On 5/26/05, Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
On English Wikipedia (dunno about the others) there is a facebook page where you can put your photograph if you want people to know stuff like gender (or you can just say "I am male" or "I am female" on your user page). In general it doesn't make much difference, though, and is not relevant to use of Wikipedia. I've managed perfectly well for about a decade usually roleplaying female online, and nobody ever knows if I don't want them to know. Even those who do know tend to forget, such is the power of illusion.
An illusion much harder to maintain in a language like French for exemple, where many times I will have to use a female form of a past participle or an adjective and give myself away ;-). It is quite an interesting thing to note , that English is language with which it is much easier to hide your gender than with many other languages.
Delphine