[ksec]

[Off Topic]

I was very late to the whole StackOverflow Saga, and didn't spend much time reading through all of its causes and comments at the time it happen.

And when I did, the thing that struck me most and has been in many other places including HN ( Sometimes ) is the use of English presumes others are Americans, especially in technology sector. This completely ignores people all over the world using English to communicates. And this is not about cultures or values, but what is a pronoun? How do we use the correct "pronoun", how do we tell which one to use. I suspect many native English user will have cognitive load and may decide it is not worth the hassle and walk away.

What about those that uses English as 2nd or even 3rd language.

I remember a story my British Colleague once told me, our German Colleague is so good with his English, so precise that sometimes it is borderline rude if you didn't know he was German. i.e The tone is wrong, but Germany tends to be very explicit about things in their culture, not the same could be said about the Brits.

It is important to understand the meaning, and messages that is trying to come across behind its written or verbal form, and often not literally what it meant.

If we have to nitpick every single word, phase or grammatical mistake as well as whatever political issues it is with the usage of the word, we will very quickly end up with people not communicating to you ( or in this case Stack overflow ) in the fear of constantly being bashed and disrupted.

[flukus]

> And when I did, the thing that struck me most and has been in many other places including HN ( Sometimes ) is the use of English presumes others are Americans

This is a huge problem, the assumption that everyone should be forced to share Americas liberal political views. Software is global and much of the globe is still struggling with concepts like equal rights for women and not criminalizing homosexuality. Now all of a sudden people in those countries are being penalized for having perfectly normal attitudes for someone from their culture.

"Inclusivity" is alienating most of the world and destroying diversity for the few people in the world privileged enough to argue about pronouns.

[unforeseen9991]

I didn't assume, but I can tell right away when someone has English as a second language like you do.

I pick up grammatical oddities as I read, and if I had to guess i'd say your first language is of Asian origin, possibly Filipino.

Of course that doesn't mean you aren't American, but I assume you are not vs are in this kind of situation.

It probably depends on how "American" the forum for discussion is vs global, I see HN more American then say, Reddit.

[ksec]

>I pick up grammatical oddities as I read

Mind sharing? So I can improve on it, it is funny as this is not the first time someone said I am Filipino, which I am not XD.

[kelnos]

I don't think your post is off-topic at all.

We have very few signals in this medium that can tell us if someone is acting in bad faith, or just simply made a mistake. The scary thing about this code of conduct change is that it's mandating required behavior, which is a little unusual: most items in a code of conduct remind people of things they should not do, but speak in general only about behaviors that promote inclusiveness. This new bit is very specific, and lays out rules for how to use language. English itself is not a particularly consistent language even within English-majority countries like the US or UK; differences are huge between countries, especially when English isn't the primary language, due both to cultural convention and personal skill with the language.

I do think we should refer to people using their preferred pronouns when known. But we need to make allowances for mistakes; sadly I expect that the norm will be an assumption of bad faith when simple mistakes are likely to be the most common case.