Hoi, <grin> I find it funny that this is so far a male only conversation </grin> The development of this bit of software was not undertaken for Dutch or German. It is of particular value to those languages where women are addressed differently in any sentence. It is a missing part of the work that has been done so far. The fact that it can be of use for Dutch and German is a bonus. When people do not identify themselves as either male or female, there are default ways of dealing with this. Typically a person is then addressed as male. As this is a personal choice, it is best left to the person involved. This means that a person chooses what fits best for him or her. When something is unusual and addressing people personally in software is unusual it will get peoples heckles up. There will be opposition. The situation we face is one where females for all kinds of reasons do not contribute to our projects. We now have the ability to have a user interface that will address people properly once they have identified themselves in this way. While leaving it to the community is the default best answer, this is where a distinct minority will be affected by whatever choice made. The word paternalistic comes to mind when we males are to decide for the women. [[gender]] setting is used in the localisation already. Not doing it would leave an inconsistency that is fixed by this software. For languages like Dutch and German there is a choice. The word "gebruiker" is not like "kameraad" that does not have a female form. I would prefer to leave it to people to make up their own mind. Thanks, Gerard On 13 February 2011 11:12, Thomas Goldammer &lt;thogol(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:

Gerard, a girl posting here, not anymore a "male" discussion ;) *Lodewijk and Thomas: so why change it to something causing problems all Why? Maybe to call a girl by her real gender. The problems you both listed are not real problems. The male version is only used if you don't know the gender. But all wikimedia know that Sue (for example) is a girl, so why we still need to see a male word in her "user" page? *Lodewijk: **Gerard, this wouldn't really help to attract more new female Could you please tell me why? I can set my preferences to "male" or "female", but i can't see my "user" page with my real gender. And yes, that is a matter of choice, you can say that not every girl will like to be called "usuária" or Gebruikster" or "Benutzerin", but if you guys change the MediaWiki they can have the power to chose. And right now we don't have that, do we? *Austin: Like with many European languages, the masculine is the default and Anti feminist and partenalist is see several guys deciding what we want or don't want in our user pages. We are not here to change French or German grammar, if the feminine is made by adding a sufix, is a local language problem (btw, in portuguese, the male version is also a "sufix", so is "usuári*o* / usuári*a*). Again here we are not change grammar, we are only talking about give girls the "possibility" to be called by the right form in the MediaWiki system. *Austin: **It seems more like an individual preference to me.* It is a individual preference. But a preference you people don't seems to want us to decide if we want of not. _____ *Béria Lima* <http://wikimedia.pt/*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer. * 2011/2/13 Austin Hair &lt;adhair(a)gmail.com > On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Lodewijk &lt;lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org> wrote: > > And do you want it to be implemented :) But that question is to be > > answered on a community level of course - but I guess there are a few > > potential reasons why they might not want to implement it: > [...] > > * Although grammatically correct, I would find "gebruikster" in Dutch > > very weird - because it is rarely used it would put a huge emphasis on > > the fact that someone is female - this will depend per language. > In English, of course, "Userette" would be even worse, being totally > contrived. > Like with many European languages, the masculine is the default and > feminine suffixes are added only for emphasis, which is pretty > anti-feminist, and it doesn't help that the feminine forms are related > to or even the same as the diminutive forms. And so we're > systematically eliminating words like "stewardess" and "usherette." > (Though we've introduced new forms like "chairwoman" and "gentlelady," > so we're not exactly consistent.) > As I understand it, the Dutch word for "secretary" has two different > connotations based on the gender applied. "Secretaris" is more like > "UN General Secretary," while "secretaresse" is "someone who does your > typing and gets you coffee." I don't tink Dutch is unique in that. > > * I'm no expert in the field, but I can imagine some issues around > > transgender people > Not touching that one, but yes. > > etc. I would be a supporter of making it possible for a community to > > make this choice, but I would not like us to make that choice for > > them. > I would have taken this for granted, but I don't think it's a strictly > linguistic issue, and I'm not sure it's even something that should be > determined on a wiki-by-wiki basis. It seems more like an individual > preference to me. > Austin > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

To be absolutely clear: I am not against the feature, I am just against applying it to every user that indicated his/her gender without asking. Up to now (afaik) the male/female setting was only used for communication *to* the user: that is private. To turn on suddenly a feature that shows this also explicitely to the outside world is a whole different thing. Also, in some languages the difference between male/female maybe exist if you search hard (like Dutch), but are not commonly used (like gebruikster - I never ever heard that being used in common conversations). I am just saying that we should not force these changes on communities and groups of people without consulting them. They know their language best and how common the term is, how it comes across culturally etc. The fact that a term exists doesnt mean we should use it. I also agree with Austin that it should be even better to determine it as well on a personal level. But I would make it a two level choice: first the community should decide to turn it on in the first place in their wiki, then the user should decide to turn it on in their individual case. Lodewijk 2011/2/13 Austin Hair &lt;adhair(a)gmail.com&gt;om>:

No Momo, your user page will be User:Mono as always. _____ *Béria Lima (Beh) (351) 925 171 484* 2011/2/13 The Mono &lt;mono(a)mono.x10.bz&gt;

I have one: I want you to tell me WHY is easy make a female noob will be able to use javascript, templates and redirects than click in one button and say "I'm a girl". MediaWiki is full of things since forever. The software will not broke because one more feature. ____ *Béria Lima (Beh) (351) 925 171 484* 2011/2/14 Ryan Lomonaco &lt;wiki.ral315(a)gmail.com&gt;

Hoi, Yes. This software is part of [[gender]] support in MediaWiki. It does not stand on its own. Gender support is necessary for many languages if you are willing to do the proper thing and address women as its grammars require. The only reason why most software does not support this feature is because most developers are ignorant of the need for this. NB supporting gender is part of the internationalisation of software. Either way, do or don't there is a choice to make. For languages that have [[gender]] for proper localisation already, implementing this is a no brainer. For languages like Dutch or German it is a novelty. Thanks, GerardM On 14 February 2011 06:32, Ryan Lomonaco &lt;wiki.ral315(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: