Re: New Front Desk members

[Peter Samuelson]

[Anthony Towns]
> Is there any reason why grammar, porn and spam debates are attracting
> so much traffic?

I rather suspect one factor is increasing one's visibility in the
Project, without having to work on and think about technical issues.
(This sort of thing has been noted before, with the "send Linus
spelling fixes in kernel variables and comments" effect.)  That seems
like a silly goal, I know ... but even so, I wouldn't be at all
surprised if, when you correlate hot-babe verbiage with measurable,
useful Debian work, there'd be a rough inverse relationship.

There are no doubt some people who do have better things to do but
choose to ramble about Sexy Losers anyway - I can't explain *them*, but
I suspect they're in the minority.


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Goswin von Brederlow]

Florian Weimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> * Goswin von Brederlow:
>
>>> Or, at least, how many people in the project are willing to claim to
>>> be women. :)
>>
>> Every NM sends in his passport [...]
>
> Not true, this is only a fallback mechanism if there's no other means
> to identify them.

Looks like the ID check has changed then since I applied last.

MfG
Goswin


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Florian Weimer]

* Goswin von Brederlow:

>> Or, at least, how many people in the project are willing to claim to
>> be women. :)
>
> Every NM sends in his passport [...]

Not true, this is only a fallback mechanism if there's no other means
to identify them.


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Goswin von Brederlow]

Goswin von Brederlow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Chris Waters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 12:58:17PM +0100, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote:
>>> This way we could also simply check how many women is involved in
>>> Debian project ;)
>>
>> Or, at least, how many people in the project are willing to claim to
>> be women. :)
>
> Every NM sends in his passport and the sex is probably noted there in
> every country.
>
> MfG
> Goswin

Or hers, sorry.

MfG
Goswin


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Goswin von Brederlow]

Chris Waters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 12:58:17PM +0100, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote:
>> This way we could also simply check how many women is involved in
>> Debian project ;)
>
> Or, at least, how many people in the project are willing to claim to
> be women. :)

Every NM sends in his passport and the sex is probably noted there in
every country.

MfG
Goswin


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Brian M. Carlson]

On Tue, 2005-02-01 at 20:12 +0200, Richard Braakman wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 03:41:51PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:04:36 -0700, Joel Aelwyn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 
> > 
> > > *) English common usage (rather than formal usage) is rapidly and
> > > widely adopting "singular they" (much like a lot of the country uses
> > > "y'all", or "you all" for those who don't want to sound Southern,
> > > for a second person plural). This may be offensive to purists, but
> > > frankly, purists shouldn't be speaking English in the first
> > > place. It's a terrible language for purity. :)
> > 
> > A nit: y'all is singular. "all y'all" is plural. Notherners
> >  often get this wrong.
> 
> Hmm.  In my experience in Houston, the singular was y'all and the
> plural was y'alls.  Could this be region-specific?  Or perhaps
> a city / country distinction?

I live in Houston, and sometimes y'all is singular (plural, all y'all;
possessive, y'all's) and sometimes y'all is plural. Usually it's the
former, but I've never heard of y'alls being plural.


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Don Armstrong]

[GAR! Why am I responding to this thread?]

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005, Chris Waters wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 12:58:17PM +0100, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote:
> > By the way. Could we please use "gender" in db.debian.org?
> 
> As long as we're on the topic of language and usage, I should point
> out that gender is properly a property of words.  People don't have
> gender - people have sex (if you'll pardon the double-entendre).

People can have gender. To wit:

  Gender \Gen"der\, n. 
 [...]
 1. Kind; sort. [Obs.] ``One gender of herbs.'' --Shak.
  
 2. Sex, male or female. [Obs. or Colloq.]
  
 3. (Gram.) A classification of nouns, primarily according to
sex; and secondarily according to some fancied or imputed
quality associated with sex.

The word 'sex' has many more connotations than the mere property of
being male or female.


Don Armstrong

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Re: New Front Desk members

[Richard Braakman]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 03:41:51PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:04:36 -0700, Joel Aelwyn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 
> 
> > *) English common usage (rather than formal usage) is rapidly and
> > widely adopting "singular they" (much like a lot of the country uses
> > "y'all", or "you all" for those who don't want to sound Southern,
> > for a second person plural). This may be offensive to purists, but
> > frankly, purists shouldn't be speaking English in the first
> > place. It's a terrible language for purity. :)
> 
>   A nit: y'all is singular. "all y'all" is plural. Notherners
>  often get this wrong.

Hmm.  In my experience in Houston, the singular was y'all and the
plural was y'alls.  Could this be region-specific?  Or perhaps
a city / country distinction?

Richard Braakman


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Stephen Gran]

This one time, at band camp, MJ Ray said:
> Nick wrote:
> > Trying to think of a more obvious example... how would you rephrase
> > "Imagine that you are in a dark room when you hear someone enter.
> > Having entered, they close the door behind them." without butchering
> > it completely?
> 
> In that phrase, it's not clear how many people have entered. In
> NM pages, it was clear how many applicants there are.

Actually, 'someone' is fairly clearly singular.

But it could easily be rewritten as "Having entered, the person closed
the door behind them." without butchering it.
-- 
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Stephen Gran]

This one time, at band camp, Jaldhar H. Vyas said:
> On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, MJ Ray wrote:
> >
> > *The* country? I've not noticed southern England using "y'all",
> > but I'm not from there. ;-)
> >
> 
> That would be youse in one part of Essex at least.

Funny, it's exactly the same in Philadelphia.

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Re: New Front Desk members

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, MJ Ray wrote:

>
> *The* country? I've not noticed southern England using "y'all",
> but I'm not from there. ;-)
>

That would be youse in one part of Essex at least.

Personally I would resent any attempts to force gender-neutral[sic]
language, the whole idea is quite dumb, but if someone's asking nicely and
the author is willing to go along with it I don't really care.

-- 
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La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Joel Aelwyn]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 03:41:51PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:04:36 -0700, Joel Aelwyn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 
> 
> > *) English common usage (rather than formal usage) is rapidly and
> > widely adopting "singular they" (much like a lot of the country uses
> > "y'all", or "you all" for those who don't want to sound Southern,
> > for a second person plural). This may be offensive to purists, but
> > frankly, purists shouldn't be speaking English in the first
> > place. It's a terrible language for purity. :)
> 
>   A nit: y'all is singular. "all y'all" is plural. Notherners
>  often get this wrong.
> 
>   manoj

This is depedant on regional (sub-?) dialect. In general, the use
of "y'all" as singular and "all'y'all" as plural is associated with
"backwoods" southern US speech patterns, and is less commonly found in the
more urban areas, or the more northern areas of "the South".

I know of nowhere, offhand, north of the Mason-Dixon line or west of the
Mississippi that uses "all'y'all", but the use of "y'all" as a second
person plural can be found in most of the rest of the US, as far as I can
tell (certainly I've personally heard it used in every section I've been
to, which covers just about everything but the Pacific Northwest and the
Deep South - but "y'all" is more common in the parts of the Carolinas I
lived in).

They may exist, but they don't seem to be the rule.

(And for the record, I'm not a Northerner; it's worse, I'm one of those
damned Texans, who can't speak the same as *anyone* else in the US ...)
-- 
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Joel Aelwyn]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 07:20:31PM +, MJ Ray wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > By the same token, it should also have a second person plural,
> > which it lacks [...] much like a lot of the country uses
> > "y'all", or "you all" for those who don't want to sound
> > Southern, for a second person plural [...]
> 
> *The* country? I've not noticed southern England using "y'all",
> but I'm not from there. ;-)
> 
> I think Northampton dialect uses a second person plural which
> sounds like "orlvyeh" (might be "all of you"?) for cases
> when "you" is ambiguous. Like most English dialects, there's
> little written work and dictionaries are hard to get. I think
> developments often try to *reduce* complexity and ambiguity,
> but abuse of they increases ambiguity.

Touche (I *know* the e is accented, but I don't want to fight with my
not-very-good-at-UTF-8 input device to manage it). I stand duly chastized
for not paying enough attention to my choice of words there.

Mostly I find the concept of 'thou shall not sully the ancient tongue',
English-spoken-as-my-English-teacher-spoke-it rules silly. The roots of
the use of singular they can be traced back a *long* ways if you want to
get into the linguistics behind it, certainly a lot farther than what the
average person today would be able to recognize as "English" (or should
that be Anglish? How much of it is really Saxon? And so on...).

Oddly, this has some interesting ties to why "its" is a possessive
pronoun and "it's" is a contraction. :)
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Anthony Towns]

Thaddeus H. Black wrote:
Anthony Towns asks,
Is there any reason why grammar, porn and spam debates
are attracting so much traffic?
With reference to the three specific topics
listed---grammar, porn and spam---and at the risk of
inadvertently choosing inapt words, one might illustrate
the two conflicting visions as follows.
  Left: grammar should not discriminate; porn offends
  some people but so does bible-kjv; censorship is
  evil.
  Right: grammar should not mangle the ancient tongue;
  pornography is evil; community demands standards of
  behavior.
Dude, that was a complaint, not an excuse to add politics to the list.
Cheers,
aj
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Re: New Front Desk members

[MJ Ray]

Nick wrote:
> Trying to think of a more obvious example... how would you rephrase
> "Imagine that you are in a dark room when you hear someone enter.
> Having entered, they close the door behind them." without butchering
> it completely?

In that phrase, it's not clear how many people have entered. In
NM pages, it was clear how many applicants there are.


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Chris Waters]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 12:58:17PM +0100, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote:

> By the way. Could we please use "gender" in db.debian.org?

As long as we're on the topic of language and usage, I should point
out that gender is properly a property of words.  People don't have
gender - people have sex (if you'll pardon the double-entendre).

Ok, ok, this is changing, and the misuse of the word "gender" to mean
"sex" is widespread enough that it's probably considered acceptable
these days.  But it just strikes me as annoying and prudish.  (Plus, I
like saying "words have gender, people have sex.")  :)

Anyway, I don't object to the idea in principle, as long as it's
optional.  I think some people might think that their sex is
irrelevant to their role as DD, and thus, nobody's business.

> This way we could also simply check how many women is involved in
> Debian project ;)

Or, at least, how many people in the project are willing to claim to
be women. :)

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Re: New Front Desk members

[Thaddeus H. Black]

Anthony Towns asks,

> Is there any reason why grammar, porn and spam debates
> are attracting so much traffic?

There is a reason, I think.  Characterizable visions
fundamentally conflict.  Although innumerable subtle
shadings of viewpoint are found, one does notice that,
by and large, the same people tend to come down together
on the same sides of such issues.  Lacking distinctive
uniforms, we nevertheless divide ourselves roughly onto
two opposing sides: the left and the right.

With reference to the three specific topics
listed---grammar, porn and spam---and at the risk of
inadvertently choosing inapt words, one might illustrate
the two conflicting visions as follows.

  Left: grammar should not discriminate; porn offends
  some people but so does bible-kjv; censorship is
  evil.

  Right: grammar should not mangle the ancient tongue;
  pornography is evil; community demands standards of
  behavior.

There are three statements on each side, and if on the
surface you can agree with all six statements then you
stand in good company.  But what the words mean to you
may not be quite what the same words mean to the guy on
the other side; and even when the words do mean the
same, the emphasis differs critically.

Such conflicts of vision are no new thing under the sun.

For the two sides even to discuss the specific issues
sensibly is very, very hard.  Each side finds the other
not only incorrect but inherently unreasonable.  Each
tends to talk past the other, as it were.  Frustration
simmers.  Agreement is not found because the topic
discussed on the surface is seldom the real topic: it is
proxy for a deeper matter of the heart.

What the two sides agree on, in this venue, is the great
principle of software freedom.  On such an honorable
common ground slumbers fitfully the long, uneasy truce.

-- 
Thaddeus H. Black
508 Nellie's Cave Road
Blacksburg, Virginia 24060, USA
+1 540 961 0920, [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Anthony Towns]

Steve Langasek wrote:
On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 03:41:51PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
A nit: y'all is singular. "all y'all" is plural. Notherners
often get this wrong.
Amusing to have this juxtaposed with the statement that English is a
terrible language for purity. ;)
Yes, I'm a northerner, and yes, "y'all" is plural to me.
Well, hey, I'm further south than all y'all, and I reckon y'all is 
plural on its own. Fair enough?

Err, ObPatch: Bug#293096
Cheers,
aj
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Duncan Findlay]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 10:05:33PM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote:
> * Joerg Jaspert ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [050131 19:00]:
> > On 10186 March 1977, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > 
> > >> > Could you please reword these to use gender-neutral language.  My 
> > >> > suggested solutions for the problematic paragraphs are included below.
> > >> Ugh.  English has no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun,
> > > "they".
> 
> > they is gender-neutral? Leads to very bad-sounding, at least for my ear,
> > things like
> > 
> > - How have they contributed to Debian already?
> - How has your sponsoree contributed ...?

I'm pretty sure that isn't a word.

-- 
Duncan Findlay


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Anthony Towns]

Matthew Garrett wrote:
Joerg Jaspert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
they is gender-neutral? Leads to very bad-sounding, at least for my ear,
things like
How have they contributed to Debian already?
What do they intend to do for Debian in the future?
How do they interact with others, such as users and other developers
It's fairly common usage in English, and it'll probably even be
considered correct in a few years...
It made it into the 14th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, 
apparently; though they took it back out for the 15th. What's considered 
correct changes pretty regularly.

Anyway, as long as you can work out what's being communicated, the only 
things that matter are whether the guidelines make it attractive for 
people to join and help out; and working to avoid both the "oh, only men 
are allowed in, huh?" reaction, and the "oh, so only people who can 
avoid clumsy sentences are allowed in? well, go stick your participles 
up your split infinitives" reaction both seem worthwhile.

Is there any reason why grammar, porn and spam debates are attracting so 
much traffic?

Cheers,
aj
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Steve Langasek]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 03:41:51PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:04:36 -0700, Joel Aelwyn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> > *) English common usage (rather than formal usage) is rapidly and
> > widely adopting "singular they" (much like a lot of the country uses
> > "y'all", or "you all" for those who don't want to sound Southern,
> > for a second person plural). This may be offensive to purists, but
> > frankly, purists shouldn't be speaking English in the first
> > place. It's a terrible language for purity. :)

>   A nit: y'all is singular. "all y'all" is plural. Notherners
>  often get this wrong.

Amusing to have this juxtaposed with the statement that English is a
terrible language for purity. ;)

Yes, I'm a northerner, and yes, "y'all" is plural to me.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: New Front Desk members

[MJ Ray]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> [...] they had signs saying, "Each passenger
> must have their own ticket."  This line made it all the way through an
> entire bureaucracy without anyone noticing it was "wrong".

The area where I grew up had signs which clearly said
"No parking offenders will be prosecuted" which wasn't
what was meant either. Some signs have errors.


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Chris Waters]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 10:06:01AM -0500, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> On Monday 31 January 2005 03:43 am, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

> > I wonder how many native speakers would assume "they" to refer to an
> > unknown number of unknown elements when used as an indefinite pronoum?
> >  That seems to be the real question here.

>   Whatever its merits in formal writing, "they" is commonly used
>   colloquially > (at least around here) as a gender-neutral
>   substitute for "he" or "she".

As for Henrique's point - if it doesn't make sense to you, that's
because you were taught English wrong.  Which is ok, I was taught
wrong too.  Back in the seventies, I was taught that you don't end a
sentence with a preposition, that you don't split an infinitive, and
that you don't use "they" as a singular pronoun.  (Oh, and you don't
play fast-and-loose with adverbs like I did in the first sentences of
this paragraph.)  All of those rules are now considered false,
because, even though they were jammed down the throats of
schoolchildren for nearly two centuries, they never, ever took.

Back in the seventies, they opened up a brand-new subway here (BART),
and in the subway stations, they had signs saying, "Each passenger
must have their own ticket."  This line made it all the way through an
entire bureaucracy without anyone noticing it was "wrong".  And the
reason nobody noticed was that that's the way native speakers speak.
My high-school English teacher organized a protest, and got the signs
"fixed", and I was actually pretty proud of him at the time, because I
didn't realize (yet) that he was trying to enforce an invalid and
misguided rule.

And yet, the use of the singular "they" does still make people
uncomfortable.  Possibly (probably) because it was and is so much more
widespread and obvious than the sentences that end with prepositions
or the split infintives, and thus it was something that people
thought they could "correct" (like my high-school English teacher).
But in any case, prejudice against the singular "they" is widespread
enough that it's usage cannot be consider better than colloquial, as
Daniel notes.  Unfortunately, the formally "correct" alternative -
using "he" - also makes people uncomfortable (as we see from the
current debate).  So there's really no way to win here.

Now, I try to stick with "he" in my formal writing, but generally use
"they" in my informal writings.  As a project, though, I think we
should stay out of the debate, and leave it up to the individual
author(s).  Because there really is no "right" answer here.

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Re: New Front Desk members

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:04:36 -0700, Joel Aelwyn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> *) English common usage (rather than formal usage) is rapidly and
> widely adopting "singular they" (much like a lot of the country uses
> "y'all", or "you all" for those who don't want to sound Southern,
> for a second person plural). This may be offensive to purists, but
> frankly, purists shouldn't be speaking English in the first
> place. It's a terrible language for purity. :)

A nit: y'all is singular. "all y'all" is plural. Notherners
 often get this wrong.

manoj
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Andreas Barth]

* Joerg Jaspert ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [050131 19:00]:
> On 10186 March 1977, Steve Langasek wrote:
> 
> >> > Could you please reword these to use gender-neutral language.  My 
> >> > suggested solutions for the problematic paragraphs are included below.
> >> Ugh.  English has no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun,
> > "they".

> they is gender-neutral? Leads to very bad-sounding, at least for my ear,
> things like
> 
> - How have they contributed to Debian already?
- How has your sponsoree contributed ...?

and so on.


Cheers,
Andi
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Re: New Front Desk members

[MJ Ray]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> By the same token, it should also have a second person plural,
> which it lacks [...] much like a lot of the country uses
> "y'all", or "you all" for those who don't want to sound
> Southern, for a second person plural [...]

*The* country? I've not noticed southern England using "y'all",
but I'm not from there. ;-)

I think Northampton dialect uses a second person plural which
sounds like "orlvyeh" (might be "all of you"?) for cases
when "you" is ambiguous. Like most English dialects, there's
little written work and dictionaries are hard to get. I think
developments often try to *reduce* complexity and ambiguity,
but abuse of they increases ambiguity.


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Helen Faulkner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-01-30 19:27]:
> Could you please reword these to use gender-neutral language.  My
> suggested solutions for the problematic paragraphs are included
> below.

Thanks, I've added your and Anthony DeRobertis's changes.
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Matthew Garrett]

Joerg Jaspert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> they is gender-neutral? Leads to very bad-sounding, at least for my ear,
> things like
> 
> How have they contributed to Debian already?
> What do they intend to do for Debian in the future?
> How do they interact with others, such as users and other developers

It's fairly common usage in English, and it'll probably even be
considered correct in a few years...

-- 
Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Joel Aelwyn]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 10:14:12AM -0500, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> On Monday 31 January 2005 10:06 am, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> > "they" is commonly used colloquially
> > (at least around here) as a gender-neutral substitute for "he" or "she".
> 
>   And just to be ultra-clear, I don't mean "used by PC people", but rather 
> "used in informal speech as the preferred alternative when you don't know the 
> gender of the person to whom you are referring" -- much to the dismay of our 
> high school English teachers, who tried their best to get us to use one of 
> the formally correct alternatives.

My high school English teachers (and the spouse who is an English major)
all came to the same conclusion:

*) It would be *best* if English adopted an explicit third-person
gender-neutral pronoun (as opposed to a ungendered one, which is what 'it'
means, and which people find quite offensive because it implies no gender,
rather than an unknown one). By the same token, it should also have a
second person plural, which it lacks... neither of these appear to have
any formal choices that are in fact recognized by anyone who *uses* the
language.

*) English common usage (rather than formal usage) is rapidly and widely
adopting "singular they" (much like a lot of the country uses "y'all",
or "you all" for those who don't want to sound Southern, for a second
person plural). This may be offensive to purists, but frankly, purists
shouldn't be speaking English in the first place. It's a terrible language
for purity. :)

The second point above means, very simply, that it is an evolving language,
and the people using the language have found a way to answer their need for
having a way to refer to a third party of an unknown or unspecified gender.
And this isn't just PC-speak; it can be found far more widely than it used
to be, and much more casually.

Certainly, the rules for writing business memos at my employer strongly
imply (though they don't come out and say it) that using "he" is considered
to be reinforcing a discrimination of language in connotation, *whatever*
the denotation may be, and is to be avoided - whether by using a specific
noun ("the customer", "the employee"), singular they (if you can't read
the sentance out loud with a straight face, this is a bad choice), or
restructuring the sentance to not need a pronoun in that spot.

The first of those tends to get clumsy quickly; the latter is one of the
only real, workable solutions that doens't piss off one camp or the other,
because it avoids the situation entirely.
-- 
Joel Aelwyn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   ,''`.
 : :' :
 `. `'
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Joerg Jaspert]

On 10186 March 1977, Steve Langasek wrote:

>> > Could you please reword these to use gender-neutral language.  My 
>> > suggested solutions for the problematic paragraphs are included below.
>> Ugh.  English has no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun,
> "they".

they is gender-neutral? Leads to very bad-sounding, at least for my ear,
things like

- How have they contributed to Debian already?
- What do they intend to do for Debian in the future?
- How do they interact with others, such as users and other developers?

which is asked in the advocate mail at the moment. Asking about one
person with they, gna. I cant imagine that this could be right. :)

-- 
bye Joerg
Some NM:
"Essential: Yes" -- useful for a message when you do apt-get remove bash


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Daniel Burrows]

On Monday 31 January 2005 10:06 am, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> "they" is commonly used colloquially
> (at least around here) as a gender-neutral substitute for "he" or "she".

  And just to be ultra-clear, I don't mean "used by PC people", but rather 
"used in informal speech as the preferred alternative when you don't know the 
gender of the person to whom you are referring" -- much to the dismay of our 
high school English teachers, who tried their best to get us to use one of 
the formally correct alternatives.

  Daniel

-- 
/--- Daniel Burrows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --\
|  Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you |
|  tied them the usual way.  This happens to us all the |
|  time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.   |
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Daniel Burrows]

On Monday 31 January 2005 03:43 am, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> I wonder how many native speakers would assume "they" to refer to an
> unknown number of unknown elements when used as an indefinite pronoum?
>  That seems to be the real question here.

  Whatever its merits in formal writing, "they" is commonly used colloquially 
(at least around here) as a gender-neutral substitute for "he" or "she".

  Daniel

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|-- "The Princess Bride"|
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Re: New Front Desk members

[martin f krafft]

I apologise for entering this discussion without doing my homework.

Argh.

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Re: New Front Desk members

[Steve Langasek]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 02:13:12PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005.01.31.1258 
> +0100]:
> > By the way. Could we please use "gender" in db.debian.org?

> This is a good idea.

> To address Helen's concern... this is a problem with the English
> language. However, it is only a problem ever since feminists
> identified it as such. 'he' only respresents disrespect of the
> female gender's role if you want it to. I would say that most every
> user reading the documents will not care whether the new maintainer
> is female or male, a talking parrot or a disguising alien, a table
> cloth or a plant. It's a "new maintainer" in the context of the NM
> documents, nothing more and nothing less.

> You have the choice to either bloat every text with the "he or she"
> and "his or her" stuff, or just deal.

If you don't want to get flamed, try to make a point of reading the thread
you're replying to, as using "he or she" was *not* the suggestion of the
woman (which I guess is what you mean by "feminist") who started this
thread.

Onward in the noble fight for singular they,
-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: New Front Desk members

[martin f krafft]

also sprach Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005.01.31.1258 
+0100]:
> By the way. Could we please use "gender" in db.debian.org?

This is a good idea.

To address Helen's concern... this is a problem with the English
language. However, it is only a problem ever since feminists
identified it as such. 'he' only respresents disrespect of the
female gender's role if you want it to. I would say that most every
user reading the documents will not care whether the new maintainer
is female or male, a talking parrot or a disguising alien, a table
cloth or a plant. It's a "new maintainer" in the context of the NM
documents, nothing more and nothing less.

You have the choice to either bloat every text with the "he or she"
and "his or her" stuff, or just deal. I find that political (or
whatever) correctness makes texts awkward to read. They provide no
benefits other than give the feminists a feeling of success, which
is fake anyway.

I realise this is flame bait. Please don't. If you want to see
gender support in the Debian documentation, check it out from CVS
and get going. I doubt people will object.

-- 
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 .''`. martin f. krafft <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo]

On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 07:27:26PM +, Helen Faulkner wrote:
> I was looking over some of the documentation on the page you mentioned, 
> and I noticed that some of the templates assume that the people referred 
> to will be male.  [1] assumes that a NM applicant is male.  [2] assumes 
> that any DD, or any respectable person who might be contacted to verify 
> the applicant's identity will be male.

[...]

By the way. Could we please use "gender" in db.debian.org?
I often translate English texts (Debian Weekly News) to Polish and that's
usually not so obvious that some name belongs to woman. 
That's even more problematic in Polish cause we're using different forms in
past for woman and man. 

This way we could also simply check how many women is involved in Debian
project ;)

regards
fEnIo
-- 
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 : :' :   32-050 Skawina - Glowackiego 3/15 - w. malopolskie - Polska
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, Nick Phillips wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 12:11:36AM +, MJR wrote:
> > By the way, can you substantiate that Shakespeare claim? To
> > forestall the one in the Comedy of Errors, "not a man" =
> > "no men", which is a plural, so "their" can be accurate. Many
> > alleged examples of the "singular their" are zero rather than
> > singular and yet more are indefinite numbers.
> 
> Bollocks [1]. Randomly switching genders all the time is *way* more
> confusing than using "they", "their" etc.

Actually, for a non-native speaker it might not be.  I certainly would get
more confused by singular "they".  I'd not get the idea that it means there
is only one being involved, instead I would get the idea that there is an
*unknown* number of *unknown* beings involved.

On the other hand, when facing a "he is this, she is also that" type of
sentence, I'd just think "yuck, what an ugly way to write that!".

I wonder how many native speakers would assume "they" to refer to an unknown
number of unknown elements when used as an indefinite pronoum?  That seems
to be the real question here.

BTW, using "someone" will NOT convey the certain idea of a single being to
me either.  It also refers to an unknown number of beings to me, as all
other indefinite pronoums do.  Maybe that's because I am no native speaker.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Nick Phillips]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 12:11:36AM +, MJR wrote:

> I'm tired of this crusade against the English from our resident
> sexists, grounded only in the Sapir-Whorf *hypothesis*.
> 
> If you would like some example genders switched to make a bit
> more of a mix, or avoided entirely, then fine, but please don't
> continue mangling plurals and singulars. It's confusing. In the
> worst case, people might think they group-apply to NM. Current
> English singular thirds are he, she and it. The common third
> has been on the way out for yonks: deal with it.
> 
> By the way, can you substantiate that Shakespeare claim? To
> forestall the one in the Comedy of Errors, "not a man" =
> "no men", which is a plural, so "their" can be accurate. Many
> alleged examples of the "singular their" are zero rather than
> singular and yet more are indefinite numbers.

Bollocks [1]. Randomly switching genders all the time is *way* more
confusing than using "they", "their" etc.

"They" is in common use as a singular, and has been for yonks;
deal with it.

As far as the Shakespeare goes, in the context of "There's not
a man", "not a man" is clearly not = "no men". In fact, "none"
would be a more obvious replacement, and "none" is singular.

Trying to think of a more obvious example... how would you rephrase
"Imagine that you are in a dark room when you hear someone enter.
Having entered, they close the door behind them." without butchering
it completely?



[1] Seemed like an appropriate expletive, in the circumstances ;-)



Cheers,


Nick


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Matthew Garrett]

MJR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I'm tired of this crusade against the English from our resident
> sexists, grounded only in the Sapir-Whorf *hypothesis*.

Charitably assuming you meant "English" rather than "the English", I
think that's going way too far. Use of singular they may or may not be a
travesty, but it's not indicative of sexism.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Anthony DeRobertis]

On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 07:27:26PM +, Helen Faulkner wrote:
> Please note that being an AM is a very important and responsible job.
> Please treat your applicants in a nice and friendly manner.  If you have
> any questions about how to proceed with an applicant, please don't 
> hesitate to contact me.  During the first few phases, you should ask the 
> applicant about themselves and what they want to do.  We generally 

applicant => singular
themselves => plural
they => plural

Suggestion: change "the applicant" to "applicants you handle"

> include a short biography in the public AM report, so other developers 

Then report to reports.

> can get to know the applicant better.  However, some people might not 

Applicant to applicants again.

might not => do not ?

> want their information be published on a web site and hence in google. 

google -> Google.

> In fact, we had a big complaint about this recently.  Hence, please make 
> sure to ask your applicant *explicitly* whether you can post their bio 

applicant => applicants, again.

> to a public mailing list.
> 
> 
> Suggested solution for [2]
> 
> (paragraph 2):
> However, it is not signed by an existing Debian developer.  Since many
> people trust Debian, we have to make sure that new volunteers are who
> they claim to be.  The easiest check is having your GPG key signed by
> a Debian developer because this means that they have met you in real 

developer: singular
they: plural

Suggestion: change "a Debian developer" to "one or more Debian
developers"


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Re: New Front Desk members

[MJR]

Helen Faulkner wrote:
> Well, actually that is incorrect.  They as a singular, gender neutral
> pronoun has been used in English for centuries (surely, if Shakespeare
> used it, its good enough for Debian).  See, for example
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

I'm tired of this crusade against the English from our resident
sexists, grounded only in the Sapir-Whorf *hypothesis*.

If you would like some example genders switched to make a bit
more of a mix, or avoided entirely, then fine, but please don't
continue mangling plurals and singulars. It's confusing. In the
worst case, people might think they group-apply to NM. Current
English singular thirds are he, she and it. The common third
has been on the way out for yonks: deal with it.

By the way, can you substantiate that Shakespeare claim? To
forestall the one in the Comedy of Errors, "not a man" =
"no men", which is a plural, so "their" can be accurate. Many
alleged examples of the "singular their" are zero rather than
singular and yet more are indefinite numbers.

-- 
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See also http://people.debian.org/~mjr/


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Steve Langasek]

On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 02:43:28PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 07:27:26PM +, Helen Faulkner wrote:
> > Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> > >Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt and Brian Nelson have recently joined the Front
> > >Desk.  I'm currently giving them some training and I have also written
> > >documentation on the activities of the Front Desk.  The documentation
> > >is available from http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nm/trunk/doc/  It's not
> > >particularly exciting reading, but at least the functions of the Front
> > >Desk are documented now.

> > I was looking over some of the documentation on the page you mentioned, 
> > and I noticed that some of the templates assume that the people referred 
> > to will be male.  [1] assumes that a NM applicant is male.  [2] assumes 
> > that any DD, or any respectable person who might be contacted to verify 
> > the applicant's identity will be male.

> > Could you please reword these to use gender-neutral language.  My 
> > suggested solutions for the problematic paragraphs are included below.

> Ugh.  English has no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun,

"they".

> which means that the use of "he" and "his" for an unspecific third party
> assumes nothing about his gender.  Your objections to [1] and [2] are
> patently false.

Grammatical prescriptions do not negate the visceral responses people have
to this sort of pronoun use.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Lars Wirzenius]

su, 2005-01-30 kello 14:43 -0500, Glenn Maynard kirjoitti:
> Ugh.  English has no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, which
> means that the use of "he" and "his" for an unspecific third party assumes
> nothing about his gender.  Your objections to [1] and [2] are patently
> false.  (Your rewritings, arbitrarily switching between plural and singular
> forms, are clumsy.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they is informative. Singular they
isn't uncontroversial, but it is not unheard of, and works pretty well.
In fact, though I can't find a reference to it now, I remember Ian
Jackson himself being the first person for me to explain this with
references. My English teacher at school would have scorned it, but I've
now become accustomed to it and like it. I see it used in many places.
In fact, most Debian development documentation, for example, is already
gender neutral, even if not always using singular they.

If I were radical, I'd propose English import the Finnish
"hän" (possibly transliterated as "han") as a gender neutral third
person singular pronoun. At least it would be an easier sell than the
occasionally proposed "sheit", I wager.

> There are useful things for Debian to spend time on.  This is not one of
> them.

Indeed. There is no point in being gender-specific when one can easily
and without cost or harm be gender-neutral and having a long discussion
about it is mostly a waste of time. We are naturally neutral about
religion, nationality, and ethnicity. If someone were to write Debian
documents and insert incantations from a particular religion, there
would be a fuss. Gender is a similar issue; there is no benefit to us
from not being gender-neutral.

In the interest of not wasting unnecessary effort on this, I won't be
continuing the thread, should further discussion happen.

Re: New Front Desk members

[Helen Faulkner]

Glenn Maynard wrote:
On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 07:27:26PM +, Helen Faulkner wrote:

Ugh.  English has no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, which
means that the use of "he" and "his" for an unspecific third party assumes
nothing about his gender.  
Well, actually that is incorrect.  They as a singular, gender neutral 
pronoun has been used in English for centuries (surely, if Shakespeare 
used it, its good enough for Debian).  See, for example 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Your objections to [1] and [2] are patently
false.  (Your rewritings, arbitrarily switching between plural and singular
forms, are clumsy.)
Well, I was trying to go with the style used in the rest of those 
documents and in much of the Debian documentation.  But of course there 
are other available solutions, and I don't claim to be a good writer. 
You are welcome to suggest more preferable rewordings :)

There are useful things for Debian to spend time on.  This is not one of
them.
Nobody asked you to spend time on this ;)
Helen.
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Re: New Front Desk members

[Glenn Maynard]

On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 07:27:26PM +, Helen Faulkner wrote:
> Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> >Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt and Brian Nelson have recently joined the Front
> >Desk.  I'm currently giving them some training and I have also written
> >documentation on the activities of the Front Desk.  The documentation
> >is available from http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nm/trunk/doc/  It's not
> >particularly exciting reading, but at least the functions of the Front
> >Desk are documented now.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I was looking over some of the documentation on the page you mentioned, 
> and I noticed that some of the templates assume that the people referred 
> to will be male.  [1] assumes that a NM applicant is male.  [2] assumes 
> that any DD, or any respectable person who might be contacted to verify 
> the applicant's identity will be male.
> 
> Could you please reword these to use gender-neutral language.  My 
> suggested solutions for the problematic paragraphs are included below.

Ugh.  English has no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, which
means that the use of "he" and "his" for an unspecific third party assumes
nothing about his gender.  Your objections to [1] and [2] are patently
false.  (Your rewritings, arbitrarily switching between plural and singular
forms, are clumsy.)

There are useful things for Debian to spend time on.  This is not one of
them.

-- 
Glenn Maynard


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Re: New Front Desk members

[Helen Faulkner]

Martin Michlmayr wrote:
Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt and Brian Nelson have recently joined the Front
Desk.  I'm currently giving them some training and I have also written
documentation on the activities of the Front Desk.  The documentation
is available from http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nm/trunk/doc/  It's not
particularly exciting reading, but at least the functions of the Front
Desk are documented now.
Hi,
I was looking over some of the documentation on the page you mentioned, 
and I noticed that some of the templates assume that the people referred 
to will be male.  [1] assumes that a NM applicant is male.  [2] assumes 
that any DD, or any respectable person who might be contacted to verify 
the applicant's identity will be male.

Could you please reword these to use gender-neutral language.  My 
suggested solutions for the problematic paragraphs are included below.

Thanks,
Helen
1. 
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nm/trunk/doc/front-desk/templates/new-ams?op=file&rev=0&sc=0
2. 
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nm/trunk/doc/front-desk/templates/nm-no-sig?op=file&rev=0&sc=0

Suggested solution for [1] (paragraph 4):
Please note that being an AM is a very important and responsible job.
Please treat your applicants in a nice and friendly manner.  If you have
any questions about how to proceed with an applicant, please don't 
hesitate to contact me.  During the first few phases, you should ask the 
applicant about themselves and what they want to do.  We generally 
include a short biography in the public AM report, so other developers 
can get to know the applicant better.  However, some people might not 
want their information be published on a web site and hence in google. 
In fact, we had a big complaint about this recently.  Hence, please make 
sure to ask your applicant *explicitly* whether you can post their bio 
to a public mailing list.

Suggested solution for [2]
(paragraph 2):
However, it is not signed by an existing Debian developer.  Since many
people trust Debian, we have to make sure that new volunteers are who
they claim to be.  The easiest check is having your GPG key signed by
a Debian developer because this means that they have met you in real 
life and confirmed your identity.

(paragraph 4):
The NM process offers another option: you can send me a scanned image of
an ID card (passport, drivers licence) and the name of a person who I 
can contact and ask if this is really you.  The person should be 
respectable, i.e. university staff, employer -- it would be best that 
their name and position can be found on a web site (e.g professors are 
listed on the university web site).

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New Front Desk members

[Martin Michlmayr]

Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt and Brian Nelson have recently joined the Front
Desk.  I'm currently giving them some training and I have also written
documentation on the activities of the Front Desk.  The documentation
is available from http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nm/trunk/doc/  It's not
particularly exciting reading, but at least the functions of the Front
Desk are documented now.

-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/


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