I think Bone was a PoC.
~Max
Am I the only SDMB poster who is frequently totally in the dark as to other posters’ sex?
No
No~~~
You may be right. But neither are mods now.
I see nothing wrong with striving for diversity and sharing aggregate info about its achievement on the moderation team - it’s not necessary to identify people individually, but it would be nice to hear percentages at least - ie “60% of the mod team is American, 20% identify as female…”
etc.
FWIW, the board where I am a moderator has Indonesian, French, Australian, American, and Turkish representation on the mod team. The variety of viewpoints represented thanks to our differing cultural backgrounds has been an enormous strength for the team, and the message board as a whole, in my view.
I’m lazy and call everyone “they” and then don’t worry about it (or care). You’re all text on my phone for the most part. 
I do use they often as a catch all. It is simple and probably the least offensive.
You’re far from alone. Though it depends a lot on which categories & threads you choose to read.
A lot of the interest of the 'Dope to me is exactly in how different conversation becomes when you don’t know, and furthermore mostly don’t care, about who is which sex. OTOH …
It’s been awhile since we had a classic “battle of the sexes / Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus” thread. And given current trends in moderation, that topic may be enough of a third rail that we may not see them going forward. But in one of those the ambiguous names pretty reliably line up on the team matching their underwear.
And the reason for that, abandonment and resignation/capitulation by females and their supporters, is not good.
I was deliberately being exceedingly value-neutral in my wording. Those were/are not happy threads, nor SDMB’s proudest moments. Rather the opposite.
I remember back in the 90s, I was in an online chat room. An unfamiliar name joined the room, but everyone was already in the middle of various conversations, and so nobody welcomed him right away. He concluded it was because he was black, called us all racists, and left in a huff.
(although now that I think of it, he might have just been trolling)
Back when I was a mod I remember being taken aback by how much tolerance there was of hate speech toward women. There was a particular poster who was really bad with it, and eventually he was banned for harassment IIRC. There seemed to be an end - run around bigotry that if a particular poster was especially odious, the official reason for banning was some other reason than his toxic attitude.* But we were all glad to see him go.
*We owe a debt of gratitude to the Pit for this. Posters are astute at identifying bigoted asshats and goading them until they blow up and start trolling all over the boards. Before I became a mod I had a hand in dispatching the virulently racist New Deal Democrat that way. One of my proudest achievements.
I mean, i know hate speech is subjective, but things like “women are whores” fall firmly into that camp, IMO. And that kind of thing was just let go in the past. I hope that wouldn’t be the case now.
I was hoping it was because fewer people were posting that sort of crap.
IIRC the history was lots of women did quit. And lots of those who stayed behind did complain to TPTB. Who eventually put 2 & 2 together and the result was a much stronger set of rules on appropriate posting behavior towards gender / sex / etc. topics, and much earlier enforcement thereof. As a result a lot fewer people are posting that crap.
The other thing that may have happened is a lot of us got to the age that if we were going to become divorced, it’s now already long enough ago that we’ve gotten over the hate-filled insanity stage. I’m still happily married to my first wife, but I’ve ridden through a lot of other people’s divorces and there are few things more able to convert a sane person into an all-the-opposite-sex-is-evil True Believer. For a few years at least.
In all, the SDMB is, IMO, in a better place about all this. Shame about the rest of our country, but with luck the healing will begin in mid-January.
Suggests? To whom?
Certainly to this PoC doper, who distinctly gets the impression certain flavours of racism aren’t considered as bad as misogyny by TPTB here.
And I know it’s not because the issue wasn’t raised enough. It was just dismissed with “I don’t moderate hate speech” and “it’s OK to make racist OPs as long as they’re polite.”
Now, the new GD rules on thrice-told-tales have cut that back. And that’s nice. For GD and P&E. But I suspect it was more to do with the lack of GD mods at the time than any consideration for PoCs. I’d believe it more if there was actually just a specific board-wide policy about racism the way there is about misogyny, rather than it being thrown into a grab-bag ruling in one forum+subforum
With all due respect, this impression depends on whose ox is being gored. Both -isms, racism and sexism are pernicious and systemic. The TPTB need to be vigilant about both and not dismissive when either is called to their attention and especially vigilant to not marginalize those who do call it out.
Ableism and ageism could use some work here also.
One has a general board-wide policy, one doesn’t. It’s hardly subjective.
Sure, but they weren’t the things specifically being compared in the quoted post.
I noticed that with a couple of posters, one of whom has fortunately been banned.