[Foundation-l] Showing the difference between the sexes

Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
Mon Feb 14 09:00:27 UTC 2011


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 <wiki.ral315 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rather than implementing MediaWiki code that could be controversial,
> there's
> probably an easier solution that requires no code:
>
> - Add a pseudo-namespace (such as the WP: prefix on Wikipedia, WN: on
> Wikinews, etc.) that forwards from Benutzerin to Benutzer (and the relevant
> User talk namespaces).  This would mean that either Benutzer or Benutzerin
> would successfully link to one's user pages.
>
> - Let users add a template to their user and talk pages that changes the
> title of the page from Benutzer to Benutzerin.  This could be easily done
> using the magic word {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and possibly JavaScript to modify the
> user/user talk links at the top of the page.
>
> This has the benefits of not adding more code to MediaWiki, not requiring
> users to choose their gender unless they want to, and ensuring that if
> someone doesn't know whether I'm male or female, they can get to my user
> page without having to guess.
>
> It would obviously be a decision for communities to make, but if there were
> consensus to do it, I'm pretty sure that it could easily be done this way.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> --
> [[User:Ral315]]
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