BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I’m on sides of the internet where letting people know your pronouns is the status quo and another where its verbatim “tits or gfto”.

I personally don’t think that pronouns would be the most inclusive (ironically). I think more people would be turned off by the political implications of having pronouns on your profile or something than the amount that will find this place more inviting because of it.

I don’t think just calling people “they” when you don’t know their gender is too bad of a deal, and if they really care that much about their pronouns, they would just tell you which they are anyways.

By the way, despite the effeminate name, I’m a he/him.

My vote

I’d be fine with it.

Fine by me. I don’t know how much anyone actually looks at profile pages, though.

I would not use and probably wouldn’t notice such a field

I can’t imagine this would hurt anything, and might help new players feel more welcome.

I’ve implemented the concept for what I’d like it to look like. If this doesn’t work out, it’s incredibly simple to revert.

The field can be found in profile settings.

Man, remember Spivak? ...I don’t, it was before my time. (Thank goodness, to be honest.)

Oh, sorry, I evidently missed “probably sit somewhere next to names in comment sections”, I must have just been reading the truncated sticky post text.

I’m less sure about that; it’s at odds with the singular they mandated by the ruleset, which tradionally extends to conversation in comments. And if it’s going to be foreground on the blog we should probably define a range of valid values in the ruleset, to spare us from bad jokes from anyone who as Cuddlebeam says might be “turned off” by the concept.

I don’t know if the rules have any meaningful bearing on the comments beyond what is described in the voting rules and any relevant dynastic rules. (Of which there’s only the Institute proposals, and that doesn’t care.)

I acknowledge the joke potential problem, but I don’t know if it would actually exist in this community. Further to that, prescribing the valid pronouns any given player can identify as within the comments section feels sort of against the point.

I certainly haven’t seen any evidence of the tradition you suggest.

I really don’t like this “next to the name” thing.

This feels too Tumblr for me. (Not that it is bad, I just don’t think Blognomic is the place for this).

I fail to say how this is Tumblr.

In any case, I disagree with the notion that BlogNomic is the wrong place for this. The game is built, at least in part, on interpersonal relations, and respect is a big of ensuring those are relations are healthy.

I like it and am happy for it to stay.

I think it could be a bit smaller / more discrete but it’s one of those things where if it helps even one person feel more welcome and doesn’t hurt anyone else in the process then that’s a straightforward net benefit.

I always thought there was plenty of singular-they in comments, mostly because we generally don’t know every other player’s gender. It’s certainly my default, and I consciously gear-change into it even when referring to a player whose actual pronoun I know. But since it doesn’t stand out too much when people don’t use it maybe it’s not as common as I think.

I’ve always quite liked BlogNomic’s general attitude of gender-blindness, but so long as there’s no pressure for players to reveal their preference here, I guess we’re not losing anything, and making the place more welcoming is certainly no bad thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love singular they as default, but I like to be able to refer to people and to be referred to as makes they and I feel comfortable.

...I really would like not to have to switch the selector to a prescriptive dropdown.

I do agree with Kevan that BlogNomic’s studied gender-blindness is a strength, but I also have to acknowledge that, of the players who actual gender I have known over the years, all but a vanishingly small minority have been male and none have been non-binary. That clearly unscientific piece of anecdata definitely reflects the willingness of people from different gender identities to be open about gender on the internet, but I’m also conscious that it may suggest that BlogNomic has invisible biases that I can’t see, and as such I’m willing to conform to wider best practice.

Maybe just on the profile then? Having it everywhere feels so invasive and distracting.

Shoving it into a corner of a profile defeats the purpose.

I think this puts too much importance on people’s genitalia.

(Or other gender-determining devices. I just wanted to make a bad toilet joke.)

My intent is certainly not to make you think about genitals. My intent is for a reasonably respectful and considerate community to continue to be respectful and considerate.

For clarity’s sake, I currently have he, she, he/they and she/they setup with a custom background, with purple as the fallback default. (Given that most of the other available serious options are also gender neutral.) I do hope that if you continue to use the field you will take it seriously. It’s all well and good complaining that it could be used for jokes, but another, hypocritical thing entirely to then do so yourself.

what difference is there between he and he/they?

Philosophically? Questioning the meaning of gender in a early-to-mid 21st century world.

Technically, site-wise? He/Him has a solid background, He/They has a gradient between that and the neutral purple.

More broadly, there exist non-binary folk who still also identify as either a man or a woman.

Indeed… There are differences in colour here. I didn’t realise there were preset options, considering that one cannot actually see them.

I can probably fix the awareness problem.

I have attempted to fix the awareness problem.

Thank you for fixing the awareness problem.

A dropdown might be helpful: if it’s restricted to a few options that gives us more options for displaying it unobtrusively.

I’ve stepped in and blanked Cuddlebeam’s current pronoun field (“HAS MALE REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS”) given that it’s appearing across the whole blog and - whatever point or joke was intended - can be read as a deliberate piece of transphobia that BlogNomic’s community is okay with. Which it’s not.

Yep, it’s a dropdown now. Have provided an undefined option which should clear it (because apparently we can’t have an entirely blank option on an optional field?) and one labelled “other (ask me)”.

Probably better this way.

I still think it’s way too intrusive. Like, I get what people’s pronouns are after the first time of seeing them on the page.

It might be possible to use first-of-type in CSS to only show it for the first appearance for each user, but we can probably get this to the point where we stop even seeing it. (If it was a small square bullet-point box to the left of the name, or something.)

I kind of like it at the level it is right now. Duke says it’s about on par with the voting icons for visual intrusiveness, and if it appears about as often as those (which it will) that’s good enough for me.

I’d just like to avoid reducing it to the point that it misses the point.

“Duke says it’s about on par with the voting icons for visual intrusiveness”

I don’t believe they’re AS important as voting icons.

I’d find it weird if, for example, on facebook or twitter or something, on every single post they make, I have to be reminded of their pronouns. It just seems out of place. Same here.

On their profile, sure. Let people do whatever they want with that.

What if it was more transparent, becoming more opaque with mouseover?

Now there’s an interesting concept.

In addition, there is now a Show Pronoun Tags option in your profile settings. If they’re really so objectionable to you, clearly my pleas are lost on you.

Maybe a hover over their name to display a panel with info? Like on Twitter. A comment here isn’t too different from a tweet in general format.

Like you can see more information about that person, and people can put whatever they want there too, like their favorite dynasty or if they’re vegetarian, their trigger warnings, etc.

@Tantusar I think this looks good.

I feel you are being a little disingenuous, Cuddlebeam, and I am inclined to disregard your remarks on the subject.

He’s not wrong (I just used his pronoun, hooray) that this principle can be used as a broader ‘flair’ system. Not open-ended, but it might be good to eg have an Emperor tag, so that the current emperor’s comments are more visible in comments sections.

I’m likely more rude than I should, but I’m serious.

An Emperor tag has legs, although it would necessitate a change to the site meta dynastic handover checklist.

(i.e. There still wouldn’t be a rules issue with it, as far as I am aware.)

Even better now. (I’m not generally a fan of proclaiming our gender in every post we make, either, considering that the English language can function without it. So if we are to have such tags, I prefer them discreet.)

It’s a balancing act. If we whittle down to them only being visible on profiles, this will have been an abject failure. I don’t think I can compromise down much/any further without it having been a waste.

I mean, put like that, yes. I believe it is a waste. In its current, intrusive form.

(God bless that there is a way to remove it, though)

Clearly… After all, your proposal was to have tags “next to names in comment sections”. That was the point. And the tags must be legible; I shouldn’t have expected the background to be so light without the hovering trick.

As far as an Imperial badge is concerned, I don’t see how the rules would have anything to do with it. Granted, the Emperor’s name is in the Dynasty’s name, so it’s not hard to find out who it is: just look at the page’s masthead. Yet it’s not something a newcomer immediately realises, so there’s that.

(My comment above was directed to Tantusar, by the way.)

If it’s easy enough to set up it could also have dynastic applications, although it does beg the question of whether we know that the capability exists in the player base at any given time.

Gamestate tracking is where it gets tricky. I don’t know if profiles can meaningfully be made gamestate, and it’s a bit of a hassle to edit someone else’s as an admin. It’s entirely doable, but a hassle.

And that should be the emperor tag done and the manual updated.

Great work. Thank you, Tantusar ☺️

I find the intrusiveness obnoxious. Just listing it on the profile is enough for me. If I want to know your pronoun preference (And I do) I’ll look it up.

I find it barely intrustive, in its current ghost form. I’ve honestly already started tuning it out.

Good work on the templating, I had no idea the blog setting even existed. (I’ve toggled off the “alert me when a new dynasty begins” visibility as much as I can, but haven’t yet deleted it in case it’d be useful to extract the data first. Unless absolutely everyone has it ticked.)

I don’t really have any issues with the tags myself, mostly from being on many sites that use such a system. As for the emperor tag, while I see Dukes point about just looking at the header, I was involved in one case where I was asked to sub in for an emperor during their dynasty so having the tag, imo, is still abit helpful

I have my doubts that it feels inclusive to a prospective Individual who is a woman to have all of her comments flagged as “this poster is different” in what is otherwise a, how you say, “sausage fest”.

I’m with pokes on that. Also, having it right next to the names of everyone, at least in my perspective, seems to imply that’s it’s required for new players and is a big deal for the game; gender of players hasn’t ever come up in the ruleset to my knowledge

Gender has never been relevant to the rules (apart from the rules requesting use of gender neutral terms to refer to the abstract concept of a human or another, different human) and I would hope it never becomes relevant.

I’m with pokes and card. Sticking it next to the name on every comment doesn’t seem that welcoming to anyone who doesn’t pick “Him”. Having preferred pronouns in the profile is great, and I’ll certainly use it, but I don’t think its helpful to advertise it with this frequency.

The emperor tag is excellent. Really nice for checking what your DEF vote will actually do.

With every possible respect, the, how you say, “sausage fest” is not the ideal place to ideate on how to best promote inclusivity in the complex gender space of the 2020s. That work is being done admirably and ably by groups in which non-binary people are much better represented, and much of their work can be found online. Here, for example, on page 10, or here, from Stonewall.

An online space is different from a workplace in that nobody has a physical body that inherently provides gender presentation. Continuing to use ‘they’ at BlogNomic is an option which is, as far as I can tell, compatible with the recommendations of both of the provided links.

But it is the ideal place to discuss how to promote inclusivity in THIS SPACE. Which is not a work place, and is rather lacking in gender cues altogether. I’d be happy welcoming the girls by their proper pronouns. The more complex cases are just a bonus.

And come to think of it, I don’t feel comfortable starting off every public statement with “And I’m a He”.

In addition to the hide all tags selector, a hide my tags for everyone selector now also exists.

Is “hide my tags” different from having selected nothing?

Yes. The pronoun selector, regardless of whether you select to hide your tags or not, shows up on your profile. If you selector to hide your tags, they just won’t show up in anyone’s comments sections.

What would you guys choose, the original neutral vanilla we had before or this new environment of people being split and annoyed.

I would easily take even this watered down concept over nothing or practically nothing at all.

I mean, the blog isn’t very inclusive towards certain religious groups either because of how non-secularly we take things. Should we ban using the term “magic” to help Jehova’s Witness feel more at home? Or stop “glorifying” (in fantasy) things which are haram for muslims? And stop using the term “God” and similar holy concepts in vain?

Why is gender special over those other issues?

If we’re being inclusive, shouldn’t we include all prerequisites for other groups to also “feel at home”, and not just one arbitrary group? Isn’t it a bit unfair to only attend to one?

I’m not going to accommodate this sort of ridiculous slippery slope argument.

It’s not a slippery slope. I’m pointing out special pleading towards your particular view of social justice, while ignoring that others exist.

Or, alternatively, we just don’t give any particular special treatment to any of these different social justice views (gender, religion, etc) and we just keep things plain and neutral like most other major sites on the internet do. Like, we don’t have gender pop up all of the time on Youtube comments next to your name. Or reddit. Or Facebook.

Personally, I don’t see much of a difference between having institutional demands (or pressures, as hard or soft as they may be) on people coming from either gender politics, or Sharia Law.

What is being demanded of anybody?

I will likely continue using ‘they’ pronouns for everyone. I haven’t interpreted the badges as telling me that continuing this behavior is unwanted.

An additional midway option has been added to the ‘Show Pronoun Tags” selector, “On Hover”, which I’ve also set as the default for logged out users. “On Hover” requires the user to hover over a comment to see the pronoun tag, if any.

The whole propose of the pronoun thing is.

It’s a request to have people use those pronouns. It’s there to tell you to do something.

I still think this is way too much fanfare for something that belongs on the profile, but I’m glad that it’s being simmered down, it’s progress from how it was at the start of all of this salt.

I am not doing any of this to accommodate for you.

That doesn’t sound very inclusive of you.

I would bristle too if the punishments for using the wrong pronouns included death. (I assume!) that they don’t, so there’s somewhat of a distinction from Sharia Law. I’m interpreting it as only a request. I don’t like the badges for the reason that I’ve stated before, but no need for hyperbole.

No, it doesn’t sound very inclusive. I am disinclined to including people who are being a dick for no good reason.

pokes: Fortunately, death is not a penalty I am willing or able to offer.

I’m unstickying this as the bugs seemed to have been worked out and everyone who has wanted to say something so far probably has.