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Maybe, maybe not, but replacing "man page" to "person page" to submit a breaking PR probably is? Note that "man page" is an abbreviation of "manual," which ety
by bmelton 5y ago
Maybe, maybe not, but replacing "man page" to "person page" to submit a breaking PR probably is?
Note that "man page" is an abbreviation of "manual," which etymologically derives from 'manus' (Latin for "hand") and "al" (roughly, "pertaining to"). Arguendo, one could object to 'manual' being the de facto implementation as it is gendered male. Manumal could be a workable neuter representation, but "man page" avoids the Latin gender preference altogether.
- endisneigh 5y agoI’m not sure what you’re going on about - we’re in agreement that the bot in question doesn’t even do what it purports to do well at all. The question isn’t whether the bot in OP is good, it’s not, it’s whether or not switching to gender neutral language is useful or not.
- mminer237 5y agoIn English, "he" is traditionally gender neutral, like in most languages. So the bot's really just changes gender-neutral singular into gender-neutral plural.
- endisneigh 5y agoThat might be true historically but I would doubt the majority of people today would agree that “he” is a gender neutral pronoun.
- rascul 5y ago"He just cut me off" and similar things are often said while driving, in a gender neutral sense.
- endisneigh 5y agoI don’t disagree but advocates of gender neutral language would say that’s more of a symptom of male dominance than gender neutrality. Fascinatingly enough w.r.t driving nearly 80 percent of drivers were men in the 60s (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2012.755736?scroll=top&needAccess=true https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2012.7...). You see similar things where she is used as the “gender neutral” pronoun for situations in which a woman was historically over represented
- rascul 5y agoI have noticed that female drivers will sometimes use "she cut me off". Although my sister uses "he".
- bmelton 5y agoI began my answer before your edit, so "what I'm going on about" is the topic at hand
- endisneigh 5y agoEven before my edit, I never implied the bot was effective or good, though. The bots effectiveness and the thing it purports to do are two separate matters.
- bmelton 5y agoPlease note that the context you seem missing is the original submission, which I am guessing you hadn't looked at before your edit. So my point was that "irrespective of the inherent goodness of gender neutral language, this bot is flawed" which was neither implied nor inferred by your original submission, but which is relevant to the discussion of both gender neutral language's adoption and also but more specifically to this submission.
- endisneigh 5y agoI did look at the original submission. My original comment explicitly said and still says the bot sucks. My comment is around what the bot is trying to do in principal, not what it has failed to do in practice
- bmelton 5y agoWell there you have it. Mine is about what it's doing in practice, which is I believe the point of the article. That said, I believe your original comment was just `Is switching to gender neutral pronouns bad?`
- endisneigh 5y agoNah it was the first three sentences. I just added more and a line break