The field should be a text box, not a radio button or a dropdown list.
Ideally, I’d like it to be labeled ‘pronouns’ rather than ‘gender’, but that might be non-preferred for signaling reasons.
Agree strongly with the signaling concern. Also, it helps prevent smartalecks filling in something like “second person” or worse “first person plural”.
‘Gender’ isn’t much better at dealing with smart-alecks or outliers, actually. If I’m in an odd enough mood on the day that’s implemented, I might fill in the box with ‘yes’. Or ‘no’. Or ‘blue’. ‘Female’ doesn’t always suit me, and unlike with pronouns there’s no obvious non-male non-female answer to that one.
I’d add “both”, “fluid” or “variable”, and “other” for a better shot at completeness, mostly because there are people whose non-binary gender is an important enough part of their identity that “n/a” seems likely to feel dismissive to them.
Better go with the text field then if there’s really demand for all those. The base three would pretty much solve the actually manifesting problem of people not knowing which pronoun to use of other people though.
It might be possible to automate this—if you’re commenting to someone, pronouns which don’t match their preferences are marked as spelling errors or (if wanted) autocorrected.
I don’t know whether this is worth the trouble to program, but it’ would be kind of cool.
That seems much too hard—pronouns are used in all sorts of contexts; how would it determine who (whether the author of the parent, the OP, or—more likely—nobody who wrote a comment here at all, in which case it has no reference) is being referred to?
How about something for those of us who prefer anonymity..
Edit: I meant those of us who prefer anonymity but still want to post some personal information.
Don’t fill in the field?
*nods*
The field should be a text box, not a radio button or a dropdown list.
Ideally, I’d like it to be labeled ‘pronouns’ rather than ‘gender’, but that might be non-preferred for signaling reasons.
Agree strongly with the signaling concern. Also, it helps prevent smartalecks filling in something like “second person” or worse “first person plural”.
‘Gender’ isn’t much better at dealing with smart-alecks or outliers, actually. If I’m in an odd enough mood on the day that’s implemented, I might fill in the box with ‘yes’. Or ‘no’. Or ‘blue’. ‘Female’ doesn’t always suit me, and unlike with pronouns there’s no obvious non-male non-female answer to that one.
Are there important options beyond beyond male, female and an explicit n/a for the variable, not applicable, not your business etc cases?
I’d add “both”, “fluid” or “variable”, and “other” for a better shot at completeness, mostly because there are people whose non-binary gender is an important enough part of their identity that “n/a” seems likely to feel dismissive to them.
Better go with the text field then if there’s really demand for all those. The base three would pretty much solve the actually manifesting problem of people not knowing which pronoun to use of other people though.
If the field isn’t filled in, then posters are still stuck with a situation where what’s wanted isn’t obvious.
Tentative suggestion: a text field in profiles for preferred pronouns.
It might be possible to automate this—if you’re commenting to someone, pronouns which don’t match their preferences are marked as spelling errors or (if wanted) autocorrected.
I don’t know whether this is worth the trouble to program, but it’ would be kind of cool.
That seems much too hard—pronouns are used in all sorts of contexts; how would it determine who (whether the author of the parent, the OP, or—more likely—nobody who wrote a comment here at all, in which case it has no reference) is being referred to?
You’re right.