5 ms·

Switch to Gender Neutral Terms

14 points by ahamez 5y ago

yakorevivan 5y ago
dudul 5y ago
"Many" -> "persony". I know it's just a poorly written script, but this replacement illustrates so well the craziness of this whole thing.
- itsabug 5y ago
  How so? These are obviously just bugs? Or obviously trolling?
  - dudul 5y ago
    Of course these are just bugs, when you look at the diff you can infer how naive the regex is. I did say it was just a poorly written script, but I can't help looking at this and thinking of all the very serious people who simply want to remove the substring "man" from everything.
incomingpain 5y ago
edit/ sorry guess I shouldnt have commented.
- falcolas 5y ago
  It's a poorly written bot is all. There's no debate to be had.
- netsharc 5y ago
  Oh, check today's date. I guess tomorrow someone will be offended that someone is making fun of their movement to rid language of sexism and patriarchy. ;) Edit: but... the bot tried to submit the PR 3 days ago. So... not an April Fool's prank?
  - incomingpain 5y ago
    This is NOT an april fools joke.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      If it is, it escaped into the wild a couple days too soon. It's so bad I really can't take it as something serious. It's just a poor-taste joke at the expense of vulnerable groups.
    - netsharc 5y ago
      Anyway, the guy's not very good about hiding his tracks, he commited to this repo to test the bot, using his real account with name and face: https://github.com/inclusive-coding-bot/test_non_inclusive_repo https://github.com/inclusive-coding-bot/test_non_inclusive_r...
      - incomingpain 5y ago
        Lets just drop this.
      - itsabug 5y ago
        Looks like a student, trying to improve things and making some mistakes that are very much to be expected for a student project. Kudos for the effort, and I think they probably learned a good lesson in test data generation.
- itsabug 5y ago
  One "debate me" is pretty cringe, but two, I don't think you'd find anyone who thinks those are serious suggestions. It's either a bug or someone trolling. I push hard for gender neutral language, but not whatever this change is proposing. Helps is not a gendered term, and should remain helps.
lnxg33k1 5y ago
Yeah let's just go through an insane amount of efforts to change everything IT so that we can accomodate the 0.something% of the population who can't just accept and he/she and move on
- itsabug 5y ago
  Trans and non binary folks are probably whole integer percent of populations, and are over represented in tech. It's trivially easy to use "they" rather than he or she. Or "the person" or whatever the actual noun is.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    It's not even a matter of making special provisions. It's just plain civility. If you ask me to refer to you as a "they" or any other pronoun, that's how I'll refer to you.
    - itsabug 5y ago
      Right? We already do this with names. "Please don't call me Bill, I prefer William". Ok, I'll call that person William. It'd be an asshole move to deliberately call them Bill. Using someone's correct pronouns is the same. If they say, "use x not y" it's an asshole move to deliberately not use x.
    - lnxg33k1 5y ago
      Oh me too, of course. I just don’t understand someone expects to change the default way to refer to anyone else.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        Perhaps because the "default" way misgenders about half of them.
        michaelmrose 5y ago
chinabison 5y ago
I'm assuming this is a piss-take.
- kleer001 5y ago
  Sadly it is not. The bot's github page leads back to a real looking webpage. But then again that could be some top tier trolling. The page is completely bereft of any personality, names, or faces... so... For anyone that cares the argument basically comes down a weak form of the Sapier-Worf hypothesis and the primacy of emotions over any other consideration. A useless and potentially harmful admixture.
sixhobbits 5y ago
hambes 5y ago
Given how obviously stupid many of the changes are, to me this looks like a false flag attempt trying to stir outrage against a movement with good intentions.
- kazinator 5y ago
  They are absolutely all stupid. I skimmed through it twice and couldn't find a single good-by-fluke edit.
tomlockwood 5y ago
This got upvoted to the frontpage because it aligns with the preconceptions of a certain subset of HN readers. How representative is this single issue of the variety of discussions currently ongoing about inclusivity in tech?
- itsabug 5y ago
  Right? "College student tries to help out, program has bugs, HN loses their goddamn minds" lol Edit: the replies to this comment are emblematic of HN losing their goddamn minds. Hey, y'all, sometimes humans are humans. Sometimes college kids have big ideas and don't nail it. Have a little empathy, have a chuckle, and move on.
  - slenk 5y ago
    "College students wastes maintainers times by pushing worthless PRs" Moreover, they didn't contact the owner of the repository, who says they don't want bot flows. Does being a college student mean you can just waste people's time?
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    It's absolutely contentless garbage!
  - netsharc 5y ago
    I'm not sure what it is anymore. "College student" has a LinkedIn page that shows he's been at the college for 4 years and has had several internships in FAANG. The bot's linked website is slick and too serious to be an April Fools prank. I wonder who the fools are if someone who can get internships at FAANG can't write a proper search and replace bot.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rbanffy 5y ago
The PR was a couple days too early. Looks like a buggy bot that needs human supervision.
WhatsName 5y ago
Should have linked this issued (given hard to find, since the bot went wild), for more context and comments by the bot author: https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/pull/6805 https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/pu... My personal experience with most of these bots is, most of them are promoting some kind of service (image/badge bots) or try to enforce a certain behavior onto maintainers ("Your are missing a [code of conduct]"). Haven't yet come across anything useful. If your political issue is something you truly care about, please at least make the effort hand craft your pull-request. And even then, it would be awesome to keep politics out of code.
- itsabug 5y ago
  One, you can't keep politics out of code. Code, like sports, like games, like movies, etc. is inherently political. Who has access to software? Who doesn't? Who is in the training set? Who isn't? Who gets the education necessary to write code? Who doesn't? But I agree, you should target these improvements to open source tools you use, care about, or are a contributor to. It's ok to have a bot assist in writing the PR, but you should deploy it narrowly.
branneman 5y ago
April Fools I guess, considering the actual commit content: - many -> persony - helps -> theylps - here -> theyre - historical -> theirstorical
- itsabug 5y ago
  Buggy bot, looks like a college student trying to help but not fully testing.
- cameronfraser 5y ago
  this was happening before april fools
laserdancepony 5y ago
This is getting so out of hand, it's not even funny anymore. Just like the blacklist/whitelist debate or the github master branch shitshow. Are there no real problems left?

14 points by ahamez 5y ago

"Many" -> "persony". I know it's just a poorly written script, but this replacement illustrates so well the craziness of this whole thing.

itsabug 5y ago
How so? These are obviously just bugs? Or obviously trolling?
- dudul 5y ago
  Of course these are just bugs, when you look at the diff you can infer how naive the regex is. I did say it was just a poorly written script, but I can't help looking at this and thinking of all the very serious people who simply want to remove the substring "man" from everything.

incomingpain 5y ago

edit/ sorry guess I shouldnt have commented.

falcolas 5y ago
It's a poorly written bot is all. There's no debate to be had.
netsharc 5y ago
Oh, check today's date. I guess tomorrow someone will be offended that someone is making fun of their movement to rid language of sexism and patriarchy. ;) Edit: but... the bot tried to submit the PR 3 days ago. So... not an April Fool's prank?
- incomingpain 5y ago
  This is NOT an april fools joke.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    If it is, it escaped into the wild a couple days too soon. It's so bad I really can't take it as something serious. It's just a poor-taste joke at the expense of vulnerable groups.
  - netsharc 5y ago
    Anyway, the guy's not very good about hiding his tracks, he commited to this repo to test the bot, using his real account with name and face: https://github.com/inclusive-coding-bot/test_non_inclusive_repo https://github.com/inclusive-coding-bot/test_non_inclusive_r...
    - incomingpain 5y ago
      Lets just drop this.
    - itsabug 5y ago
      Looks like a student, trying to improve things and making some mistakes that are very much to be expected for a student project. Kudos for the effort, and I think they probably learned a good lesson in test data generation.
itsabug 5y ago
One "debate me" is pretty cringe, but two, I don't think you'd find anyone who thinks those are serious suggestions. It's either a bug or someone trolling. I push hard for gender neutral language, but not whatever this change is proposing. Helps is not a gendered term, and should remain helps.

lnxg33k1 5y ago

Yeah let's just go through an insane amount of efforts to change everything IT so that we can accomodate the 0.something% of the population who can't just accept and he/she and move on

itsabug 5y ago
Trans and non binary folks are probably whole integer percent of populations, and are over represented in tech. It's trivially easy to use "they" rather than he or she. Or "the person" or whatever the actual noun is.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  It's not even a matter of making special provisions. It's just plain civility. If you ask me to refer to you as a "they" or any other pronoun, that's how I'll refer to you.
  - itsabug 5y ago
    Right? We already do this with names. "Please don't call me Bill, I prefer William". Ok, I'll call that person William. It'd be an asshole move to deliberately call them Bill. Using someone's correct pronouns is the same. If they say, "use x not y" it's an asshole move to deliberately not use x.
  - lnxg33k1 5y ago
    Oh me too, of course. I just don’t understand someone expects to change the default way to refer to anyone else.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      Perhaps because the "default" way misgenders about half of them.
      - michaelmrose 5y ago

chinabison 5y ago

I'm assuming this is a piss-take.

kleer001 5y ago
Sadly it is not. The bot's github page leads back to a real looking webpage. But then again that could be some top tier trolling. The page is completely bereft of any personality, names, or faces... so... For anyone that cares the argument basically comes down a weak form of the Sapier-Worf hypothesis and the primacy of emotions over any other consideration. A useless and potentially harmful admixture.

sixhobbits 5y ago

hambes 5y ago

Given how obviously stupid many of the changes are, to me this looks like a false flag attempt trying to stir outrage against a movement with good intentions.

kazinator 5y ago
They are absolutely all stupid. I skimmed through it twice and couldn't find a single good-by-fluke edit.

tomlockwood 5y ago

This got upvoted to the frontpage because it aligns with the preconceptions of a certain subset of HN readers. How representative is this single issue of the variety of discussions currently ongoing about inclusivity in tech?

itsabug 5y ago
Right? "College student tries to help out, program has bugs, HN loses their goddamn minds" lol Edit: the replies to this comment are emblematic of HN losing their goddamn minds. Hey, y'all, sometimes humans are humans. Sometimes college kids have big ideas and don't nail it. Have a little empathy, have a chuckle, and move on.
- slenk 5y ago
  "College students wastes maintainers times by pushing worthless PRs" Moreover, they didn't contact the owner of the repository, who says they don't want bot flows. Does being a college student mean you can just waste people's time?
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  It's absolutely contentless garbage!
- netsharc 5y ago
  I'm not sure what it is anymore. "College student" has a LinkedIn page that shows he's been at the college for 4 years and has had several internships in FAANG. The bot's linked website is slick and too serious to be an April Fools prank. I wonder who the fools are if someone who can get internships at FAANG can't write a proper search and replace bot.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rbanffy 5y ago

The PR was a couple days too early. Looks like a buggy bot that needs human supervision.

WhatsName 5y ago

Should have linked this issued (given hard to find, since the bot went wild), for more context and comments by the bot author: https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/pull/6805 https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/pu... My personal experience with most of these bots is, most of them are promoting some kind of service (image/badge bots) or try to enforce a certain behavior onto maintainers ("Your are missing a [code of conduct]"). Haven't yet come across anything useful. If your political issue is something you truly care about, please at least make the effort hand craft your pull-request. And even then, it would be awesome to keep politics out of code.

itsabug 5y ago
One, you can't keep politics out of code. Code, like sports, like games, like movies, etc. is inherently political. Who has access to software? Who doesn't? Who is in the training set? Who isn't? Who gets the education necessary to write code? Who doesn't? But I agree, you should target these improvements to open source tools you use, care about, or are a contributor to. It's ok to have a bot assist in writing the PR, but you should deploy it narrowly.

branneman 5y ago

April Fools I guess, considering the actual commit content: - many -> persony - helps -> theylps - here -> theyre - historical -> theirstorical

itsabug 5y ago
Buggy bot, looks like a college student trying to help but not fully testing.
cameronfraser 5y ago
this was happening before april fools

laserdancepony 5y ago

This is getting so out of hand, it's not even funny anymore. Just like the blacklist/whitelist debate or the github master branch shitshow. Are there no real problems left?