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> "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female, gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender,

> "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female, gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question." I Imagine this read to the survey writer like: "Hello, I'd like to complain about your use of the term Linux on the corporate intranet. A page provides instructions for running the data parsing scripts "on Linux". Since we do not do any kernel work, it is improper to refer to them as Linux instructions. Instead, people should be familiar with either POSIX, bash(with extensions), or GNU coreutils."

thex10 9y ago
I mean, I see the point you're trying to make. But that error could be pretty damning in the context of a detailed survey about, like, operating systems and their utilities. In that case, wouldn't you expect to survey writer to know those details, or at least not completely lose their shit when told about them from someone who knows more about the topic?
- MichaelBurge 9y ago
  We don't know the purpose of the survey, but it's described as an "open source developer survey". I imagine gender was thrown in because, hey maybe the women use vim and the men use emacs for some reason, and that's kind of interesting to know. I briefly checked the Stack Overflow survey as a comparison: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017
s73ver 9y ago
So on a survey meant to gather data on the participation rates of marginalized people in Open Source communities, you feel it would be appropriate to publish a question which would be deemed as troublesome or even offensive to members of those groups?
eropple 9y ago
Perhaps you should reflect on that we are talking about people, not computer programs, and that the contextual impact of misrepresenting people has a much more marked impact than the contextual impact of misrepresenting computer programs.
microtherion 9y ago
This survey question was more along the lines of "What text editor do you use: a) vi b) emacs c) Linux" In such a question, it would be perfectly reasonable to point out that "Linux is not a text editor. Linux users may use vi, emacs, pico, sam... If you want to know if a survey respondent is a Linux user, you need to explicitly ask that question".

thex10 9y ago

I mean, I see the point you're trying to make. But that error could be pretty damning in the context of a detailed survey about, like, operating systems and their utilities. In that case, wouldn't you expect to survey writer to know those details, or at least not completely lose their shit when told about them from someone who knows more about the topic?

MichaelBurge 9y ago
We don't know the purpose of the survey, but it's described as an "open source developer survey". I imagine gender was thrown in because, hey maybe the women use vim and the men use emacs for some reason, and that's kind of interesting to know. I briefly checked the Stack Overflow survey as a comparison: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017

s73ver 9y ago

So on a survey meant to gather data on the participation rates of marginalized people in Open Source communities, you feel it would be appropriate to publish a question which would be deemed as troublesome or even offensive to members of those groups?

eropple 9y ago

Perhaps you should reflect on that we are talking about people, not computer programs, and that the contextual impact of misrepresenting people has a much more marked impact than the contextual impact of misrepresenting computer programs.

microtherion 9y ago

This survey question was more along the lines of "What text editor do you use: a) vi b) emacs c) Linux" In such a question, it would be perfectly reasonable to point out that "Linux is not a text editor. Linux users may use vi, emacs, pico, sam... If you want to know if a survey respondent is a Linux user, you need to explicitly ask that question".