Switch to Gender Neutral Terms

https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/pull/6801

by ahamez • 4 years ago

14 37 4 years ago

github.com

dudul2• 4 years ago

"Many" -> "persony".

I know it's just a poorly written script, but this replacement illustrates so well the craziness of this whole thing.

itsabug8• 4 years ago

How so? These are obviously just bugs? Or obviously trolling?

dudul2• 4 years ago

Of course these are just bugs, when you look at the diff you can infer how naive the regex is.

I did say it was just a poorly written script, but I can't help looking at this and thinking of all the very serious people who simply want to remove the substring "man" from everything.

incomingpain3• 4 years ago

edit/ sorry guess I shouldnt have commented.

falcolas• 4 years ago

It's a poorly written bot is all. There's no debate to be had.

netsharc3• 4 years ago

Oh, check today's date.

I guess tomorrow someone will be offended that someone is making fun of their movement to rid language of sexism and patriarchy. ;)

Edit: but... the bot tried to submit the PR 3 days ago. So... not an April Fool's prank?

incomingpain3• 4 years ago

This is NOT an april fools joke.

itsabug8• 4 years ago

One "debate me" is pretty cringe, but two, I don't think you'd find anyone who thinks those are serious suggestions.

It's either a bug or someone trolling. I push hard for gender neutral language, but not whatever this change is proposing. Helps is not a gendered term, and should remain helps.

lnxg33k13• 4 years ago

Yeah let's just go through an insane amount of efforts to change everything IT so that we can accomodate the 0.something% of the population who can't just accept and he/she and move on

itsabug8• 4 years ago

Trans and non binary folks are probably whole integer percent of populations, and are over represented in tech.

It's trivially easy to use "they" rather than he or she. Or "the person" or whatever the actual noun is.

rbanffy5• 4 years ago

It's not even a matter of making special provisions. It's just plain civility.

If you ask me to refer to you as a "they" or any other pronoun, that's how I'll refer to you.

chinabison• 4 years ago

I'm assuming this is a piss-take.

kleer001• 4 years ago

Sadly it is not. The bot's github page leads back to a real looking webpage. But then again that could be some top tier trolling. The page is completely bereft of any personality, names, or faces... so...

For anyone that cares the argument basically comes down a weak form of the Sapier-Worf hypothesis and the primacy of emotions over any other consideration. A useless and potentially harmful admixture.

hambes• 4 years ago

Given how obviously stupid many of the changes are, to me this looks like a false flag attempt trying to stir outrage against a movement with good intentions.

kazinator• 4 years ago

They are absolutely all stupid. I skimmed through it twice and couldn't find a single good-by-fluke edit.

tomlockwood2• 4 years ago

This got upvoted to the frontpage because it aligns with the preconceptions of a certain subset of HN readers. How representative is this single issue of the variety of discussions currently ongoing about inclusivity in tech?

itsabug8• 4 years ago

Right? "College student tries to help out, program has bugs, HN loses their goddamn minds" lol

Edit: the replies to this comment are emblematic of HN losing their goddamn minds. Hey, y'all, sometimes humans are humans. Sometimes college kids have big ideas and don't nail it. Have a little empathy, have a chuckle, and move on.

slenk• 4 years ago

"College students wastes maintainers times by pushing worthless PRs"

Moreover, they didn't contact the owner of the repository, who says they don't want bot flows.

Does being a college student mean you can just waste people's time?

tomlockwood2• 4 years ago

It's absolutely contentless garbage!

netsharc3• 4 years ago

I'm not sure what it is anymore. "College student" has a LinkedIn page that shows he's been at the college for 4 years and has had several internships in FAANG. The bot's linked website is slick and too serious to be an April Fools prank.

I wonder who the fools are if someone who can get internships at FAANG can't write a proper search and replace bot.

rbanffy5• 4 years ago

The PR was a couple days too early. Looks like a buggy bot that needs human supervision.

WhatsName• 4 years ago

Should have linked this issued (given hard to find, since the bot went wild), for more context and comments by the bot author: https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/pu...

My personal experience with most of these bots is, most of them are promoting some kind of service (image/badge bots) or try to enforce a certain behavior onto maintainers ("Your are missing a [code of conduct]"). Haven't yet come across anything useful.

If your political issue is something you truly care about, please at least make the effort hand craft your pull-request. And even then, it would be awesome to keep politics out of code.

itsabug8• 4 years ago

One, you can't keep politics out of code. Code, like sports, like games, like movies, etc. is inherently political. Who has access to software? Who doesn't? Who is in the training set? Who isn't? Who gets the education necessary to write code? Who doesn't?

But I agree, you should target these improvements to open source tools you use, care about, or are a contributor to. It's ok to have a bot assist in writing the PR, but you should deploy it narrowly.

branneman• 4 years ago

April Fools I guess, considering the actual commit content:

- many -> persony

- helps -> theylps

- here -> theyre

- historical -> theirstorical

itsabug8• 4 years ago

Buggy bot, looks like a college student trying to help but not fully testing.

cameronfraser• 4 years ago

this was happening before april fools

laserdancepony• 4 years ago

This is getting so out of hand, it's not even funny anymore. Just like the blacklist/whitelist debate or the github master branch shitshow. Are there no real problems left?

Switch to Gender Neutral Terms

Related Stories