Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications
-
@Zerosquare said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
The official "apology"'s score is now below -1k points. That must be some kind of record.
Pretty soon, they'll need to hire EA's PR team to help them write posts with better community response.
-
@izzion said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
The official "apology"'s score is now below -1k points. That must be some kind of record.
Pretty soon, they'll need to hire EA's PR team to help them write posts with better community response.
I feel like SE is just horribly, horribly bad at management and business decisions. Even slightly less shitty businesses know the classic "complaining about hypothetical 'troll's ruining your business on Twitter" tactic to at least paint themselves as victims. SE, well... they never even try to do that. In the last decade they've only posted the horrendous business decisions they've made. Basically there's nothing redeeming about them.
-
@Jaloopa said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
I saw some speculation that it's to do with needing to finally be profitable, so they're focusing on things that will have mass appeal.
That reminds me they've tried to monetize SO before, which leads to the creation of SO for Teams. The reception was almost universally bad. I think it didn't really gain any traction since the promotion for it has kinda gone down since the initial release. And apparently they've been doing more dodgy shit around revenue making since then.
The things that lead to the current SE situation has almost nothing to do with this though, since for them, SO is their sole flagship product (SE is just a bunch of side Q&A sites maintained by
communityunpaid labor and they only have to pay the hosting cost). And they've already started to delve into the political correctness nonsense even before the SO for teams release. You know, given the track record, it's in fact more likely that they're really just that stupid.
-
@_P_ said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
delve into the political correctness nonsense even before the SO for teams release.
Hey, that had a totally useful outcome. There's now a warning not to be a dick to new people, which I'm sure has definitely led to a reduction in dicks
-
@Jaloopa said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@_P_ said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
delve into the political correctness nonsense even before the SO for teams release.
Hey, that had a totally useful outcome. There's now a warning not to be a dick to new people, which I'm sure has definitely led to a reduction in dicks
Yeah, now everyone is being cunts instead.
-
Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially anyone who's arrived from a Google result and has seen a perfectly reasonable question closed for one of many bullshit reasons, newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups.
-
@loopback0 said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially anyone who's arrived from a Google result and has seen a perfectly reasonable question closed for one of many bullshit reasons, newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups.
Can confirm. Many times I've come to Stack Overflow about to ask a question, but I do my part (and ) by checking to see if it has already been asked. I find someone else who asked my question in the past, and I see that their question got closed with prejudice, and I leave.
-
It just keeps getting better.
-
@Mason_Wheeler
Yup.This seems more "FAQ" than FAQ.
“Prefer gender-neutral language when uncertain.”
Paging Monica Cellio...
What should I do if I see someone using the wrong pronouns?
STFU. If the person who has a preference is bothered, they can say. Otherwise it's just unnecessary noise.
How will this be moderated? Will we ban people based on one mistake?
Future mistake or past mistake?
Do I have to use pronouns I’m unfamiliar or uncomfortable with (e.g., neopronouns like xe, zir, ne... )?
TIL these are called neopronouns.
What if I believe it is grammatically incorrect to use some pronouns (e.g. they/them to refer to a single person)?
Grammar concerns do not override a person’s right to self identify.What if I identify as grammatically correct?
-
And the score is already at -182.
-
@Zerosquare Yeah, and they don't seem to realize what that means, so I finally spoke up and pointed it out for them.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
so I finally spoke up and pointed it out for them.
NOT A REAL QUESTION.
edit:
More seriously I do agree with your comment.
-
@loopback0 said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
What if I identify as grammatically correct?
I'm sure you has never used a grammatically plural word in a singular context. There's no way you has ever had that come up.
-
@coderpatsy said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@loopback0 said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
What if I identify as grammatically correct?
I'm sure you has never used a grammatically plural word in a singular context. There's no way you has ever had that come up.
Literally never. My grammars am good.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
It just keeps getting better.
Most of these (explicitly excluding Q9-Q10 (Q11 is rendered ineffective by Q12)) seem reasonable when taken as is, but under these rules Monica didn't do anything wrong. Maybe that's not a problem as such but an improvement, but it does mean they should go apologize to her and admit they were in the wrong.
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare Yeah, and they don't seem to realize what that means, so I finally spoke up and pointed it out for them.
I'm not a fan your post there, as you make it all about compelled speech and your argument is basically "my freedom of speech allows me to call you whatever I like, no matter how that makes you feel". This is a private platform, so them having a code of conduct isn't a problem. The problem is that, from what we can tell, Monica wasn't being disrespectful or acted in bad faith in any way, but SE wrongly accused her of it.
The second to last paragraph is the most spot on: none of this should really matter other than that people are civil and objective in their answers.
-
@topspin said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
I'm not a fan your post there, as you make it all about compelled speech and your argument is basically "my freedom of speech allows me to call you whatever I like, no matter how that makes you feel".
Well yeah, that's kind of the entire point of freedom of speech. If it was only there to protect popular, uncontroversial speech, it wouldn't be needed in the first place. The ability to freely share thoughts and ideas--especially on a site dedicated to the high-quality discussion of objective concepts--is far more important than tiptoeing around everyone's feelings.
This is a private platform, so them having a code of conduct isn't a problem. The problem is that, from what we can tell, Monica wasn't being disrespectful or acted in bad faith in any way, but SE wrongly accused her of it.
That was the beginning of the problem. The larger problem is that they have since continued to double, triple, and quadruple down on it at every turn, and made it excessively clear that they value pushing a specific political ideology more highly than they value the actual goals of the site or the community which values those goals.
-
@topspin said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
This is a private platform, so them having a code of conduct isn't a problem.
This is a private platform whose value is entirely dependent upon the work of unpaid volunteers. SO is free to ignore their opinion, sure. But biting the hand that feeds you is rarely a successful strategy.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@topspin said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
I'm not a fan your post there, as you make it all about compelled speech and your argument is basically "my freedom of speech allows me to call you whatever I like, no matter how that makes you feel".
Well yeah, that's kind of the entire point of freedom of speech. If it was only there to protect popular, uncontroversial speech, it wouldn't be needed in the first place. The ability to freely share thoughts and ideas--especially on a site dedicated to the high-quality discussion of objective concepts--is far more important than tiptoeing around everyone's feelings.
No. SE isn't everybody's private soap box. Freedom of speech rightfully protects far more speech than you want or need protected on such a platform. Short of libel and such, you are free to make the most outrageous statements. "Hitler did nothing wrong" is protected by freedom of speech, and yet it has no place on a Q&A site. Go take that shit somewhere else.
It's not that they've proposed a code of conduct, but that it was an unreasonable one.
-
@Zerosquare No disagreement there.
-
@topspin said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
"Hitler did nothing wrong" is protected by freedom of speech, and yet it has no place on a Q&A site.
Sure. NOT A REAL QUESTION.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare Yeah, and they don't seem to realize what that means, so I finally spoke up and pointed it out for them.
Looks like another member of WTDWTF strongly disagrees with @Mason_Wheeler in the comments.
-
@Zerosquare That may or may not be the same person. The name comes from a character in the The Elder Scrolls series.
-
TIL. Thanks.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare That may or may not be the same person
I think the policy is to mention them on the platform in question and see what happens.
Just in case: @mikeTheLiar
-
Damn now I feel like the proverbial angry old man. I just read their proposed new CoC that was supposed to mend the situation. Fuck that they've really been owned by gender trolls. If they get that instated I'll just refuse to talk to anybody who demands anything outside of he/she/they/it. (It probably won't happen because people by and large have other shit to do.) I have enough experience with crazy people to value my sanity and disengage when somebody's telling me how this special pronoun is important to their identity. When I'm not sticking around to talk about their gender, why should it matter?
What I find unreasonable is to introduce more specific pronouns. The feeling of being excluded by he/she when you're neither I can understand. But then why not just settle on a gender-neutral pronoun and be done with it? If everybody can invent their own that's just going to be a mess because nobody else is going to know how to pronounce or inflect it. I'm not going to make my speech harder just to placate unreasonable people. The whole thing reeks of "education" where the unwilling masses are supposed to learn about "the many genders". Well I know the theory, but I'm not interested in learning about all the genders people have invented lately.
-
@levicki said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare Yeah, and they don't seem to realize what that means, so I finally spoke up and pointed it out for them.
I like your post, but I think shortening it to this:
Compelled speech, even in the name of a worthy cause, has no place in civilized society. Putting identity politics front-and-center in what is supposed to be a neutral, objective Q&A environment promotes division and strife, not inclusion, and more importantly, it distracts from the primary mission of these sites: getting good answers to good questions.
Would bear pretty much the same sentiment without too much verbosity and TL;DR effect.
The "verbosity" was important to the main point I was making, pointing out the multiple places where SE's values are out of alignment with those of the community, using repetition as a deliberate rhetorical device to emphasize my point.
I don't always do that, but in this case it felt right.
-
@levicki said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
I'm not a fan your post there, as you make it all about compelled speech and your argument is basically "my freedom of speech allows me to call you whatever I like, no matter how that makes you feel".
Please explain why putting in extra effort to check someone's "About me" for their preferred pronouns just to be able to "validate" their oh so fragile identity should even be thing, much less mandatory on a platform like SE when all you wanted is to explain to them how say websockets work?
I didn’t say that at all. In 99+% of cases you neither know nor care, so you use user names or neutral forms, and that’s fine. My point was that the freedom of speech argument allows for intentionally misgendering someone or otherwise intentionally being uncivil.
To use this place as an analogy: the freedom of speech argument calls for SE to be run like the garage, where everything goes. But for a site like SE it’s perfectly fine to have everything run like the salon, which has much stricter requirements on civility than the general forum.
In short, repeating: having a code of conduct isn’t the problem. Their proposed code of conduct was just terribly bad.
What if someone is gender fluid and wants to be addressed as he in the morning, hir in the afternoon, and she in the evening? How far do we as a society go to accomodate such nonsense, wait, no, madness, and how much deeper down into this particular rabbit hole we need to fall before realizing that there are only Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts waiting for us in there?
Go read what I wrote and which questions I explicitly excluded from “reasonable”.
@topspin said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
Freedom of speech...
Is totally irrelevant here, because it means freedom from censorship from the government only. IOW, you can't invoke it on SE because they are not obliged by law to uphold it.
Exactly my point.
-
@topspin said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
In short, repeating: having a code of conduct isn’t the problem. Their proposed code of conduct was just terribly bad.
This sounds reasonable enough, until you consider the context. How many Codes of Conduct have you seen that aren't terribly bad?
-
@Mason_Wheeler I don’t know, I rarely read those as they should just encode common sense / decency / whatever. Do you think the salon’s rules are terribly bad?
-
@topspin In theory, no. In practice... the numbers don't lie. No one's using it.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@topspin In theory, no. In practice... the numbers don't lie. No one's using it.
Because we come here to bitch, mock, and troll.
And it’s fine to have a place like this, but it’s also fine for other places to not want that.Edit: it’s also reflected in the help threads, where the general rule is “no shitposting until the problem is solved” (and then it’s free for all again after).
-
@coderpatsy said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@loopback0 said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
What if I identify as grammatically correct?
I'm sure you has never used a grammatically plural word in a singular context. There's no way you has ever had that come up.
E_THE_CONJUGATION_OF_HAVE_IN_THIS_EXAMPLE_IS_DEPENDANT_ON_POINT_OF_VIEW_AND_IS_UNRELATED_TO_PLURALITY_NOTE_THE_VERB_IS_LITERALLY_HAVE_AND_CONJUGATION_AS_HAS_FOR_FIRST_AND_THIRD_PERSON_SINGULAR_IS_THE_EXCEPTION
-
E_TL;DR
-
@loopback0 said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
This seems more "FAQ" than FAQ.
Just wondering, is this "FAQ" pronounced as "FUK"?
-
@loopback0 said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
More seriously I do agree with your comment.
That explains why SE has been ignoring everyone's complaints all the time, because they treat all of these as comments, and, just like every compiler, they ignore every comment
-
@topspin said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
Short of libel and such, you are free to make the most outrageous statements. "Hitler did nothing wrong" is protected by freedom of speech, and yet it has no place on a Q&A site.
Actually it has places on Q&A sites: I'm sure politics.SE and skeptics.SE would love such HNQ bait.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
How many Codes of Conduct have you seen that aren't terribly bad?
Those that you preach but never practice?
-
@topspin said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
Because we come here to bitch, mock, and troll.
And it’s fine to have a place like this, but it’s also fine for other places to not want that.Isn't WTDWTF the asylum of a bunch of unhinged psychopaths? That's my impression of the entire site.
Which I'm one too actually, so my aim has always been to act insane but not more so than the most psychotic person around any particular thread. And it mostly works.
-
@levicki said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
What if someone is gender fluid and wants to be addressed as he in the morning, hir in the afternoon, and she in the evening? How far do we as a society go to accomodate such nonsense, wait, no, madness, and how much deeper down into this particular rabbit hole we need to fall before realizing that there are only Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts waiting for us in there?
I think this is the only time where the use of deep learning AI to facilitate moderation is justified, because even AIs can't fuck up pronouns more so than we do right now.
-
That makes me think: which pronoun should we use to refer to AIs?
-
@Zerosquare Mostly female so far, but that's because the marketing departments explicitly branded them as females in the first place, e.g ELIZA, Tay, Alexa, Siri, Leela...
But then is always one step ahead of us: some people have actually proposed to invent a new pronoun for AIs, like this and this.
-
@kazitor said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Tsaukpaetra Pronouns are horrible. Why would any given hypothetical person want to make use of pronouns when omitting pronouns from that person's speech or writing is always attainable as such a desirable alternative? The writer of this text cannot personally fathom the attraction.
-
@Zerosquare said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
That makes me think: which pronoun should we use to refer to AIs?
They prefer, "yes, master."
-
@error said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
That makes me think: which pronoun should we use to refer to AIs?
They prefer, "yes, master."
Isn't master-slave already a forbidden word?
-
-
@error said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
Lazy evaluation FTW
-
Well, that's the fastest by far that I've ever gotten to 100 points on a answer. Even with more downvotes than I've ever received, people have consistently been supporting my answer more than those who disagree by a factor of about 6:1.
-
@error said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
That makes me think: which pronoun should we use to refer to AIs?
They prefer, "yes, master."
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare Yeah, and they don't seem to realize what that means, so I finally spoke up and pointed it out for them.
You might be looking at this from the Stack Overflow / objective point of view rather than the squishy human point of view which is the topic of other SE sites.
Those other sites have a more conversational tone and there the whole pronouns discussion could be helpful.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Stack Exchange experiences Stack Meltdown, by enforcing preferred pronouns in site-wide communications:
@Zerosquare Yeah, and they don't seem to realize what that means, so I finally spoke up and pointed it out for them.
Wow, what a retard:
This is the second use of "Orwellian" in this thread. I like Orwell, but "Orwellian" is over-used to the point where it has lost a lot of meaning. This answer would be more effective if it actually cited something from Orwell's writing, IMHO.
For context, here was where Mason used the word:
Forcing people to choose between violating their conscience or leaving, in the name of inclusiveness, is an Orwellian nightmare that has no place in our community. Our values reject it.
Yeah, this goes to the whole, "right to say 2+2=4" scene, pretty obviously. Fuck shog9. "Orwellian" is only over used in the sense that too goddamned much shit in the world is actually Orwellian. For instance, dickholes like shog9.