Reminder! If you want to express your opinion in the English Wikipedia
Request for Comment on whether to adopt gender neutral language in
Wikipedia policies (but not articles or discussion pages), this is due
to be *closed this weekend* having reached 30 days for votes and
discussion.
Shortcut:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fae/RFC_GNL
Full link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/RfC_to_adopt_a…
The tally is currently 80 support votes versus 61 oppose votes. That's
57.6% support. A non-controversial "supermajority", as used in some
past RfCs, would require over 60% support.
As a taster, here are 3 sample views expressed for support and oppose,
it's worth browsing through the RfC discussion section to get a feel
for the arguments raised and balance of evidence:
Support "I have no issues with this being done. Assuming proper
grammar is maintained, I think that this can probably be done without
an RfC. Though perhaps the opposition here proves otherwise."
Support "It does not affect others but helps those, who do not use he
or she as pronouns. Using they is also shorter than writing he or
she."
Support "I support the use of gender-neutral language in order to make
everyone feel welcome here at Wikipedia."
Oppose "I do not support altering our text to the proposed doublethink
new-language at the behest of a small minority of non-conformers who
perceive micro-aggressions from standard wording."
Oppose "I am a person, not an object. I was born a man, I will die a
man, and I demand to be referred to in a gender supportive language.
Don't force you preference for gender neutrality on the rest of us
through policy initiatives, otherwise it ceases to be neutrality and
becomes fascist in nature."
Oppose "A bridge too far, heavyhanded and unnecessary. Sure I'd be on
board with suggesting that generic "he" be replaced with singular
"they" or "he or she" or whatever. But, no, even "he or she"
is
considered hostile. Sorry, I consider this an egregious case of
special pleading and first-world-problemism. How about instead lets
worry about how we are unwelcoming to women. That's a lot bigger
problem."
To see who said what, go to the RfC. :-)
Thanks,
Fae
Wikimedia LGBT+
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT+
On 7 April 2017 at 22:51, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
An English Wikipedia gender neutral policy, similar to
the one
developed for Commons, is now under "lively" discussion in a Requests
for Comment started this afternoon. You can read the proposed policy
and join in by adding your viewpoint at:
Shortcut:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fae/RFC_GNL
Full link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/RfC_to_adopt_a…
Some of the comments may be upsetting for some readers. I've actually
been a bit surprised. If it's too much drama for you, go focus on
something more fun.
Thanks,
Fae
Wikimedia LGBT+
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT+
On 5 April 2017 at 11:44, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
*
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Defaulting_to_gende…
Hi,
One of the outcomes from my weekend at the Wikimedia Conference in
Berlin, was that the various discussions over /feeling/ more welcoming
in our language presumptions for non-male contributors made me think
about taking some practical steps on my home project. Commons is lucky
that having a standard policy language of English makes it easier to
use neutral gender in policy statements. I'm taking that further by
proposing that we stick to a neutral gender for all our policies and
help pages. In practice this means that policies avoid using "he or
she" and stick to "they" or avoid using a pronoun at all. I'm hoping
that the outcome will feel like a much more natural space for people
like me that prefer to stay gender neutral, possibly give a slightly
safer feeling to the project by the very act of making the effort, as
well as avoiding an over-emphasis on binary gender when it's pretty
easy to simply avoid it.
Comments are welcome on the specific proposal, or you may have ideas
for other local projects to do something similar. I'm aware that this
is much more difficult to make progress on in languages such as German
or Spanish that have a presumption of male/female gender within their
vocabulary, so any cases of on-project initiatives in non-English
would be especially interesting. Solving these challenges is an
opportunity to make our projects a leader on gender neutrality...
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae