembered me. :P
I do remember you! I bumped into you on nearly your first day here, and you made a positive impression on me. And I'm pretty sure I know you're a lady, but I don't remember how I learned that.
We were talking about trans experiences and hate speech, and I related that I was a trans woman, so that's probably where you first picked it up. It makes me happy to hear I made a positive impression with you!
In one case, it was relevant to a conversation. In other cases, it was just out of the blue.
That's because you're one of the (if not the) most active users on the site. The vast majority of users don't have these issues.
So... if I just stopped posting and commenting so much, the problem would go away? People would suddenly stop wondering about other people's pronouns?
One could say that, as a prolific participant here, I'm discovering problems early on which most other people won't discover until the site is busier at a later time.
... to a rhetorical question? Thanks, but no thanks. :)
Just in case you interpreted that as a criticism of your activity on the site, let me preface by saying it wasn't intended in that way.
I don't think most people care about some random user they were replying to that one time. It's only when they start seeing this person more and more and more, that they start to get curious about who this person is.
Basically, I'm saying you're sort of a site celebrity, and as such, you awake an amount of curiosity that most users don't.
So, the scale of this problem, I believe is waaay smaller than what you think. Because your perspective is different from everyone else's.
I doubt most people have received messages asking about their pronoun preference. That, –I believe– is a niche problem that doesn't require a site-wide tackling.
I don't want to be an object of curiosity. And, quite bluntly, I see no reason why I should be. I post articles and I write comments - just like most other people here. If I do it a little more often than other people, that doesn't make me special or important.
But this isn't about me - because I'm not the one sending these messages. I'm not the one trying to find out other Tildeans' pronouns. This is about the people out there who want to know what other Tildeans' pronouns are. If they want to know, they shouldn't have to resort to sending PMs to other Tildeans (who, by the way, might not welcome such an intrusion). If we can make the site a little friendlier and help it run a little more smoothly for those interested people, that's a good thing.
Posting more makes you more recognizable. More recognizability does make you special. In the sense that most users don't have it, but you do. So you're rare, thus special.
I'm sure there's probably people that are interested in knowing others' nationalities, race, age, civil status, height, weight, education...
Should we include those, too, since
If they want to know, they shouldn't have to resort to sending PMs to other Tildeans?But you are the one receiving them...
Yes. But I don't think this feature would necessarily make it friendlier. In fact, I worry it would make it easier for trolls: you cannot misuse someone's pronoun to upset them if you don't know which pronoun they prefer.
Also, if this thread is anything to go by, it doesn't seem like it's a feature most users are interested in or see as something beneficial.
Yes, I've noticed. However, I didn't know that when I posted this topic!
They really aren't. You can just use “they”.
You could also be discovering problems which will not exist if the site were bigger since you'd be more likely to be lost in the noise.
A possible alternative 'solution' could be per-topic soft-anonymity:
Hopefully that would make more people judge posts on the merits of their argument rather than the power of the user name. But it still lets bad behaviour spotted if someone cares to go looking.
I've no idea if this suggestion is good or terrible, seems easy enough to implement Tildes could run it experimentally.
Compromise: Display them on the user profile, and in the "replying to" text.
I appreciate that you default to "they", but as the website grows we are likely to have more and more people who do not, and creating yet another space that believes there aren't women (and so on) on the internet is not good for maintaining healthy discussion.
What If I want to write about your post and don't want to write "MacDolanFarms' post" every single time I mention it?
IMO it's better to be honest about not wanting to tediously look up pronouns for every single mention of a user. Isn't that where you come from? Like, are you really that passionate about not wanting to be called "he" or "she"? I don't really see the argument there. That's not something anyone ever cared about before the topic of gender normalization blew up.
I don't have a single argument against calling users "he" or "she" or "them" by preference except it complicating things. And I'll admit that still puts me on the side of preferring a generic "he" and "he"/"she" when the gender has been stated as part of the topic of discussion.
"They/Them" has correct usage as a singular gender neutral pronoun, and it's not complicated. It's actually the default for most people over here in the UK as far as I know.
"Their post." "They" has been an acceptable singular third person pronoun for a few hundred years now.
I think just having a small "bio" section that's visible on the user's page would probably work fine for this. It's not a feature specifically devoted to the purpose, but if they want to put their preferred pronoun(s) in there (as many people do with their bio on Twitter and other sites), that would be fine. There's even an open merge request for this feature already, that I haven't reviewed yet.
That's another approach.
However, Tildeans mostly interact with each other in topics, via comments. This is where they'll want to refer to each other. If they have to jump out of the thread to go to another Tildean's profile page, that's less convenient than seeing the other person's pronoun displayed in the thread where they're commenting.
Why do you need to know someones pronoun when commenting? Just refer to everyone as they/them and you will be right every time.
I don't. I refer to everyone as "they" unless I know otherwise.
However, other people have been asking me what my pronoun is. Those people care. Those people want to use the right pronouns. I'm making this suggestion for those people, not for me.
Tildes extended adds the ability to tag username's. This and a bio would be able to meet these goals, right?
I suppose so. Assuming that everyone installs browser extensions, and uses them on their computers, tablets, and phones.
Tbh, threads about minor/non-existent issues are a bigger problem than the issues they aim to address. We should brainstorm how to deal with those before we start giving people preferred pronoun flair.
I don't think honest mistakes should be punished in any way... but if someone has been explicitly told a user's preferred pronoun and that person deliberately and continually uses another one just to insult/harass them, I would say that deserves punishment.
With that said, I don't think this feature suggestion is a great idea or even necessary since it can simply be accomplished by a site culture promoting use of gender neutral pronouns until otherwise informed.
How do you intend to stop people sending me messages asking what my preferred pronouns are? I've received two of these messages so far, as well as having people hint in public threads that they'd like to know what my pronoun is.
Well, if/when the user profile feature is implemented then you can include your preferred pronoun there. And is having to answer two PMs in 4 months on the site asking for your preferred pronoun such an incredible annoyance that it warrants an entire custom feature to specifically address?
As I told Deimos, it's more convenient to have the pronouns visible in threads where people are interacting with each other.
It's not only 2 PMs in 4 months. There have been public hints about people wanting to know my pronoun, and direct questions in threads. And I've seen people having to correct other people in threads, and so on.
This isn't just about me. It's about symptoms I'm observing, which I believe to be the tip of an iceberg: some people want to know other people's pronouns, and some people want to inform other people about their pronouns.
I honestly don't understand why so many people are pushing back on this!
Well, I can't speak for everyone, but for me I honestly don't think it's such a huge problem that it warrants a custom feature added to the site to address it. Is getting the occasional PM and comment asking for your preferred pronoun and people occasionally having to correct someone really that big of an issue?
Profiles are likely already coming and potentially solve a large portion of the issue since then it's trivial to check someone's profile for their preference (which they can include if they care about such things) before using a gendered pronoun when referencing them. And if/when whisper comments are added to the site then the noise issue you brought up also becomes nullified as well since people will be able to have off-topic conversations with each other without clogging up the main threads.
So do we really need 3 distinct features to potentially address one IMO minor issue?
p.s. I am more than willing to concede that I may be wrong and this isn't just a "minor" issue. I suspect for many non-binary and trans users in particular this might be a more serious issue that they would like addressed in a more comprehensive way than just user profiles and whisper comments. So if anyone else feels like chiming in and letting me know how they feel, I would genuinely appreciate it.
We add a bio section to the profile page. The bio would be above the PM button so people would see that first.
maybe those people can stop asking and harassing you. it's not necessary, everyone here is a user.
I wasn't aware that we had to limit our suggestions only to items which were necessary at the moment. I thought we could also suggest features for further down the track.
Of course not! That's certainly not my intention, and I hope it's noone else's intention either. However, some people care about pronouns, and this feature would make that information available to them.
And this feature would give those people the ability to share their preferred pronoun with you in a low-key discreet way, without having to make an off-topic comment in the thread, adding noise to the discussion.
I see this as getting this issue out of the way of community interactions. At the moment, we've got people having to correct each other in public threads, or sending private messages to each other to ask about pronouns (I've received a couple of these messages). This prevents the need for that noise and clutter.
What about when someone wants to know another person's gender before they call them "he" or "she"? How do they do that? (instead of sending the other person a private message to ask them)
I'm not overly fussed whether someone calls me "they" or "he" or even "she". I think it's clear from my male username that I'm a "he", but I'm not going to throw a tantrum if someone calls me a "she". However, I have had a few people ask me what my pronoun is. It's not me who cares, it's those other people. They want to know my pronoun before they refer to me incorrectly. They are the people I am aiming this feature at.
I repeat: I am not proposing that this be enforceable in any way. I do NOT know where you keep coming up with that idea. It's not stated or implied in anything I have suggested here. I even wrote in bold at the bottom of my post that this feature would be ""totally voluntary". However, you keep twisting this as if I'm trying to enforce some police state of political correctness. Stop that.
You don't get to agree with other people's pronouns. If I say I'm a "he", then that's entirely my prerogative and not yours.
Of course not. THIS IS NOT ABOUT PUNISHMENT OR ENFORCEMENT! Stop twisting my words.
I have to draw a hard line on this. Unless someone is being absurdly unreasonable (my pronouns are "your majesty"/"fucktard"), it's not okay to intentionally refuse to use a person's preferred pronouns. If I say "please use 'she' to refer to me" and another user says "no, I'm sorry, I can't do that," their words are by nature not neutral. They very explicitly reject a fundamental part of my identity in a transphobic way that is difficult to attribute to anything other than malice or intentional ignorance.
Transphobia, especially intentional disrespect of other's pronouns, is not something we should tolerate here.
For those of us to whom this issue is important, i.e. binary-leaning trans people, that's not any better. Refusing to gender me is not a compromise because it's still a refusal to accept or see me as the person I say I am.
@Deimos, can you clarify this? I would generally consider this transphobic, and I'm under the impression that you discourage transphobic behavior here.
It's hard to talk about completely hypothetical situations, but yes, if it's being done for malicious purposes or to be transphobic it would almost certainly result in a ban.
There is no bio page. I did not know there were plans for a bio page. And I probably would not use it even if it existed.
But I don't want people messaging me all the time to ask my pronoun. They care a lot more about it than I do.
I've already pointed out elsewhere in this discussion that having information in a bio page elsewhere on the site when someone is typing a comment within a thread is not convenient: they can see an element sitting next to someone else's username, but can not see the bio page.
We would deal with that situation in exactly the same way as we deal with it now. People are correcting other people's use of pronouns now, which means there is already the opportunity for people to use incorrect pronouns. We don't need to wait for a user flair or a bio page for people to misgender each other deliberately: this can happen right now. We would deal with this problem in the future in exactly the same way as we would deal with this right now.
EDIT: added "is not convenient", because I had a brain fart and missed this.
I am not the person you replied to but on these specific comments,
If a bio is implemented, surely it would mainly be on the profile page, above the "Message" button, so hopefully people won't message when the answer is right in front of their face when they go to ask.
How about we try this: a pop-up with a small delay on mouse hovering over the username, which includes the user bio.
This would solve the visual clutter problem and might stop people who are curious from even having to go to your user page.
I love this kind of pop up, when well implemented. Information is kept readily available without clutter.
Gotta make sure it's accessible though, so that people on screen readers can use them
The problem with popups is that they are not accessible for a huge segment of the market: mobile browsers.
But there's not a lot of other info I want to convey to other users. Anything I want to say, I write in comments.
However, I observed a demand for information about pronouns, and I suggested this feature to meet that demand.
I am completely against this. I don't support comments being framed with this sort of potentially polarising information. I am here because I believe we value words and ideas before their sources. This is also superfluous in that in direct interaction we use the second person anyways, and when referring you or anybody else in a comment directed at someone else I will use singular they in writing, but this feature adds an unnecessary overhead to writing comments with a potential and easy pitfall that can cause lots of offence (I am a C1 level English speaker and use the language since before elementary school but I still confuse my 3rd.p.sing. pronouns).
A better idea would be to include such info in user bios (which I support, I believe I was the first to suggest them and there is a patch being made for them) and encourage the use of singular they which appears even in widespread international publications by now.
P.s.: I have a distaste for the "as a ... I think ..." culture because it's the opposite of scientific or philosophical approach, and think that this sort of framing supports such problematic attitude, thus I am a bit opinionated in this regard. Sorry if my comment comes off as a dismissal, but I believe this would be the start of an attitude dangerous and detrimental to the premise of Tildes and to the concept and culture of reason-based discussion in general.
What is so polarizing about telling people what pronouns to use? I understand arguments about clutter or irrelevancy, but I don't understand how saying "please use 'she' to refer to me" should cause any kind of fight.
Polarising in that it associates certain stances and thoughts to a username, and can also cause certain prejudices, in which case a comment is not a stand-alone, coherent manifestation of a view in an of itself, but it's interpretation becomes tied to such external factors.
Also, I think people should be free in choosing what pronouns they use. I personally will not use anything other than the singular they to refer to any tildes user no matter what the consensus wil be in this thread. Dictating someone which words to use is a bit too much. Furthermore, this is impractical and prone to lots of useless confusion and flame given mistakes will happen and it'll quickly become a serious burden when one has to look up the pronoun of someone before referring to them. Eventually some will decide to disregard that and we'll go fighting and splitting over it.
If I were to ask that you use 'she' to refer to me, since I'm a woman, would you insist on using 'they' to refer to me anyway? Using 'they' as the default is a good choice, and mistakes will happen and be forgiven, but it's disrespectful to disregard someone's pronouns simply for your own convenience.
That's really not as big a burden as you're making it out to be. It will be listed next to their username, or on their bio one click away, or you'll just assume 'they'. I'm not sure I see how there will be significant confusion here, either, and flaming is already very explicitly discouraged and punished here.
Mistakes will happen, but we should be encouraging giving people the benefit of the doubt and using Hanlon's Razor in all areas of the site. As long as people correct and take corrections gracefully and don't intentionally misgender others, this shouldn't be cause for strife.
I mean, hell, even without this feature we'd have these problems. An asshole can decide I'm not a woman and gender me male even without this feature just because my username is pretty gendered and I'm open about being trans. We'd handle these situations the same way whether we have this feature or not; the only possible difference is in volume.
It's not disrespectful to use "they" to refer to people. There is no reason gender pronouns need to exist at all. They don't assist any kind of understanding and only create bias and stereotypes.
It's not about using 'they', but about using 'they' when someone has requested you use something else for them. I think I've beat the horse enough in this thread, though, so we'll have to agree to disagree.
In principle I tend to use the singular they for all written correspondence. But in practice I don't think I could be strict enough to disregard someone who declares that which pronoun is used to refer to them is very important for them.
For the rest, I'm not sure. Yesterday I asked which pronouns people used, and out of the 110+ messages maybe at most 15 were direct answers to the question. The rest were mostly debate on the topic, which was a very nice thing to read and participate in for me, but also an illustration of how confusing and intimate this can be. And this thread is approaching a hundred comments too.
I don't know if I made it clear in the other comments, but I am not opposed to people requesting certain pronouns to be used, I would accomodate it I remembered (I wouldn't look it up though, defaulting to they). But I oppose the pronoun flair which is too much in my view. It sways the focus to the frame rather than the comment text. And I worry that this can (possibly will) trigger bad interactions.
I like this idea. It's a simple thing that we can do to be kind to one another. If that's not Tildes then what is?
Hiding your information is actually beneficial for us all. I know nothing about you at all. All I can see is the text you have typed in to the comments field. This means I have no bias intentional or otherwise related to your comment. Your comment is able to speak on its own and is separated from the author.
We can still consider the person behind the comment and treat them with respect but I don't need to know who you are to be able to converse respectfully. We are all the same and deserve the same amount of respect.
I think it just means the reader will use context clues to try and figure out. I've had people presume I'm a woman on Reddit because my username is a diet beverage. It's not natural to use they/them for every single person, in every single interaction you have with them. Some folks prefer pronouns like xie/xim that nobody will ever use unless directed.
It's not even uncommon for there to be 'pronoun tags' on forward thinking spaces in the physical world. There's a coffee shop near me where the barristas wear name tags with their name and pronouns.
I just seriously don't understand - there's a simple, unobtrustive, and optional way that we can take a small step towards respecting each other and it's getting this much push back?
I went to a geekery shop the other week, and noticed that the staff had stickers identifying their pronouns.
Is it really? I suppose I haven't been keeping a finger to the pulse here, but I'm a little disappointed if that's true. I expected better of us. :/
We're not that different to the rest of the internet: most people here are men, so it's therefore an easy assumption to make that any individual person one is dealing with is probably male.
I'm curious about when people would even use a personal pronoun for a tildes user. In general people use the gender-neutral "they/them" on the internet.
A lot of people unfortunately default to "he/him" and then get defensive when corrected.
Some people think it's polite. I've had people ask me my pronoun for this reason.
Alright, I'm going to lock this thread now. It's gone way off into the weeds and is mostly just circular arguments that have little to do with the actual suggestion any more.
To me, this sounds like a solution in search of a problem and would probably cause more drama that it would prevent. I think having a small bio/description section on a user page could handle this just fine without cluttering up the discussion threads with extra info.
Throwing my opinion into the pile and hopefully a different perspective.
I tend be active most on places like ~misc, ~talk, and ~lgbt. As I see it, these areas are just a little bit more personal than others like ~comp and ~tech. If I am talking about a personal subject with somebody (especially when the subject is pronouns), I tend to refer to them in a slightly more personal manner. Their pronouns don't really make a difference if we're talking about new planets, but may mean a little more when we're in a thread discussing gender, relationships, or sexuality.
That being said, I actually support bios. It makes it so that if somebody does want to attack me with the wrong pronouns, they have to put work into it. It also reduces visual clutter. I'm not against tags though (I actually personally tag people's pronouns if they mention them).
Why not just a generic flair system? A short field where the user can put whatever they want, and change it.
I really dislike a flair system idea as a site-wide thing. The front-page would suffer from more visual clutter; a group specific flair seems more reasonable to me. I suggested an even better solution in this post.
I am only against this because supplying such information upfront is probably more likely to provide an angle of attack for dickheads than to be beneficial to users.
While I don't like the idea suggested by @Algernon_Asimov here, and provide what I think is a better solution here, I don't agree with this comment because if they are dickheads, they would get punished regardless.
What about a global 'flair' that's on a tooltip when they hover your username? No additional clutter -- it could be as simple as
tomf | (he) works with spreadsheets |Had the same thought.
yeah, I think that would work the best. The functionality is native to all browsers, too.
I'm not sure how well it would work on mobile, though, and I'm pretty sure the goal is to have mobile and desktop be the same or nearly so.
very good point. A
[ + ]next to nicks to slide out the 'flair' would be the next best option for consistency.would this be a global flair? If/when boards get their own flairs how would this look?
My suggestion is that this would be a global flair. At this stage, I have no idea if groups would have group-specific flair. If we ever do have group-specific user flairs, I assume this would be separate to a global user flair.
Isn't the point of having usernames to have a little bit of unknown and (most importantly) anonymity around us? Why would I want people to know my gender? People shouldn't care about gender on this website, but instead focus on the discussion. In the end when we are on Tildes we are just words on a screen, just that. Not a male, not a female, not anything else really.
I ask this at the risk of seeming like a troll but I mean this in a genuine way. Why is that list so large? I understand not being comfortable with he/she but what is the difference between fae and zee?
It's likely this is why.
When I studied English as a second language there weren't this many pronouns. I struggle to understand why they were created and to me it looks like an overcomplication that will never be as popular as it wants to be.
Doesn't that apply the other way around too?
(I'm not trying being sarcastic nor rude, even if it may sounds like it. Sorry about that. I'm just trying to understand your way of thinking.)
please think about your comment again and think about whether integrating ~ with an external site is necessary and whether or not it follows along with the design philosophy of ~.