I would love a nice couple paragraphs that said "here's what happened", otherwise taking any side in this is just taking shots in the dark, I'm basically reading "certain events happened with a certain individual and that's not okay"
That is helpful, but still far from a couple paragraphs. Nobody owes me anything on this, but I am not taking the energy to parse through this and then SO's responses and then reread TFA to get an actual factual sequence of events here, which ultimately ended in someone losing their moderation status on a Q&A website. This probably comes off as really callous but honestly, Watergate or the Bay of Pigs or (more close to home) Stallman's resignation can be explained in a couple of sentences.
On a mod and employee chat group, they were discussing a new future code of conduct. One element said "You must use people's preferred pronouns if given". A mod (volunteer) (Monica) said "Is it OK if I never use any 3rd person singular pronouns?" She got no answer for a while and was then fired as a mod on Friday at 6pm less than 1 hour before before Shabbat and Rosh Hashana (she is Jewish and a mod of the Jewish Stack Exchange). Stack exchange published a note saying she broke the code of conduct. 73 other mods then either resigned or went inactive.
Could you please help me understand how this relates to Cellio's previous concerns in October 2018 about a problem with Twitter and customer support and moderation?
I have to admit, having read Cellio's summary of the situation, I'm puzzled why "avoid using pronouns to refer to people where possible" would be a controversial view. If you use the wrong one, it may cause harm. If you use none at all, your interaction is more futureproof. For example, if I write about a person who feels comfortable being called "him" but the person later chooses to prefer being called "her", but if if I had avoided using "him" entirely in the first place, then I would never worry about having to retroactively edit or delete my writing to avoid harm.
> Does that concern have anything to do with the pronoun code of conduct problem at issue here, or is it totally unrelated other than Cellio's involvement?
No, it's an entirely seperate issue. However, it's a symptom of the same general problem of the company prioritizing its political/profit-seeking/marketing agendas while ignoring its community (there were dozens of relevant feature requests that had been ignored for years, yet the company took drastic action within 40 minutes of a Twitter post).
> I'm puzzled why "avoid using pronouns to refer to people where possible" would be a controversial view.
None of the details are public; all we really have so far is a couple vague summaries, plus a few more hints and implications. However, it seems the company's reasoning seems to be something along the lines of "if you avoid using third-person pronouns, then you're refusing to acknowledge people's identities."
The October 2018 incident was the previous round of Twitter warriors harrassing SE into kowtowing to their agenda at the expense of the SE user community.
Note that nearly every time communities begin discussing the authoritative forcing of community members to use "correct pronouns" in communications, it invariably ends in firings, resignations, and the community bitterly divided.
It's ironic that certain social activists, who outwardly claim to be motivated by a desire for mutual respect and an acceptance by the community for diverse lifestyles, are so quick to destroy the reputations of those who show even the smallest hint of resistance to their demands. The type of respect they truly seek is that which comes from the fear of the consequences of anything less than total agreement.
Wow, the extreme vagueness there, the perfect conviction in their rightness. I have no idea what the actual situation was, but that kind of writing makes me deeply suspicious I'm not getting both sides.
That is one side of the story. I'm quite certain there's another side to it, as with anything. (In fact, I'm quite certain there's many more sides to it, with all the people who have jumped on.)
Seems like there was a disagreement regarding the use of gender pronouns that resulted in 73 moderators getting "fired" or leaving.
The author of that summary mentioned one thing I found especially egregious, which is a policy that stated avoiding using pronouns was out of alignment. If I understand correctly, when she asked how they would know if she was avoiding pronouns or just naturally not writing them, she was fired. I may have this wrong as I just skimmed the summary. Also it seems she had multiple disagreements on this front before.
Is the implication that the LGBTQ+ community found it _more_ offensive to use e.g. "they" than "he" or "she"?
I'm so confused. Wouldn't "they" (the gender neutral version) be _more_ inclusive? Is there some other alternative that's even better that I haven't considered? I hope I'm not offending anyone by asking this. Just trying to make sure I understand.
Yes, people will often find it offensive if you use "they" after asked to use "he" or "she".
If someone says "I am a man, please use he/him for my pronouns" and you use 'they' - that would generally be considered at least odd, if not inappropriate.
I don't think that means it's inappropriate to use "they" as the default if no other information exists though.
uh but using "they" as a neutral way to talk about anyone is just fine. people have been doing that for literally centuries, its called "singular they"
this is all about people wanting to be outraged for no reason
"Singular they" is indeed well used, but it's not normally used when the gender of the person in question is explicitly known.
If you use "they" for someone who has specifically said to you "please use the pronouns 'she/her' when referring to me", you are being rude, not neutral.
Many will mix between the "he/she" and "they" in the same conversation. Quite often referring to their closest friends and family rather than pointed attempt to misuse a pronoun.
> Many will mix between the "he/she" and "they" in the same conversation.
That does not match my observed reality at all. All natural languages I know are gendered the same way English is.
Singular "they" is already exceedingly uncommon by itself; and across all the languages, and in my whole life-time, never once I or a conversation partner used "they" instead of the specialised pronoun, or mixed in a conversation, when the gender of the person in question is explicitly known as GP wrote. The same is true for all written material I read in my whole life.
All I can say is it matches mine. So we're at impasse I guess.
English speech varies. Even across the UK there are dozens of regional accents and dialects. Now add the many regional variations across the USA and other world Englishes. All with their own traits and habits, some more widespread than others. A deep rabbit hole with many forks then.
Common enough that I would not think it the slightest bit unnatural on hearing, or give it a second thought. I wouldn't give it a second thought reading it in a natural conversation in a book - not just in intentionally neutral business or net writing, so that's not going to be memorable. It's not an idiom I'd single out as localised to any one group or region. It would be memorable and feel odd reading if it were all that way in a novel's quoted conversation, or nearly all names with few pronouns like some telesales scripts seem to encourage.
Not as common as he/she certainly, but I dunno 1:4 or 1:8 or something. I couldn't say what proportion is names not pronouns either. FWIW My people skew international, educated, Scots and perhaps city in a part of the UK that's well north of London.
ok so what? the entire problem is its not known because its different than normal. so we cant use the default gender because someone somewhere might not agree? and we cant use singular they because they dont like it?
so what, we need to read minds? why? for the 0.01% of people who demand everyone else change? how about we forget all this and stick to the defaults. if YOU have a specific pronoun then you can ask but we dont need to rewrite posts and content at all
> "Where's Dave?"
> "They're in the garage, I think"
I am born and raised US, have lived all over west coast and midwest, and have traveled extensively throughout all regions of US. I have never heard people use the singular they in this pattern.
Where are you from? Wondering if perhaps it is a regional dialect difference.
North West of England. My circle skews international, educated, Scots and perhaps city. I've not noticed it as specific to any of the many regional or international dialects. So I can't pick it out as Scots or Mancunian for instance.
It may fall under the generic UK North-South speech and language split.
Monica wanted to write in a way such that she would never use the words "he", "she", or singular "they". Stack Exchange said it's not OK to write in a restricted way like that, the words must be used.
Moderator got fired for wanting to not use pronouns at all, because they though preferred pronouns were confusing to non-native English speakers instead of preferred pronouns.
+1 I feel I should care about this but I don't believe it's worth investing the time to go through walls of text of 'he said' 'she said' biased explanations. I'm probably better off..
Can you do us all a favour? Please stop incorrectly stating that the problem is with pronouns in general. It's been pointed out many, many times. The point of contention here deals with one person intentionally refusing to use the pronoun someone else has requested when addressing them.
Notice the emphasis on the words "intentional" and "them".
(To be clear, this comment in no way meant to justify S.O.'s horrendous handling of the situation)
theres nobody specific in the story. nobody requested a pronoun. if it was that simple then why would any of this happen? its cause this is about pronouns being a problem and people wanting to edit everything to be gender neutral to cater to the perpetually outraged
> the company is changing the CoC to require use of preferred pronouns
In other words, it's a policy whereby an individual may request to be addressed a certain way, and that request must be honoured.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
It sounds like you're the one generating false outrage.
NB: It's not exactly clear how/if she violated anything, in fact, it sounds to me like she did nothing wrong. But that's not the point I'm making: The point is that everything stems from this new policy.
The tl;dr (but still pretty long) is that Stack Overflow instituted a new Code of Conduct that required the use of a person's [preferred] pronouns. This change in the Code of Conduct was well intentioned but some people took issue with how it was implemented without much community input. A mod (Monica Cellio) had some level-headed discussion/questions about writing in a gender neutral style vs. affirmatively using a person's pronouns. She was fired with basically no due process, and it's pretty clear that she wasn't being mean or intentionally violating the Code of Conduct. A bunch of other mods got upset with how she was fired and they quit. SO has now issued two non-apologies and is rushing out a new Code of Conduct with a short timeframe for feedback, which is almost sure to make more people angry- plus they haven't been very concrete about which, if any, mods will be getting their jobs back after this fiasco. I don't envy SO's position- they have to keep mods happy, but if they walk back their original CoC change they would be telling the entire LGBTQ+ community that they are valued less than a few mods. However, this is entirely SO's fault with the way they have handled things- including not firing a mod that used more hateful language which makes their enforcement of the CoC inconsistent- so don't feel too bad for them.
I've been trying to sort out all these recent posts today and I think your summary is a pretty good one.
At the risk of being downvoted, as a cisgender same-sex attracted member of the "LGBTQ+ community", I suspect only a relatively small number of outspoken transgender activists would have a problem with revisiting this policy change with the aim of restoring goodwill in the community. We are so often lumped together by broader society as LGBTQ+ (and variations) that many people outside the world of gender and sexual minorities don't realize how much conflict there is between the LGB people and the T people.
It seems ludicrous to me that anybody should care about the pronouns of anonymous question-askers on the internet. But then again I also don't see much sense in performing tons of free moderation labor for StackExchange.
If you don't know what pronoun to use then the correct one is "they", and if you do know then using the wrong one or deliberately going out of your way to avoid one is just rude.
Obviously, lots of answers will flow perfectly naturally without using pronouns and those should be fine like that.
I understand your intention is positive, and I enjoyed the nuance of your post.
As a member of the 'entire LGBTQ+ community', we're not monolithic, or even close to it. SO is the first mainstream website (at least in the circles I run in) that has even attempted this kind of thing.
I'm willing to cut them a little slack as they navigate a topic which has been incredibly fraught.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that rolling back to the old CoC would make every LGBTQ+ person feel unvalued. Everyone, regardless of community membership or not (you can probably tell that I'm struggling for appropriate language here), has differing levels of sensitivity to any issue. Some people are glad when others make an effort to do the right thing, others won't be pleased unless their individual needs are met 100%, and some are angry that society is moving in one direction and they can't be openly bigoted anymore.
However, if you're looking at it from a policy perspective, rolling back the CoC or not can be viewed as a signal, which every person is free to interpret as they wish. This is probably going to be dependent on whether you like the changes or not (some LGBTQ+ people have spoken up and said that the changes to the CoC are actually harmful). My interpretation: rolling back the CoC signals that SO wants to go back to a point when the mods were happier, work things out with the mods from there (there are several other complaints the mods have), and that the LGBTQ+ issues take a backseat. Not rolling things back signals that SO wants the LGBTQ+ community to feel valued and included, but tells the mods that their complaints won't be dealt with the way that they want. I don't think it's possible for SO to send the message that everyone is valued equally- even if they say it their actions won't reflect it.
Mods are volunteers, but most mods on SO take their responsibilities very seriously. The terminology that has been used during the last few days has been "firing" rather than "removal of moderation privileges," so I stuck with that.
Monica mentioned in her post that she was the second choice candidate for a community manager position, which is an actual job at SO, but I'm not clear on whether she was actually offered a job and if she accepted. Either way, this indicates she was a fairly active mod if she was being considered for a job.
I refuse to use pronouns for people outside the binary and I'll only use the pronouns they have claimed.
I think this is a state and corporate power issue. I have never in my life been compelled to say certain words or risk losing my professional reputation, access to SO and more, but I can't, in good conscience, participate in this Orwellian social experiment I have never been asked my opinion of and for which, even the slightest deviation from the company line earns one virtual persona non grata status.
apparently anything on the site like a code example that talks about people like Bob and Alice cant use He and She - because it might offend the 0.01% of people who think that everyone needs to state their pronouns. apparently even saying They isnt enough.
its what happens when you give in to the tiny minority that will always complain about something
Do you have a source for your claim that code examples with Alice and Bob with she/he pronouns are not accepted on Stack Exchange? I haven't seen any claim like that before.
>June 2018: There was a TL discussion about gender-neutral pronouns and then "preferred pronouns". (I know they're not "preferred", but this was the phrasing used by the people bringing it up.) Some moderators who are not native English speakers expressed confusion. I said I avoid singular they for that reason, 95% of the time you can write around the problem, and (on SE) I'm offended when someone edits my posts badly to solve a gender-neutrality problem. (Editing well is fine, which usually means pluralizing or using a name or something like that instead of either generic "he" or singular "they".) Some people said not using preferred pronouns invalidates the person; I said for me it's not about the person at all but the quality of my own writing (an important part of my identity). Tension rose, other people said some things I saw as bullying, and I stepped out. For a long time after, I didn't enter the room unless strictly necessary. Note: no employee said anything to me about my role in this conversation, and while some other mods disagreed with my position, none said anything like "this is a Code of Conduct (CoC) violation". Employees witnessed this discussion.
I don't see anything in there that would apply to fictional characters (Alice and Bob). It all seems to be only about real people. Also I don't see anything in there that indicates Stack Exchange says you can't refer to Alice as "she", unless Alice specifically wants to be called by some other pronoun.
theyre editing posts for perceived or pretend offense
if it was a specific person then theres nothing to edit because you would just use the pronouns and there wouldnt be any issue. they dont talk about anyone who specifically wanted different pronouns in that story
> theyre editing posts for perceived or pretend offense
Who are "they"? Monica in that part is upset about people coming along and adding weird grammar into her posts. Those people could be other mods, or could be even regular Stack Exchange users. At no point does she say Stack Exchange staff are editing her posts, or that the editors were following a Stack Exchange rule.
> then you would just use the pronouns and there wouldnt be any issue
Monica has said she never uses 3rd person singular pronouns. So no, she would not "just use the pronouns". And people have taken issue with the fact that she never uses 3rd person singular pronouns, that's the reason she was fired.
> they dont talk about anyone who specifically wanted different pronouns in that story
Just because Monica doesn't mention a specific person by name in the blog post doesn't mean there wasn't a specific person involved with the situation. I think it's very likely the story Monica is talking about involved a specific person.
exactly "they" are people who create problems where they dont exist.
if YOU specifically dont have a specific preferred pronoun then theres no problem to be concerned over. editing posts to be gender neutral is the most privileged form of outrage ever
"apparently anything on the site like a code example that talks about people like Bob and Alice cant use He and She" is wrong.
SE wanted people's correct pronouns explicitly used if they were given. Has nothing to do with rhetorical Alice or Bob, and SE didn't object to calling women 'she'.
Furthermore, the actual root of the controversy here is that Cellio was removed of her admin title too swiftly, and generally SE hasn't managed their admins very fairly or well.
Overall it looks like you're trying to spin whole scenario as "the LGBTQ+ snowflakes are whining again" and that's not the actual story here.
