Stack Overflow Inc. Fiasco: Timeline
This is a side question, but in regards to the actual gendered pronoun discussion that seems to be at the center of the policy debate, what even is the specific set of criteria being used?<p>It seems like someone is lobbying that moderators <i>must</i> refer to others with pronouns that the other person chooses. Doesn’t this obviously have unsolvable problems, in principle?<p>- most of the time, responses on a Stack Overflow site are content-specific (“clinical”) and should not necessarily make reference to another human at all (and probably should make efforts to avoid such references as often as possible, for writing clarity).<p>- when referencing another comment or answer or something, dry scientific writing that does so without attributable language attaching it to a person would be less controversial, more clear, and less likely to bring subjective opinions into a matter of reference.<p>- you could always make all references revert to a chosen username and restructure language to have no concept of gender, which for clinical writing is a huge positive aspect, and is in no way connected to the preferences of those being referred to (by matter of it being clinical, not by any matter of status of gender identity)<p>- even if you assume you did need to refer by pronoun, how could Person A know what pronoun Person B wishes to be referred by, unless explicitly stated somewhere?<p>- how could you prove negative intent when choosing not to use certain pronouns, as opposed to a mistake, or pronoun identity that was not publicly known, etc.?<p>I’m just curious how such a thing could ever conceivably be part of a policy that restricts or controls clinical writing style in the moderation of a forum. Regardless of all the moderator drama, it just appears to me like a type of policy that functionally cannot exist, regardless of whether a corporate entity declares it a policy or not.