Pronouns in Account Bio

[j141135]

Howdy! I have no clue if something like this would be useful, or if it's been suggested before, but would it be possible to have a section in each account's bio for preferred pronouns? Not even necessarily to help people who use pronouns like they-them feel more comfortable, though that obviously would be a good side effect, but just from a more pragmatic sense, when doing diplomacy it's good to make sure you don't mislabel somebody and make them dislike you. I don't want to assume a potential ally is a guy and turn them away from me, but also using "them" for every single player can get confusing fast. If every person had a section where they could put their pronouns in their bio, if you wanted to be careful about that you could just look once and be done with it for the rest of the game. I also assume that for people that aren't guys, being assumed to be male is somewhat common and not fun, and this could help with that somewhat.

[GracchusBabeuf]

I like this suggestion. I myself have been getting tired of just using "they" to refer to everyone. This wouldn't change anything for anon-games though. It would probably be best if it was just normalized to say what pronouns you prefer at the beginning of the game.

[Chaqa]

Easier said than done, but probably more doable than most suggestions I would hazard (forum profile additions are likely much harder)

[DarthPorg36]

I agree with this. As a guy, I generally default to using he/him, but I try to use they/them as to not offend anyone. It would make it easier to clarify who we're talking to and take away the awkward what-are-their-pronouns? moment

[Doom427]

It would probably be best if it was just normalized to say what pronouns you prefer at the beginning of the game.

Only issue with this in anon games is anyone not using he/him will be easy to figure out and find their public profile. Having something in profile though would be great for public games.

[Octavious]

I'm a tad confused. I thought we'd been able to put whatever information we wished to share about ourselves in the comments section of our profile for many years. Is that not still the case?

For anonymous games obviously anonymity trumps all. If you're worried about using the wrong pronoun and for some reason find asking difficult then the obvious solution seems to simply avoid them. If you want to refer to the French player, for example, you can simply refer to them as France.

[dargorygel]

I'm a tad confused. I thought we'd been able to put whatever information we wished to share about ourselves in the comments section of our profile for many years. Is that not still the case?

For anonymous games obviously anonymity trumps all. If you're worried about using the wrong pronoun and for some reason find asking difficult then the obvious solution seems to simply avoid them. If you want to refer to the French player, for example, you can simply refer to them as France.

I think that the suggestion urges the site to include a place on the 'form' for such info... similar to name. Of course folk could just include it in the comments... but few do.

[Jamiet99uk]

Yeah the point is that over on the right hand side of your forum posts where it currently reads:

Dargorygel
Site Moderator
[Comedy Cube]

It would optionally add something like this:

Dargorygel
(He / Him)
Site Moderator
[Comedy Cube]

[Octavious]

similar to name

I was unaware that the membership were encouraged to share their names either. Is that something that is also being considered? I confess I rather enjoyed the ability to create whatever persona you wished without any of the intrusive a/s/l? questions you were pestered with on things like Yahoo Pool (for those who remember such things).

I would be in favour of the site continuing to default to anonymity rather than the implication that giving personal data was something you had to opt out of.

[dargorygel]

similar to name

I was unaware that the membership were encouraged to share their names either. Is that something that is also being considered? I confess I rather enjoyed the ability to create whatever persona you wished without any of the intrusive a/s/l? questions you were pestered with on things like Yahoo Pool (for those who remember such things).

I would be in favour of the site continuing to default to anonymity rather than the implication that giving personal data was something you had to opt out of.

.
Not at all... random fill in example

[Octavious]

Fair enough. It'll be interesting to see how much demand there is

[Yonni]

At the beginning of a press game, a default message in the global chat saying simply "We encourage our users to share their preferred pronouns for this game" or something like that would be helpful.

[dargorygel]

Fair enough. It'll be interesting to see how much demand there is

Aye

[gimix]

@native speakers... someone once told me that all country names are feminine in English (this is not the case in other languages: in Italian for instance Galles [Wales] is masculine while Scozia [Scotland] is feminine).

So the correct way of speaking would be to always use feminine pronouns, something like "If France moves her army to Burgundy I will be mad at her"

[Doom427]

@native speakers... someone once told me that all country names are feminine in English (this is not the case in other languages: in Italian for instance Galles [Wales] is masculine while Scozia [Scotland] is feminine).

So the correct way of speaking would be to always use feminine pronouns, something like "If France moves her army to Burgundy I will be mad at her"

I think Germany is male, but for all the others in game this should work. If moderators can put a message in every game, I'd appreciate this becoming the standard.
Something like "Germany is a boy, everyone else is a girl. If you mess up you're banned" should work.

[Octavious]

I think with English as soon as you start talking of a "correct" way of doing anything you're on dangerous ground. Leave blind adherence to linguist rules to the French. I reckon the only thing about English over which there's near universal agreement is that the Yanks do it wrong.

France, for sure, has a definite female feel. Russia too, but in a distinctly Babushka kind of way. Germany far less so somehow, and Belgium is more of an "it".

[MerryBBuck]

The Klingon language has no gender pronouns. There are also just two categories of nouns: living things and dead things.

"If France moves her army to Burgundy I will be mad at her" would be "HoH vIraS". Klingon lacks nuance, so if you translate that back into English, it would be "Let's kill France."

[Jamiet99uk]

How many Klingon players are currently members of this site?

[Ginge86]

Everybody knows that all of the players are male, except England of coarse. Being pink, they are clearly female.
Why complicate an easy system?

[GracchusBabeuf]

@native speakers... someone once told me that all country names are feminine in English (this is not the case in other languages: in Italian for instance Galles [Wales] is masculine while Scozia [Scotland] is feminine).

So the correct way of speaking would be to always use feminine pronouns, something like "If France moves her army to Burgundy I will be mad at her"

Nouns aren't really gendered in English. Even if they have a technical gender it doesn't have any effect on speech, since "the" is the same no matter what.