- From: Melanie Richards <Melanie.Richards@microsoft.com>
- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 21:58:06 +0000
- To: "lwatson@tetralogical.com" <lwatson@tetralogical.com>, Inclusion and Diversity Community Group <public-idcg@w3.org>
Hi Leonie and co, I want to start off by saying my perspective comes from a cisgendered person with she/her pronouns, and only reflect my particular lived experience. I poked around on the internet about this and found a mix of guidance which suggests either route on hypothetical pronouns could be workable. My personal opinion is that we could suggest spec editors adopt a standard they/them (editors SHOULD?), for the following reasons: * they/them feels (again, IMHO) like a fairly inclusive standard pronoun set, and is often used as a default when a person does not know or does not wish to assume someone's gender. * Using one pronoun set helps simplify: no need to keep track of the balance. * Since as you mentioned these cases are fairly rare, there may not be enough opportunities to equitably represent a range of pronouns (they/them, he/him, she/her, ze/zir, etc) in one spec. What seems a common thread across guidance is to write in such a way that no pronouns or gendered terms are needed at all: https://www.mypronouns.org/inclusivelanguage. And we could make that suggestion as well. Another related topic is the use of placeholder names. Often these tend toward Anglo-centric when used in tech examples, so we could also advise editors to use context-appropriate ungendered nouns instead of person-names, or use something like "Person A" if absolutely necessary. Thanks, Melanie -----Original Message----- From: Léonie Watson <lwatson@tetralogical.com> Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2020 4:23 AM To: Inclusion and Diversity Community Group <public-idcg@w3.org> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Fwd: Re: Neutral language in W3C specifications Everyone, Would welcome guidance on this. I suggested that the Publication (Pub) Rules might look for gender specific pronouns, and this can be done, but I'm not sure what the best editorial advice for editors should be. The use of pronouns doesn't come up often in specifications, though it does sometimes when there are use cases or user stories that illustrate the reason for a particular feature. The guidance could suggest using they/them as the standard pronouns, or that editors should make sure there is an even balance of they/them, he/him, she/her etc., or something else? Léonie. -------- Forwarded Message --------Subject: Re: Neutral language in W3C specifications Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 15:03:01 +0400From: Denis Ah-Kang <denis@w3.org>To: lwatson@tetralogical.com, Spec-prod <spec-prod@w3.org>, chairs@w3.orgHi Leonie, Thank you for your feedback. Sure, we can also add these pronouns to the list of terms to detect. Do you have a preference or suggestion as to what our guidance to the editors should be in those cases? Denis On 7/22/20 1:21 PM, Léonie Watson wrote: > Denis, this is a really positive step, thank you to you and the team. > > One suggestion - is it possible for PubRules to check for gender > specific pronouns (he/she, him/her etc.) too? > > They are rare in specifications, but do sometimes feature as part of > use cases or examples. > > Léonie. > > On 22/07/2020 09:40, Denis Ah-Kang wrote: >> Dear editors and chairs, >> >> In order to offer the best environment possible to its community, W3C >> is supporting the push for a more inclusive and neutral language, >> especially in our specifications. >> >> In the upcoming weeks, pubrules [1] will show a warning if terms like >> "master", "slave", "grandfather", "sanity" or "dummy" are detected in >> a specification and this will also be reflected in the Manual of >> style [2] with a list of alternatives. >> Note, since it may take time for the editors to change the branch >> name "master" to something else, we will not flag the URLs containing >> that word in the first place. >> >> Going forward, we will audit all the specification repositories and >> open issues if they contain problematic terms. >> >> Let me know if you have any comments/suggestions. >> >> Denis >> W3C Systems team >> >> [1] >> https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww >> .w3.org%2Fpubrules%2F&data=02%7C01%7CMelanie.Richards%40microsoft >> .com%7Cdc28bf5194684584213808d82e31b8c6%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd01 >> 1db47%7C1%7C0%7C637310138378744051&sdata=FQqGd6UNTD7E7ux%2B57Yw3e >> %2BBNTRrRrDhksyLJMQJ5ZU%3D&reserved=0 >> [2] >> https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fw3c >> .github.io%2Fmanual-of-style%2F&data=02%7C01%7CMelanie.Richards%4 >> 0microsoft.com%7Cdc28bf5194684584213808d82e31b8c6%7C72f988bf86f141af9 >> 1ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C637310138378744051&sdata=iBTN%2FwSeX6U% >> 2FDOBSR24418WQT6alkfH2GdTS14M%2BKBY%3D&reserved=0 >> >
Received on Wednesday, 22 July 2020 21:58:21 UTC