Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Anti-harassment/Add gender options to user preferences - how do you prefer to be described

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Add gender options to user preferences - how do you prefer to be described

• Problem: Germany will add the third gender option by the end of the year, about a dozen nations in the world already recognize more than two genders

• Who would benefit: everyone who wants to be addressed in another way as he / she / neutral

• Proposed solution: Either add two more radio button to the preferences page (female / male / divers / other). Or allow free text for self determination of ones gender.

• Phabricator tickets: T61643

• Proposer: RyLee Hühne (talk) 22:33, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

• See previous discussion at T61643. And I note MediaWiki already supports three options that serve as "male", "female", and "neutral"; wikt:divers#German indicates that "divers" means "various, diverse, miscellaneous" which would seem to correspond to the third. Anomie (talk) 00:23, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
  • The three options supported by MediaWiki at the moment are actually "male", "female", "do not disclose". This matches a bit the past german law of having a birth certificate with a gender entry of male or female or to leave the entry open. However the german constitual court ruled last year that there has to be another option apart from having no entry, as persons not male and not female do belong to an own gender, that by now has been named "divers". In english there are the personal pronouns he, she and they. That should be matched in wiki mesaages that address a person with the approbiate personal pronoun. I oppose however the free text option, as this would require large changes to the wiki software. --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 17:32, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
    • The default English description "When mentioning you, the software will use gender neutral words whenever possible" says nothing along the lines of "do not disclose". As far as I can tell the German description doesn't say anything like "do not disclose" either. Anomie (talk) 17:57, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
      • But that is the point of the ruling: People belonging to the third gender have a right to be addressed with their correct gender and not to stay neutral (even so some - some - consider themselves as neutral). uselang=qqx displays this:
        • (yourgender)
        • (parentheses: (gender-unknown))
        • (gender-female)
        • (gender-male)
        • (prefs-help-gender)

      The gender of people belonging to the third gender are not "gender-unknown" (unless voluntary choosing to not disclose their gender)

      --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 19:40, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

      • • @Gradzeichen: Would you have an example for "addressing with their correct gender" which is not "neutral" in German? Asking as w:de:MediaWiki:Gender-unknown currently seems to use male forms (while for example w:fr:MediaWiki:Gender-unknown instead says that the software will try to use neutral terms when possible). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 03:36, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
          • No, I do not have an example, I am not part of the community. But the wishlist is about technical issues. The issue is "adding an option" to conform with law and society. The current text reflects an use of the technical options. This texts can be changed, if the software supports more than two options. You touch a very sensitive situation with this. German wikipedia uses in its texts "Generisches Maskulinum". While I am very in favor of that, german society is changing. The german equivalent of "political correct" is "Geschlechtergerechte Sprache". German Wikipedia might actually change from generic masculinum to gender approbiate language. If that happens, than one thing that could not stand, is that the neutral text (generic maskulinum) is identical to the male text. In such a case it would become unavoidable to have different texts for male, female, divers, unknown. The german parliament will sign the law on the third gender in november, it will become operational before new year. The question is: Will Wikipedia adapt to this, making Wikipedia a forerunner, or will Wikipedia wait for a shitstorm to happen, and than be forced to find a solution fast. --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 14:41, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
            • Wikipedia in German is not only created by German contributors, but anyone who speaks German, including Swiss and Austrians. So I see no reason why Wikipedian should abide to German government decisions. Implementing changes now will not, in itself, prevent controversy. As a rather good German speaker, I really wonder what this "correct address" might look like. I never came across it in Swiss or German newspapers, even left-winged. I'm strongly for a "wait and see" policy. --Braveheidi (talk) 01:01, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• There is no gender option in MediaWiki. The current wording of the preference clearly says "how do you want to be described". The distinction is small, but very important. This means the user can choose their preference regardless of their actual gender identity. The current three options are a compromise between what is available in natural languages and what can easily be mapped across languages – this is a cross-language feature. --Nikerabbit (talk) 10:27, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
• The real problem is lack of respect for the existing preference, as use of the gender function or variants of the strings to the gender function are removed or overridden at several projects. Thus I don't believe the solution would be to increase the number of variants. — Jeblad 07:51, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
• As others; everywhere this debate comes up. Gender is biologically unary, binary, or in some rare cases (referring to humans) trinary. Gender is NOT gender identity. it's the terms that cause so many issues. Adding options such an option beyond a potential user page box, is just asking for trouble. A quick google/bing/duck of the Linux CoC situation will show just how messy such processes are.Lostinlodos (talk) 01:48, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:39, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Andrew J.Kurbiko (talk) 05:16, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Libcub (talk) 10:18, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Jullan3 (talk) 15:25, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Good inclusive proposal. Abzeronow (talk) 17:20, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support JOAN ~ ^(Questions?) 20:42, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose The current setup is sufficient.Darwinek (talk) 02:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Wunkt2 (talk) 02:49, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support the ideal situation would be allowing users to write their own pronouns in (perhaps we'd want four boxes for subject, object, possessive and reflexive e.g. xe/xem/xir/xyrself; these boxes would only appear once a user has selected "custom"). — Bilorv (talk) 03:02, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose fix the existing message strings before new variants are added. — Jeblad 07:51, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Fixer88 (talk) 08:11, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Sargoth (talk) 09:43, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Sebastian Wallroth (talk) 13:09, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose Per Jeblad. There are still more important issues to resolve. — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 17:41, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose It is used to form of interface messages. Any "extra" genders do not have defined forms of words for these genders. If someone wants expose special gender, just use userpage. --Wargo (talk) 21:13, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose See Wargo. Mediatus (talk) 08:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Demostene119 (talk) 11:52, 19 November 2018 (UTC)