@DavidK Eh, yes, but the question was "can I be charged with sexual assault?", not "can I be fired?". Perhaps the OP is okay with being fired, as long as he is not charged. There are millions of fireable but non-chargeable offenses, this seems to be one of them.
@DoritoStyle You can follow your preferences to your heart's content in your own posts. Don't go changing other people's answers to suit your worldview. Also, some authors prefer to use feminine pronouns (she, her, etc.) in "gender neutral" sentences to "make up" for the historical bias in favour of masculine pronouns, so should they be allowed to edit the posts again?
@DoritoStyle By the way, what do you mean hypothetical crazy example? Are we now going to allow discrimination based on how many people it affects? That sounds like a second-order discrimination. ;)
@RichardU Yes, sounds like a good plan. I like it. I should start doing the same.
@MaskedMan like I said, one does not really "own" their posts. I don't really think that kind of possessive thinking helps the site. After all OP's don't even get final say as to whether or not their questions are useful , much less worded well.
re: "author preference for reverse bias", I don't think that's any more compelling that wanting to keep masculine bias. This is all about what has merit in the end, right?
re: "hypothetical crazy example" a preference for a certain sentence count is not really a thing, whereas preference for gender neutral pronouns (where applicable) is at least somewhat common.
re:"Are we now going to allow discrimination based on how many people it affects?" Considering that gender discrimination affects literally half of people on Earth and your made-up example affects almost zero; I fail to see how it's relevant.
Yes, the Stack Exchange network encourages community-based edits.
In the spirit of Wikipedia or other community-edited sites, we trust users – even anonymous visitors – to edit content here. There are some rules though that everyone should follow.
Why should I edit a post?
The most important r...
"Change subtleties that normally wouldn't matter (e.g. change spelling from British to American English, introduce your own writing style)." is something you should never do.
I feel like that post (I've read it before) supports my point. One shouldn't hold such strong opinions about posts being "theirs" because the community ultimately decides what's useful (Via discussions like this one, voting, and collaborative editing).
And i think you are misinterpreting it. After all, you're interpretation is not automatically more valid than my own.
Now, whether gender normative wording "matters" is a matter of opinion, of course.
I, and others, think gender neutrality makes answers more appealing to a wider audience, and as best I can tell the argument against it is "stop telling us how to write"
so, one side thinks there's a slight benefit and the other side thinks there's no benefit. I put my vote on the side of "Why not make it slightly more appealing"
@DoritoStyle You are just proving my point with that sentence. If an issue effects only a handful of people, it is okay to leave it alone, but if it affects half of the world, then yes, we need to consider it. So where do you draw the line? If the issue affects 100 people, is it significant enough to warrant an edit?
like i said, gender discrimination literally affects half the world. What's the problem with being more inclusive? I really don't see it as any more of a burden than checking spelling errors.
Are we arguing some hypothetical about when is the perfect time to be inclusive, or can't we just tackle the obvious issue in question?
Honestly though, I'm just rehashing what's been said 100 times but never solved
@DoritoStyle I don't argue against the perceived "benefit" of gender-neutral phrasing. My concern is about treating it as some sort of a special case. For instance, some of the idioms and other "clever" writing styles and choice of fancy words makes the answer less appealing to non-native English readers. So why not edit out those to make the posts useful to more people?
I'm pretty sure that does happen and it is decided on a case-by-case basis.
Seems like a fine system to be honest
That's the thing though, gender-neutrality is not really a "special case". It's a widely pervasive issue that is only being given attention recently in history.
@DoritoStyle Why should that be done on a case by case basis, and not as a rule? Also, what's wrong with being more inclusive if some issue only affects only 100 people?
Well, because you just made it up with no research whatsoever
There's no compulsion to accept some logic just because someone made it up, but like you said, we're not arguing against the pervasion of gender bias in writing
Now, the rules are fairly clear, don't edit something if it would change the meaning, right? So if adding gender neutrality does not affect the meaning (as can be determined on a case-by-case basis) and it adds value in wider audience appeal; what's the problem?
@DoritoStyle How do you know I made it up? I know at least a few people who have difficulties understanding long sentences, and that is the result of a certain medical condition. I just exaggerated it for self-referential humour.
So yeah, stop believing that you know everything. Because you don't. Nobody does.
Yeah, I get that and I see your point, but I don't think it is a reasonable comparison and it doesn't relate to the issue at hand, when 50% of people are definitely affected by something. There's no need to nit pick about some magical threshold for inclusion.
Look, I definitely don't think I know everything and I never claim to be "right" in any discussion, I only debate the points as I see them and provide what context I can.
Frankly, to call me a know-it-all is a needless insult to what could otherwise be a civil discussion, so lets not.
The website design and formatting of Stack Overflow is very gender neutral, but most users (arguably) come to the site for user content.
So a question (or two) to ALL fellow users: When posting a question/answer/comment do you try to keep your post gender neutral (by thinking about correct pron...
@DoritoStyle IMO, the problem is not the idea of determining it on a case-by-case basis (which comments would do just fine). But in doing so by preuming that such an edit is fine, and waiting to see if the original poster disagrees.
Also, who is going to be doing the determining?
Are we going to have to have a meta discussion on every proposed change to a post?
Is it not the case that the only person who knows what the intended meaning of a post was was the person who wrote it?
I still fail to see why we can't leave a comment on a post if we think the OP may have overlooked their choice of pronouns.
How "widespread" does a certain opinion/interpretation have to be to justify ignoring the preferences of a minority?
Are we going to agree on which gender pronouns are/aren't gender neutral?
What do we do if some fraction of people think that "they" isn't good enough, and insist that the "right" ones are "Ne/Ze/Ey/Ze/Xe"
What are you going to do about the fraction of people who would consider this "manipulation" or "censorship" or who would feel offended that you're getting offended on their behalf
Deciding rules/guidelines for editing other peoples posts is not an easy decision. Especially on matters of preference.
And this is all before we get into the fact that SE is a global community, spanning a huge variety of countries, cultures and human experience.
So I'll go back to my original proposition. If you think a poster may have overlooked their use of gender-specific pronouns where you think there's no need to, just leave a comment.
Or, you know, try and figure out a policy/guideline that will deal with all of the above.
@kaz comments aren't fine because they're ephemeral and prone to deletion. They are for clarification in order to provide answers, right?
Also, the community will do the determining. Either the edits help or OP clarifies that gender is somehow relevant to that question.
I don't see why we would need a meta post for every edit suggestion, they're either accepted or clarification is needed.
Intended meaning really isn't as important as constructing a generally useful question (after all. Specific personal advice is off topic)
Once again, brining up the idea of a threshold for including a minority is not relevant to this issue. 50% is not a minority.
Non-gendered pronouns already exist and are pretty standard (they, them, etc)
If people want to argue about English language standards then they can do it on the English stack exchange.
Anyone who considers this censorship would need to prove bad intent (the be nice policy is to assume good intent)
I never claimed this was an easy matter. I only balk at people who wish to refuse it outright
Comments are not acceptable and the guidelines support that. Suggesting an edit is appropriate.
My interpretation is that the guidelines support this. If an edit can improve an answer without changing the meaning, then do it. If a question isn't clearly about gender specific issues, then OP should have and needs to clarify.
I'm really not seeing a good reason NOT to do this. Worst case: The edits can be reversed and the question clarified.
@DoritoStyle Except that edits are only "suggestions" for users less than 2k rep. Above that, all edits are immediate and binding.
@DoritoStyle What's wrong with them being ephemeral? As long as they're around long enough for the poster to get pinged and respond, they've served their purpose?
Great. I'm in the process of starting my own business and I've been having some ideas for how the place should be once I start hiring people, and it'd be great to get some feedback before I actually get there.
I'll definitely look around. I frequently see questions from this place on the hot questions listing.
For answers, intent and meaning are the most important aspects. That is explicitly laid out in the rules. If you don't like an answer then downvote it. That's what voting is for. For questions, we do edit questions, sometimes drastically, to make them more generic/generally useful. However, as you rightly say, any gender is going to represent 50% of the world's people so I wouldn't agree with taking a question say, specifically, about a man/woman and making it deliberately non-gender.
There are culturlal and societal differences when it comes to gender that do need to be talked about.
@DoritoStyle You don't consider it relevant. I do. And you can say that the change you're proposing will help that 50%, but how do you know? And how many of them would want you to? That's 3.5 Billion people you're presuming to speak and act on behalf of.
@DoritoStyle "Pretty standard" no, they're not. Some people already consider "He" to be gender-neutral (according to English grammar). Some people consider "They" to not be singular. Some people consider "They" to be just as bad as He/She (hence new gender pronouns). Would you like to tell me which of these is "obviously" the standard choice?
@DoritoStyle you think the guidelines support it. I think the exact opposite.
@DoritoStyle You talk about the OP needing to clarify, yet you consider comments an unacceptable way to do this? What would you suggest instead?
3.5 billion people don't read English. There are languages with gender neutral pronouns built in. Does gender discrimination exist among speakers of those languages? You have one guess.
I am quite amused by this idea that using "gender neutral" pronouns in one language (albeit the most widespread one) will "magically" help half of the planet. The lack of gender neutral pronouns is a limitation of the language, gender discrimination is a problem with people's attitude. If one fine day, the world switches to a language with distinct gender neutral pronouns, will gender discimination disappear?
And while we are at talking about it, the current so-called gender equality movement seems to be mainly focussed on giving equal rights to women. What about other genders (that is, besides male/female)? Are they not important because they don't constitute "half of the planet"? Can you suggest suitable pronouns equivalent to he/she, his/her for a third gender person? Or do we just encompass all of them under the "singular they"?
@DoritoStyle Why are comments not acceptable? Where do you get that from? Comments are temporary does not mean never post comments. It has been stated several times on meta that comments may be deleted after they have served their purpose. For instance, after OP's post has been edited as suggested in the comment. Temporary does not mean they can be deleted whenever a mod feels like it.
Yes, the Stack Exchange network encourages community-based edits.
In the spirit of Wikipedia or other community-edited sites, we trust users – even anonymous visitors – to edit content here. There are some rules though that everyone should follow.
Why should I edit a post?
The most important r...
The Water Cooler
The Water Cooler