Re: Neutral language in W3C specifications

On 29/07/2020 17:53, Gregg Kellogg wrote:
>> On Jul 22, 2020, at 4:03 AM, Denis Ah-Kang <denis@w3.org 
>> <mailto:denis@w3.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi 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?
> 
> Use case documents are often written with stories that describe specific 
> people (e.g., Sally, John, etc.) (see [1], for example). In generally, I 
> think it’s good that stories can relate to individuals, but in these 
> cases removing personal pronouns, or always using a neutral “they” might 
> interfere with the flow of the narative. Has this been considered as 
> part of the style guide? Is there any specific advice on writing use 
> cases documents in a gender-neutral way?

We're exploring this in the ID CG [2], and I hope we'll be able to 
provide some guidance around this in due course. The rest of this email 
is just my own point of view.

I agree that it is helpful when user stories are personalised, if 
they're not they really cease to become user stories.

I think there are two things to consider:

1. Is there a single user story or a collection?
2. Does gender identification change the user story?

In documents with many user stories, like the example at [1], then 
balance is the important thing I think. The key is for people to be able 
to relate to the user stories, so having a balance of gender identities 
(and other characteristics) is likely to mean more people find the user 
stories relevant.

If there is just one user story then I think making it as inclusive as 
it can be is important,  and choosing a gender neutral identity is 
probably the way to do it.

"Sally is a developer who uses SVG as part of her job..."

Doesn't lose anything if it becomes:

"Alex is a developer who uses SVG as part of their job..."

There are times when the gender of the person in a user story is 
important, but in the context of W3C I can't think of one that applies 
to technical standards!


Léonie.

> [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-use-cases/
[2] https://github.com/w3c/idcg/issues/17

> 
>> 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://www.w3.org/pubrules/
>>>> [2] https://w3c.github.io/manual-of-style/
>>>>
>>
> 

-- 
Director @TetraLogical
https://tetralogical.com

Received on Wednesday, 29 July 2020 17:42:59 UTC