[Koha-devel] Gender-neutral pronouns
Philippe Blouin
philippe.blouin at inlibro.com
Wed Apr 19 21:48:49 CEST 2017
That's no strawman, that's a genuine questionning.
You talk inclusivity, I'm all for it, but can we walk the talk now?
'They' is a bigger barrier to entry than 'he' for non-English
readers/coders. But hey, what do I know, what is my perspective here?
The stated initiative is good: the majority of users are female, the
code is male-centric, can we be progressive, inclusive... But 'they'
sucks. As I said, why not use "she" ?
I don't send formating and commenting patches, the QA team having quite
enough on its plate already.
Philippe Blouin,
Responsable du développement informatique
Tél. : (888) 604-2627
philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com <http://www.inLibro.com>
On 04/19/2017 03:20 PM, Chris Cormack wrote:
> Of course we won't fail patches, thanks for the strawman. We can
> easily fix them instead. In fact I volunteer to do that.
>
> You're welcome to fix grammar too, send some patches.
>
> And of course you can vote -1 you just did. I certainly noticed it.
>
> Chris
>
> On 20 April 2017 7:16:22 AM NZST, Philippe Blouin
> <philippe.blouin at inlibro.com> wrote:
>
> My mistake, I hadn't read the original bugzilla. :-(
>
> Well, can I -1 this or only +1 are politically acceptable? Since
> this is politic, really. Could you amend the ticket to also
> rewrite all the comments to some acceptable level of English, to
> start with? Syntax, grammar, conjugation...
>
> Call me obtuse, but 'they' can be quite offputting in the middle
> of a sentence. I've read some short novels with that usage (used
> as an androgynous pronoun). To someone whose first language is
> not English, that can be quite disconcerting on first and second
> read.
>
> The ticket also refers to someone having written "it" for a person
> in some comment. Well, that's the type of things that occurs in a
> software partly written by French (I'm not pointing), Indians and
> Finns... You want to set a rule forcing them to use proper
> English, you'll fail their patches because of it, in the name of
> inclusivity??? That's productive...
>
> Frankly, a much better "rule" should have been to write all
> comments using the _female_ form. Clear and concise. But I don't
> believe that was the aim of the ticket...
>
> Philippe Blouin,
> Responsable du développement informatique
>
> Tél. : (888) 604-2627
> philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
>
> inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com
> <http://www.inLibro.com>
> On 04/19/2017 02:18 PM, Jonathan Druart wrote:
>> The patches only affect code comments so no translation needed.
>>
>> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 at 15:12 Philippe Blouin
>> <philippe.blouin at inlibro.com
>> <mailto:philippe.blouin at inlibro.com>> wrote:
>>
>> How many of "these" are there to change? Not that the work
>> itself will be massive, but putting a 'they' in the middle of
>> a sentence does not make it easy to translate intuitively, I
>> would think. If it's a consideration (it is for non-English
>> users, at least).
>>
>>
>> Philippe Blouin,
>> Responsable du développement informatique
>>
>> Tél. : (888) 604-2627
>> philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
>>
>> inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com
>> <http://www.inLibro.com>
>> On 04/19/2017 01:16 PM, Jonathan Druart wrote:
>>> The next step would be to provide a check to our QA tests to
>>> make sure we will not introduce future occurrences.
>>> I am pretty sure they will not be caught manually by QAers.
>>>
>>> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 at 13:56 Eric Phetteplace
>>> <ephetteplace at cca.edu <mailto:ephetteplace at cca.edu>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Paul,
>>>
>>> English has a singular "they". It doesn't suggest
>>> androgyny, either, from the definitions I've seen. For
>>> instance, Oxford English Dictionary:
>>>
>>> 2. In anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun
>>> of undetermined gender: he or she.
>>>
>>> The first usage example OED provides is from 1375. I
>>> don't think replacing "he" with "she" addresses the
>>> problem, it's still assuming a default gender. It's not
>>> too much tricker to search code for he/him & replace
>>> with they/them but that's also just an implementation
>>> issue, not a policy one.
>>>
>>>
>>> It sounds like people are otherwise supportive but I'm
>>> not sure what the next step should be.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Eric Phetteplace
>>> Systems Librarian
>>> California College of the Arts
>>> libraries.cca.edu <http://libraries.cca.edu> |
>>> vault.cca.edu <http://vault.cca.edu>
>>> 510.594.3660
>>> 2>/dev/null
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 8:42 AM, Paul A
>>> <paul.a at navalmarinearchive.com
>>> <mailto:paul.a at navalmarinearchive.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2017-04-18 08:25 PM, Eric Phetteplace wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi list,
>>>
>>> I opened bug
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> Before*:*
>>>
>>> "Kid growing and become a juvenile, he should pay "
>>>
>>> After:
>>>
>>> "Kid growing and become a juvenile, they should pay "
>>>
>>> Political correctness has never been my strong point
>>> (although I try to understand it), but I'm
>>> proficient in grammatical rigour. [1]
>>>
>>> "Kid" is a singular noun, "a" is a singular article
>>> -- "they" is a plural pronoun. Perhaps replace
>>> "they" with "[s]he"? or "Kids growing and becoming
>>> juveniles, they should pay"?
>>>
>>> From a code maintenance p.o.v., it's easier to find
>>> and replace 'he' with '[s]he' if really this becomes
>>> a priority for Koha.
>>>
>>> Best -- Paul
>>>
>>> [1] I am aware of the so-called "singular third
>>> person epicene 'they'", but academically object to
>>> it -- it often suggests androgyny rather than gender
>>> neutrality.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Koha-devel mailing list
>>> Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
>>> <mailto:Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
>>> http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
>>> website : http://www.koha-community.org/
>>> git : http://git.koha-community.org/
>>> bugs : http://bugs.koha-community.org/
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Koha-devel mailing list
>>> Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
>>> <mailto:Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
>>> http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
>>> website : http://www.koha-community.org/
>>> git : http://git.koha-community.org/
>>> bugs : http://bugs.koha-community.org/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Koha-devel mailing list
>>> Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
>>> <mailto:Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
>>> http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
>>> website :http://www.koha-community.org/
>>> git :http://git.koha-community.org/
>>> bugs :http://bugs.koha-community.org/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Koha-devel mailing list
>> Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
>> <mailto:Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
>> http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
>> website : http://www.koha-community.org/
>> git : http://git.koha-community.org/
>> bugs : http://bugs.koha-community.org/
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Koha-devel mailing list
>> Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
>> http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
>> website :http://www.koha-community.org/
>> git :http://git.koha-community.org/
>> bugs :http://bugs.koha-community.org/
>
>
> --
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-devel/attachments/20170419/d762c305/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Koha-devel
mailing list