Adding a "Pronouns" custom user field? Good idea, or the worst idea?

[thorny_locust]

@TriPolar

It’s too soon to experiment with this.

If nobody experiments with it, won’t that guarantee that it’s always “too soon” to do it?

@puzzlegal

I run/help administer several discord sites that let users select a pronoun. There’s a list, and one of the options is to contact an administrator to add additional options. Users may select as many of the pronouns on the list as they like, or select none, or select “any pronoun”.

People who don’t want to state a pronoun would effectively putting themselves into the category of “any”, in any case, wouldn’t they? Isn’t that just where we are now – most people don’t give pronouns, so people who are going to use a pronoun guess; and, if they get it wrong, the misgendered person either corrects them – which can only be done by giving a pronoun – or lets it slide on by, in effect accepting any pronoun.

@Ludovic

It’s plausible that trolls would often change and/or create custom genders to be able to act indignant when people don’t follow them. We have had trolls that chose deliberately ambiguous usernames, then when someone used he or she in regards to them, troll-responded with “how dare you assume what gender I am?” , but never clarifying what gender they did want to be called. On purpose. In order to troll.

So if it can be done as things are now, how does allowing people to state pronouns change that?

@AlsoNamedBort

@dolphinboy

How can we guarantee there won’t be some kind of stigma attached to someone who doesn’t want to share?

Can I just say that I’ve never see anyone stigmatized or treated as transphobic for not entering their pronouns in an optional field.

I’m on another site that allows stating pronouns in a highly visible fashion. Some people do, some people don’t. I’ve never seen anybody complain about it either way.

There’s no list; you just write in what you want to use. That also allows a bit of explanation: “female, but gender-neutral’s OK” fits in the space.

– you can currently put your pronouns in your profile here; but that requires anybody wondering which to use to go look at your profile, and since most people don’t seem to do that they might not even think to look there.

@DrDeth

In other words, before replying or quoting any poster, or even mentioning, we will have to carefully check a posters profile?

I think the idea is that, if the field’s filled in, it would be visible at the top of each post.

(Somewhat hijacky: I’d really like to see a location there. A really vague location if you want, but at least which continent people are on – in a number of threads it’s relevant, and most people don’t bother to explain. You can fill in a location field in discourse, but it doesn’t show unless you click on the poster, and most people haven’t done it.)

@GreysonCarlisle

The default setup is that you click on someone’s name, and their card pops up. On your card, the pronouns would appear under California.

OK. I don’t think that’s going to work, any more than the location field works. We just couldn’t get enough people to do it, and almost nobody appears to know to look there: despite multiple threads in various forums trying to publicize it.

I Locationed - Have you? A thread with a Community Benefit

Hi folks - Just like vBulletin, Discourse has a place for you to enter your location. Which will be displayed if somebody clicks on your avatar. Try mine and look just below the big pink/purple L. Back in vBulletin most of us put something in the location in our profile. Some as a joke, most as legit info. During the conversion to Discourse that info was not transferred. So nearly everybody now has a blank location. And nearly everybody doesn’t know that, and also doesn’t know that they can…

Is there any way to show "location" anymore?

I like that idea. I would encourage you to do that and would be willing to help with it if you need any.

Poster location not transferred with our move

It seems that the location posters had in their profile on the old dope were not brought along with us to this new place. You can add your location in your profile and I have done that and now it comes up when someone clicks my avatar. So, I would like to encourage everyone to add their location (or their witty remark that they had in the location field). So many times, knowing someone’s state at least or part of the country would help in understanding a post, so I’d love it if informative lo…

– for what it’s worth, I’ve got my location in the popup and my pronouns in my profile.

ETA: and you know what? My pronouns are now showing up in the popup. I didn’t do anything further about that; I just had them in the “about” field in my profile.