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GitHub gender-inclusive language bot – postmortem FAQ

9 points by jph 5y ago

A recent GitHub bot created many pull requests about inclusive language. The bot was discussed on Hacker News. The bot isn’t mine, yet it used my inclusive language repository. The discussion raised good questions. I've written answers that highlight why I believe inclusive language is worthwhile, especially for technologists. https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/gender-inclusive-language/blob/main/doc/questions-and-answers.md

impowski 5y ago
This is madness
- kbrannigan 5y ago
  I'm all for fairness and inclusivity. But how far is too far? Extreme School of thoughts like this have always existed for millenia. Groups of people trying to bend reality to their will. The human desire... Oops huperson.... oopps huperdaughter .... Ooops huperdaughtx The human desire for everyone to conform to my worldview. BRB I'm going to the park with my 2 little individuals.
  - zzzkkk 5y ago
    > But how far is too far? This could be an interesting question that I think is okay to ask? How far is too far when it comes to existing gendered language? Is it okay to ask that question too? Your examples/jokes are odd, you've taken already gender-neutral language and replaced it. > The human desire for everyone to conform to my worldview. Is that not what's happening relative to gendered language and folks who wish to move away from it?
    - kbrannigan 5y ago
      Maybe it’s because I speak French where my shoes have a gender. Things that are a non issue in some language are getting other people fired in some other languages
      - zzzkkk 5y ago
        A very small % of the population identifies outside of the conventional gender bounds. If anyone is getting fired, it's for not respecting the preferences and wishes of their coworkers, which seems quite reasonable. If someone refused to call me by nickname, and insisted using my legal name, for example, I'd probably be quite bothered.
        kbrannigan 5y ago
        Which is fine, but if you want everyone else to use a nickname. This might be a problem
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 5y ago
        That sounds normal to the point that it's boring. I remember ~10 years ago I was introduced to this concept in a way I was able to understand via an episode of a video program called "Taboo". The particular episode was about gender differences in Romania (I hope I'm not misremembering), specifically about a bit of the culture that "allowed" a biological woman to live their life out the way a man traditionally would. Someone from that culture could easily be looking at the English-speaking world and wondering why this is even being discussed: it's not even weird. Someone from your culture seems to be looking at the English-speaking world and wondering why this is even being discussed: it's utter nonsense. I do love this point about different languages, though. Many languages have gender as a default.
- jaitsu 5y ago
  I echo your sentiment. I am not against gender inclusivity but to call out what is essentially innocent language as inherently “bad” is not a good path to go down.
  - zzzkkk 5y ago
    Where does it say this is language is inherently bad? I'm not sure it does. As members of a software-focused community, can't we look at existing solutions that work okay and strive to make them even better? We all do this quite a bit in code review, for example.
    - nullfield 5y ago
      Some are better, like “fireman” to “firefighter”; in those cases, they generalize a concept in a meaning-preserving manner and simplify. edit I didn’t even see the next comment, that mentioned firefighter, when I wrote this; that makes it all the more to me. Most are identity politics bullshit, and should be resisted.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cyounkins 5y ago
Why is this labeled a postmortem?
- jph 5y ago
  It's a write-up done after the end of the problem, that aims to address some of the questions that people asked. Some teams use other terms such as after-actions, or post-incidents, or retro-reports, etc.
  - cyounkins 5y ago
    I'm familiar, and have wrote them myself. The "mortem" part of "postmortem" means death, so they are usually written after something has died or failed, like a startup or a project, and the document explains why it failed. Having "postmortem" in the title implies the language bot failed. I don't think this is what you meant.
    - jph 5y ago
      Yes you're correct, the GitHub language bot failed. It created a bunch of incorrect changes and pull requests that repo teams rejected. It caused many complaints to the author and to me. The author disabled it a few hours later.
- spzb 5y ago
  You mean, it's discriminatory against people who aren't breathing any more?
shoulderfake 5y ago
_bfhp 5y ago
https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/gender-inclusive-language#pronouns https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/gender-inclusive-lang... > biological man, biological woman | cisgender person or non-transgender person A good FAQ item might be: Are humans mammals?
- zzzkkk 5y ago
  Forgive my ignorance, why would that be a good FAQ item?
- meekmind 5y ago
  A: Probably not for much longer, thus why we're pre-programming the population for genetically modified half-human half-lizard hybrids and genderless cyborgs. It can't really be because less than 2% of the population isn't feeling included, though Palm Springs is piloting a novel way to solve that problem by incentivizing people to identify as transgender or non-binary. https://news.yahoo.com/california-city-universal-income-transgender-150602734.html https://news.yahoo.com/california-city-universal-income-tran...
- nullfield 5y ago
  This, approximately, is where the breakdown into bullshit occurred. Biology is a thing. Transgender activists try to do two things at the same time, and the mental gymnastics they have to go through to maintain the bifurcation/cognitive dissonance has to be massive: 1. They claim that sex (male/female or man/woman) and gender (masculine/feminine) are two different things 2. They immediately conflate sex and gender, such that “gay men” (homosexuals) are now “same-gender loving” 3. They abuse you gratuitously if you argue about these concepts I’ve had some pretty long talks with a friend in the field of social work, and (personally) come to a nuanced understanding of “transgender issues” where the short truth is that the large majority of people claiming to be transgendered are suffering from a mental illness. In the end, I don’t think alleged “gender roles” do a lot of good/matter; they’re cultural, and when it comes to things like wearing clothes (skirts, kilts, skinny jeans, cargo pants, v-neck t-shirts, or tank tops)… who cares? Same for makeup, nail polish, piercings like earrings or whatever-those are all just “how you express you”. Claim that a gay guy needs to consider a transgender man a potential partner, though, and you have a problem. A trans man is a trans man-a statement that, being a tautology, it’s insane the amount of vitriol you can get directed at you. Not a man. We don’t have “pregnant people”; only women can be “pregnant”. Oh well. In the end, however this comment goes, I feel I’ve followed HN’s policy of “I clarified some things”, even if some people try to claim that things are not what they are.
thenerdhead 5y ago
Does there become a point where the inclusive language rules starts to exclude a group of people who feel it's too much? I've taken many different D&I trainings. I am still failing to understand the merit of these efforts. I am all for inclusivity and psychological safety, but the very nature of these tools feels exclusive in the process. People who feel psychologically safe would use the language that best describes the thing without any feelings of retaliation from others and the understanding that humans make mistakes.
- zzzkkk 5y ago
  > Does there become a point where the inclusive language rules starts to exclude a group of people who feel it's too much? If it does, is that perhaps okay? Would this not just be a pendulum swing in the opposite direction from the current group of folks who feel excluded by dominant language? Might that discomfort switching hands, so to speak, be an interesting or useful exercise?
  - bavell 5y ago
    Are you asking if excluding people is okay if it's the right group of people?
  - wizhi 5y ago
    You'd think, that someone who has suffered would not wish for others to suffer.
  - exfascist 5y ago
    If empathy isn't your thing then consider the secondary consequences of this. Many of those people the "pendulum" is swinging away from already feel pretty excluded by society and have little reason to participate. It's driving a mass movement, it's likely what got Trump elected, and it's likely to swing the pendulum back very hard in the direction you don't want it to go. You need to make sure you're not pushing people too hard.
    - zzzkkk 5y ago
zzo38computer 5y ago
Sometimes changing the words to other ones is improvement (using words that are better descriptive (e.g. "firefighter" instead of "fireman"; their job isn't to light you on fire, isn't it?), removing distinctions that are irrelevant or unknown (e.g. words with "-ess", which I think that you usually should not need such a suffix), etc), but sometimes not. About renaming git branches, the change that GitHub made is harmless, and made improvements too, since you can easily change the default branch and rename branches, which is useful for other purposes too. Furthermore, the name "main" is shorter than "master", so there is that advantage, too. The first two letters are also same; I don't know whether or not that might sometimes be an advantage. However, maybe if it were named "trunk" by default then it might be more consistent with other version control systems that use the name "trunk" by default; although, even if it isn't, that isn't a problem either since you can still change the default names anyways. (Note: I do not use git or GitHub, so if I have any incorrect details, then you might add a comment with the corrections, please.) In SQLite, they changed the name of the schema table from "sqlite_master" to "sqlite_schema" (although the old name still works too). The new name is better descriptive of what it does, but I would have consider it is not worth to change this, so now there is two names, etc. I would have waited for SQLite4 and changed it to "sqlite_schema" in SQLite4 (and remove the name "sqlite_master", then), instead, but now it is what it is, and it would be better to keep it how it is instead of changing it back which would be even worse. About "priest"/"priestess", I should think that it should depend on the roles of religious traditions, independently from the gender. (For example, Christian traditions do not have a separate "priestess" role (although some traditions ordain women, but it is not a separate role from men and so the term "priestess" is inappropriate), so should not need to use that word. Some (non-Christian) traditions might not have priests at all.)
- jph 5y ago
  Thank you for this. I'm adding your schema point and your priest/priestess point, both to the big list.
  - kbrannigan 5y ago
    Big list is offensive to smaller lists. Please use a more size-inclusive term like: Not-Small list. Switch "This" to "TTheir" Point is offensive to bluntness . Please use Not so sharp.

9 points by jph 5y ago

impowski 5y ago

This is madness

kbrannigan 5y ago
I'm all for fairness and inclusivity. But how far is too far? Extreme School of thoughts like this have always existed for millenia. Groups of people trying to bend reality to their will. The human desire... Oops huperson.... oopps huperdaughter .... Ooops huperdaughtx The human desire for everyone to conform to my worldview. BRB I'm going to the park with my 2 little individuals.
- zzzkkk 5y ago
  > But how far is too far? This could be an interesting question that I think is okay to ask? How far is too far when it comes to existing gendered language? Is it okay to ask that question too? Your examples/jokes are odd, you've taken already gender-neutral language and replaced it. > The human desire for everyone to conform to my worldview. Is that not what's happening relative to gendered language and folks who wish to move away from it?
  - kbrannigan 5y ago
    Maybe it’s because I speak French where my shoes have a gender. Things that are a non issue in some language are getting other people fired in some other languages
    - zzzkkk 5y ago
      A very small % of the population identifies outside of the conventional gender bounds. If anyone is getting fired, it's for not respecting the preferences and wishes of their coworkers, which seems quite reasonable. If someone refused to call me by nickname, and insisted using my legal name, for example, I'd probably be quite bothered.
      - kbrannigan 5y ago
        Which is fine, but if you want everyone else to use a nickname. This might be a problem
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 5y ago
      That sounds normal to the point that it's boring. I remember ~10 years ago I was introduced to this concept in a way I was able to understand via an episode of a video program called "Taboo". The particular episode was about gender differences in Romania (I hope I'm not misremembering), specifically about a bit of the culture that "allowed" a biological woman to live their life out the way a man traditionally would. Someone from that culture could easily be looking at the English-speaking world and wondering why this is even being discussed: it's not even weird. Someone from your culture seems to be looking at the English-speaking world and wondering why this is even being discussed: it's utter nonsense. I do love this point about different languages, though. Many languages have gender as a default.
jaitsu 5y ago
I echo your sentiment. I am not against gender inclusivity but to call out what is essentially innocent language as inherently “bad” is not a good path to go down.
- zzzkkk 5y ago
  Where does it say this is language is inherently bad? I'm not sure it does. As members of a software-focused community, can't we look at existing solutions that work okay and strive to make them even better? We all do this quite a bit in code review, for example.
  - nullfield 5y ago
    Some are better, like “fireman” to “firefighter”; in those cases, they generalize a concept in a meaning-preserving manner and simplify. edit I didn’t even see the next comment, that mentioned firefighter, when I wrote this; that makes it all the more to me. Most are identity politics bullshit, and should be resisted.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

cyounkins 5y ago

Why is this labeled a postmortem?

jph 5y ago
It's a write-up done after the end of the problem, that aims to address some of the questions that people asked. Some teams use other terms such as after-actions, or post-incidents, or retro-reports, etc.
- cyounkins 5y ago
  I'm familiar, and have wrote them myself. The "mortem" part of "postmortem" means death, so they are usually written after something has died or failed, like a startup or a project, and the document explains why it failed. Having "postmortem" in the title implies the language bot failed. I don't think this is what you meant.
  - jph 5y ago
    Yes you're correct, the GitHub language bot failed. It created a bunch of incorrect changes and pull requests that repo teams rejected. It caused many complaints to the author and to me. The author disabled it a few hours later.
spzb 5y ago
You mean, it's discriminatory against people who aren't breathing any more?

shoulderfake 5y ago

_bfhp 5y ago

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/gender-inclusive-language#pronouns https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/gender-inclusive-lang... > biological man, biological woman | cisgender person or non-transgender person A good FAQ item might be: Are humans mammals?

zzzkkk 5y ago
Forgive my ignorance, why would that be a good FAQ item?
meekmind 5y ago
A: Probably not for much longer, thus why we're pre-programming the population for genetically modified half-human half-lizard hybrids and genderless cyborgs. It can't really be because less than 2% of the population isn't feeling included, though Palm Springs is piloting a novel way to solve that problem by incentivizing people to identify as transgender or non-binary. https://news.yahoo.com/california-city-universal-income-transgender-150602734.html https://news.yahoo.com/california-city-universal-income-tran...
nullfield 5y ago
This, approximately, is where the breakdown into bullshit occurred. Biology is a thing. Transgender activists try to do two things at the same time, and the mental gymnastics they have to go through to maintain the bifurcation/cognitive dissonance has to be massive: 1. They claim that sex (male/female or man/woman) and gender (masculine/feminine) are two different things 2. They immediately conflate sex and gender, such that “gay men” (homosexuals) are now “same-gender loving” 3. They abuse you gratuitously if you argue about these concepts I’ve had some pretty long talks with a friend in the field of social work, and (personally) come to a nuanced understanding of “transgender issues” where the short truth is that the large majority of people claiming to be transgendered are suffering from a mental illness. In the end, I don’t think alleged “gender roles” do a lot of good/matter; they’re cultural, and when it comes to things like wearing clothes (skirts, kilts, skinny jeans, cargo pants, v-neck t-shirts, or tank tops)… who cares? Same for makeup, nail polish, piercings like earrings or whatever-those are all just “how you express you”. Claim that a gay guy needs to consider a transgender man a potential partner, though, and you have a problem. A trans man is a trans man-a statement that, being a tautology, it’s insane the amount of vitriol you can get directed at you. Not a man. We don’t have “pregnant people”; only women can be “pregnant”. Oh well. In the end, however this comment goes, I feel I’ve followed HN’s policy of “I clarified some things”, even if some people try to claim that things are not what they are.

thenerdhead 5y ago

Does there become a point where the inclusive language rules starts to exclude a group of people who feel it's too much? I've taken many different D&I trainings. I am still failing to understand the merit of these efforts. I am all for inclusivity and psychological safety, but the very nature of these tools feels exclusive in the process. People who feel psychologically safe would use the language that best describes the thing without any feelings of retaliation from others and the understanding that humans make mistakes.

zzzkkk 5y ago
> Does there become a point where the inclusive language rules starts to exclude a group of people who feel it's too much? If it does, is that perhaps okay? Would this not just be a pendulum swing in the opposite direction from the current group of folks who feel excluded by dominant language? Might that discomfort switching hands, so to speak, be an interesting or useful exercise?
- bavell 5y ago
  Are you asking if excluding people is okay if it's the right group of people?
- wizhi 5y ago
  You'd think, that someone who has suffered would not wish for others to suffer.
- exfascist 5y ago
  If empathy isn't your thing then consider the secondary consequences of this. Many of those people the "pendulum" is swinging away from already feel pretty excluded by society and have little reason to participate. It's driving a mass movement, it's likely what got Trump elected, and it's likely to swing the pendulum back very hard in the direction you don't want it to go. You need to make sure you're not pushing people too hard.
  - zzzkkk 5y ago

zzo38computer 5y ago

Sometimes changing the words to other ones is improvement (using words that are better descriptive (e.g. "firefighter" instead of "fireman"; their job isn't to light you on fire, isn't it?), removing distinctions that are irrelevant or unknown (e.g. words with "-ess", which I think that you usually should not need such a suffix), etc), but sometimes not. About renaming git branches, the change that GitHub made is harmless, and made improvements too, since you can easily change the default branch and rename branches, which is useful for other purposes too. Furthermore, the name "main" is shorter than "master", so there is that advantage, too. The first two letters are also same; I don't know whether or not that might sometimes be an advantage. However, maybe if it were named "trunk" by default then it might be more consistent with other version control systems that use the name "trunk" by default; although, even if it isn't, that isn't a problem either since you can still change the default names anyways. (Note: I do not use git or GitHub, so if I have any incorrect details, then you might add a comment with the corrections, please.) In SQLite, they changed the name of the schema table from "sqlite_master" to "sqlite_schema" (although the old name still works too). The new name is better descriptive of what it does, but I would have consider it is not worth to change this, so now there is two names, etc. I would have waited for SQLite4 and changed it to "sqlite_schema" in SQLite4 (and remove the name "sqlite_master", then), instead, but now it is what it is, and it would be better to keep it how it is instead of changing it back which would be even worse. About "priest"/"priestess", I should think that it should depend on the roles of religious traditions, independently from the gender. (For example, Christian traditions do not have a separate "priestess" role (although some traditions ordain women, but it is not a separate role from men and so the term "priestess" is inappropriate), so should not need to use that word. Some (non-Christian) traditions might not have priests at all.)

jph 5y ago
Thank you for this. I'm adding your schema point and your priest/priestess point, both to the big list.
- kbrannigan 5y ago
  Big list is offensive to smaller lists. Please use a more size-inclusive term like: Not-Small list. Switch "This" to "TTheir" Point is offensive to bluntness . Please use Not so sharp.