The creation of the room was inspired in the comments of this post.

And is here in case anyone want to further discuss it outside the comments.

But yeah, the word 'they/their" has become the accepted word to use to refer to someone without having to assume their gender. In the related post, maybe the OP doesn't identify as a gender that "he" or "she" would appropriately describe. Also, grammatical, saying "he or she" over and over is pretty awkward.

So maybe a specific question, was is appropriate for me to have made those edits in the first place?

Since when is this becoming common? Is it only true in US?

@MikePierce thanks for the roll-back. For context, initially the post used "he" then it was pointed out that this is not ideal, so it was changed to "he or she." I mostly got involved as there was confusion about who to ping. (Personally I mostly use 'they' but I am not a native speaker or otherwise an expert on the subject.)

@JohnMa I'm in the US, and I can't speak for what's going on in other parts of the world. But I work on a University campus. We are strongly encouraged to be mindful of using proper pronouns.

@MikePierce English is not my native language, and I was never taught using they as a singular when I was in HK (english education is poor in asia in general, so I honestly do not know).

@JohnMa according to the Wikipedia page linked by Did it is more popular in BrE than in AmE (I have no idea if this true, but it's written there)

"Speakers of AmE resist this development more than speakers of BrE, in which the indeterminate they is already more or less standard." quoting a 2003 AmE Grammar book by Garner.

Here's a link to the Wiki page on Singular They that Did posted, for anyone interested.

Yeah, from personal accounts talking to folks, the main qualm folks have is that "they/them feels like it's a plural." I get that. Sometimes I want there to be a entirely different gender-neutral pronoun to replace he/she. I think a few European countries have tried to add such a word, but in the US (around me at least), "they/them" is what has caught on.

@MikePierce Saying "he or she" over and over is absolutely no problem gramattically. It may or may not be a problem stylistically. In case it's not obvious, in my opinion the answer to your question is no, you had no business making such a substantial change to someone else's post, especially since the grammar wasn't wrong. You rolled it back, fine. But check out what it says somewhere about what sort of third--party edits are considered appropriate.

@MikePierce Btw in your edit "description" you said you replaced he/she with "they". That is not true. I did not write "he/sne", not once.

@DavidC.Ullrich Who stigmatizes its use?

@DavidC.Ullrich So yeah, grammatically it's fine. But it is pretty awkward to read "he or she," over and over. That's the first thing I noticed about your post. :P But yeah, after seeing "he or she" over and over I figured you were trying to be PC, inclusive, etc and not assume the OP gender, and honestly I'm rather surprised you're this upset about the edit.

Also, I hate to leave mid-conversation, but I have to go teach now.

@MikePierce People are commenting on the propriety of the singular "they", but nobody but me has said anything about his question, regarding whether it was appropriate for him to have made that edit. Possibly someone other than me should say something about that, since my opinion was pretty obvious...

@MikePierce My stance on edits is relatively permissive. If somebody does not like an edit it is easy enough to undo. That said, in the specific case it was somewhat likely that the original author made a choice not to use 'they' and thus it might have been better to avoid the edit or to ask beforehand. Then, as said, it is easy enough to undo, so to simply go ahead is maybe another way of asking. cc. @DavidC.Ullrich

I use singular "they" and its usage is so common these days that I'd recommend others do so as well. That said, editing people's posts to add or remove singular "they" seems totally unnecessary to me.

s/he is a reasonable alternative to he or she

In fact I'd be inclined to interpret such edits as deliberate attempts to antagonize, or make a social statement, rather than honest attempts at improving mathematical communication.

they is $\varepsilon$ more inclusive (as there is a small proportion of the population which identifies as neither he nor she)

@user7530 Why do choose to interpret an edit to make the language more inclusive as a "deliberate attempts to antagonize, or make a social statement", rather than an honest attempt to improve communication by being more inclusive?

I am sympathetic to the point of view that others probably shouldn't swoop in to make these kinds of edits, but it seems that your default position should be to assume good intent, and not to automatically assume that someone is trying to make a political statement.

(though, in this case, I will agree with @MikePierce that the version with they reads much more smoothly than the version with he or she; I would imagine that a version with s/he might read about as well as the version with they---it probably isn't work jumping in to make the edit, but I find the they version much easier to read)

the contractions she's or he's are particularly rough---in those cases, it would probably be better to write she or he is

@XanderHenderson I would say the same thing if someone were to edit people's posts to change British to American spelling. They're not actually improving clarity or readability, or correcting an error: they have strong personal believes about writing style (which is fine), and imposing those beliefs on others in an aggressive way by editing posts without permission (which is not)

if you believe that using maximally-inclusive language on Math.SE is very important, the proper approach is to start a Meta topic about it, establish consensus that it's ok to edit all posts to use singular "they," and only then start editing people's posts

again, I don't have any problem with singular "they" and use it extensively myself. But editing a post for the sole purpose of switching pronouns around strikes me as so obviously likely to inflame tempers that it feels inherently troll-y

@quid @quid "easy enough to undo". Is it easy for me to undo his edit? I thought it was supposed to be bbut I couldn't find the rollback button. Regarding "permissive", surely a reasonable rule of thumb is that if you're not "certain" the poster would approve then you shouldn't make the change. For this to satisfy that criterion we have to assume he thought I was somehow unaware of the existence of the singular "they"...

@DavidC.Ullrich on the technical question. Yes, it's two or three clicks, but unfortunatey not very intuitive to find. Go to the revisions history (the link in the middle, then scroll to the version you want and click rollback in the gray banner there. Note the topmost banner does not contain this button since it is the current version, but all others do.)

On the etiquette question, I am more permissive than 'if you're not "certain" the poster would approve then you shouldn't make the change' but I am more on the blunt end regarding this. The reason for this is the asynchronous nature of the medium. If I have a couple minutes now to do it, I might do it now. If I use those minutes to ask in a comment only to get a response half a day later when I have no time it's maybe already almost moot. That's a slight exaggeration though.

Maybe my rule of thumb is if I cannot see a good reason why somebody would disagree I do it.

In the specific case, as I said, I'd consider it as likely that you (the author) had made (implicitly) a choice against the version I propose. Thus this is a clear counter indication.

@user7530 I am not suggesting that the edits were appropriate. What I am suggesting is that you appear to have a baseline assumption that the edits were made in order to further some political agenda. I don't think that this is a good starting assumption.

The repeated use of he or she, combined with the incredibly awkward (and, frankly, ungrammatical) he' or she's that pop up, make the original text difficult to parse.

I do think that the change to the singular they made the question more readable. Note enough more readable to unilaterally make the edit, but more readable.

Hence I think it is reasonable to assume that @MikePierce was well intentioned but ham-handed.

Maybe what I would actually suggest, is to write a comment to propose to the author the change and to offer to do it for them if they want. That said, since undoing edits is easy I think it is not that big a deal. Also the editor immediately agreed to roll back.

ninja'd

I was just writing that out. :\

Overall, I think that this discussion is something of a tempest in a teapot.

It was a minor but unwanted edit which did something to improve readability, and which can be easily undone. It was undone. Yay!

@quid With respect to etiquette, something that I do sometimes is make an edit, then explain the edit in a comment with an additional comment to the effect of "I tried to help, if you don't like my edits please roll them back."

@user7530 in theory, arguably that'd be ideal; in practice, it's clear it'd never work like that, and clinging to this idealize approach regarding other matters is a cause for various issues on the site.

@XanderHenderson yes that's also a good approach. In theory one could use the edit summary for this, but in practice few check it, and few know that they can ping editors. A comment solves both. (The visibility of the information, and offereing the option to communicate.)

@quid Nobody reads the edit summaries, anyway. :)

Oh, hey, if I'd read to the end of your comment, I would have noticed that you said that, too.

Let me rephrase: Nobody reads anything anyway.

Indeed. :-)

@XanderHenderson I agree that "he's or she's" is problematic - would said "he or she is" if II'd thought of it, would have been happy with an edit making that change.

Just to be clear, @DavidC.Ullrich, I am more on your side than @MikePierce's; I was just trying to get @user7530 to view Mike's actions a bit more charitably. He's a nice guy, he means well, and I think that he was trying to help, but just acted a little hastily this time.

(Then came and bothered me in my office to ask if I had an opinion, because he knows that I have an opinion about everything. :\ )