I made a bot that suggests some alternative phrasing when you write guys in Slack. It made for some discussion.
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I'm an empathetic "guy" (lol) and get your points completely. But we can't all be empathetic about everything, and it's probably not a great idea to make everyone feel like they SHOULD take everything (little things like this) so seriously. I'm not trying to take away anything from anyone - some people take this more seriously, and are offended my "non-inclusive terms", but to me this seems to be delving to deep, and really - there is no clear end in sight, we could find 250 words that we want our team to use differently.. each disagreeing with eachother, etc.
A team should be inclusive, safe, friendly, etc place for ALL team members. But when we start applying our personal beliefs about how the english language is flawed, and can upset some team members, and needs to be altered to not upset those certain people, we are really getting far away from the entire point of being a team, and wasting time and nit picky things, that (in my opinion) should not be offensive to most.
This isn't true for all things, obviously certain things are inherently offensive, however when it comes to something like this, its perspective and opinion for the most part, NOT inherently offensive, and has no REAL life negative impact on anyone, except for the way they take it. Some things people are offended by really come down to - they choose to be offended.
I personally believe in reducing how many times I'm offended in a single day - and practice not getting upset over things that are small, personal to me, etc.
Also I will say - communication is an important subject when it comes to teams working well together, sure we could all debate, and agree to use certain words, but in my mind, this could literally go on and on and on, and is completely out of the scope of the teams goals, etc. The point of communication is, do you understand what i'm referring to? not as much - do you love my word choices?
Thank you for your comment @robcapell !
Who said it was about offending or upsetting people? Can't it also be a hack to nudge people to think about how language can be more or less welcoming? Language doesn't have to be offensive in order to be exclusive.
As you point out, “guys” are but one example. As I also write, it is used and interpreted differently, in different contexts. In tech, it has for some, especially those who in a thousand small ways are reminded that they are in a minority, begotten the meaning of being gender normative. Reports of that are enough to make me reconsider it.
In terms of empathy, you state you are of that nature in the beginning. But you spend 5 paragraphs addressing how I'm in the wrong and that people who take issue with gender normative language should “get over themselves” (or “reduce how many times they are 'offended'"). Well, that suggests me that you haven't really considered or talked to underrepresented people about their experiences (just my presumption).
But to the core of your point: It's hard to negotiate language. You're completely right. And that's why, if you read me more closely, you'd see that I'm also hesitant to go that route. That being said, I think it should always be OK to question how language, privilege, and power relate to each other, and how we, in fact, can use it to achieve an "inclusive, safe, friendly, etc place for ALL team members".
If we could do it on popular systems like Slack, then making the editor more like the hemmingway editor would be cool, so you'd get warning highlights as you type. Something that would give you a gentle nudge without feeling like you're being scolded.
I think some people1 might feel like they have to justify themselves, even to a bot, when a response appears in chat, and if we could address the problem before a message got sent that might be a smoother, less annoying/embarrassing experience.
We could certainly do something like that with the editor on dev.to, right?
EDIT: in fact, should we build something like a generic script that highlights things inside WYSIWYG areas?
look at me, I have no data to back anything up. ↩
Oh, I really like that idea -- like Grammarly but for writing inclusive stuff. Hmmm...
We have had an eye towards experimentally building something like this into the DEV editor.
Our thoughts on editor augmentation is that it should act a lot like code editor autocomplete and linting. Doesn't get in the way like like a wysiwyg, but is intuitive and easy to use when it does pop up.
We haven't broken ground on anything like this because it's hard. We want it done well, and for the tool to be rushed and single purpose.
As @kmelve mentioned, language is fluid and encoded. Anything we do should err very far on the cautious end of the spectrum. This is a longterm experimental project, not a quick feature.
Totally, I write all my posts in my text editor and am fine staying that way tbh, I always end up exiting accidentally on the browser if I write in here, and my setup is perfect for me. Definitely a cool idea!
Hemmingway editor is a good example of exactly why I wouldn't want to see this type of technology enforced, or even suggested to all people.
I use Hemmingway often, and it can be helpful, but it also has a lot of terrible opinions about language. Trying to satisfy that editor results in language that, while having a good score, can be hard to read. It breaks up natural language and creates garbage at times.
This is exactly what would happen with bots in forums. We'd end up with worse language, rather than better. While I can appreciate some terms are not as good as others, at least now I know there's a human involved. I don't want to talk like a computer, or read computer generated text.
I'm not suggesting we enforce it, rather that it would be interesting to create something like a greasemonkey script or a wysiwyg plugin that would present the option "show suggestions about...", maybe with a list of types of thing it could know about.
I like the idea in terms of the technical engineering part of it, but as I sort of state in the blog, I'm not sure if it is the right approach socially. Or if it's even fully possible to automate this. One thing is that language is fluid and encoded. What I kind of find effective with the bot, is that it gives you a chance to consider or think about it. And only one the use of one word.
A system that monitored everything, and found every conceivably exclusionist word, would be a bit overkill, and, I suspect work against its purpose.
That being said, I think someone should do it, and see how it feels. Would be an interesting experiment to be sure!
To say that this is a well studied question would be a British level of understatement.
And in the spirit of experimentation, may I suggest including a control group, and allowing live viewing of the resulting data?
I'm opposed to using technology to enforce moral questions. It'll fail. It'll fail badly. The risk of harm is far more than the risk of good.
We're increasingly relying on "AI" and automation which is utterly crap at mimicking human nuance. If we continue down this path we won't end up more tolerant, just less human.
Yeah, I think you have a point, as I hinted to with the Demolition Man clip.
The bot is not enforcing it though. Contrary to the public Slackbot version, it asks you to consider the case - with sanctions except appearing.
If I'd given it more development time, I'd also add a “turn this off” capability.
Sorry Knut..."The bot is not enforcing it though." That is how Orwellian things start. They may not enforce it now but if the wrong person sits in the wrong seat in the future, it becomes very easy to enforce it. It starts with no enforcement. Then someone adds a logger. Then someone actually reads the log and finds Knut had to be corrected 32 times this week. Maybe we better talk to Knut. Knut is "coached" not to use the term. Knut is now upset. Next week he uses the term 52 times. Now, he gets coached for insubordination. Anything can happen next. Knut was a great person, employee and team member but he no longer wants to be a part of this team. Goodbye Knut. Meanwhile, Janet and Tim never used the term this passed month and they are named Employees of the Month. No enforcement, but we lost a productive team member and by the way, Janet spends 2 hours a day working on her personal website and Tim couldn't code his way out of a wet paper bag.
This was a fun story, but it's not a bot on slack I'd be worried about in terms of Orwellianism.
And funny how I am the one blamed to be thought policing when I'm willingly trying to be nuanced about something I know I will get berated for in public 😁
And didn't you see the Demolition Man-clip, and my exact comment towards the same thing?
Ain't it funny how (some) people get all dystopian when they're asked to do even a tiny effort to decrease their privilege gap?
There's no dystopian dictatorship coming to get you for not being nice to people. It's just "try to be nice to people". In this case: some people don't feel included in "you guys". Even if it were a phrase originally meant to include every member of a potentially heterogeneous group, maybe try using a word that includes them. It's that easy.
Weird how there's not many such phrases where a mostly-female term is supposed to be accepted as a wildcard for "all peoples".
The fear of abuse should not be ignored. It's exactly these types of automated tools that prevent open discussion of sexuality, including sexual health, on many public forums. Furthermore, automated tools are already being used on sites, such as YouTube, to block content based on questionable copyright reasons.
The voice that gets hurt the most by automated filtering is the minority voice. If you open the door, even a bit, to moral filtering, it's the incumbent dogma that will become normalized. Dissenting voices will simply be drowned out.
My argument against filtering has nothing to do with what is being filtered. I'll make the same argument for any kind of automated filtering and classification.
I think @anabella has a good point though. Those who object to this bot (and doesn't manage to reflect that they actually read my post) escalates it to being about either moral monitoring, censorship, people being “offended” or what not. They are important, challenging, and interesting points in and of themselves, but what worries me is that they also reframe the discussion and offer little acknowledgment to the experiences of those who felt the need to make this bot in the first place.
And @mortoray , the bot isn't actually censoring anyone. It only reveals itself to the user in question. It does so by presenting a proposal, with a way to learn more about why it does so. It's up to you to make the judgment, or to protest it, or ask the moderator to either remove it or whitelist you. It's only acting in the channels it's invited to. Its source code is out in the open.
Is there really not any distinction between that, and the opaque processes and technological decisions that go into something like YouTube or Facebook? Can't it be a way for a community to self-monitor according to the agreed-upon rules they've set for themselves in order to foster a productive conversation?
Thanks for your input @mudasobwa ,
It's completely within the owners of the site’s right to exercise the Code of Conduct that we agree to when signing up for this free service.
One could easily argue that just greying it out and labeling it is indeed more inclusive and tolerant compared to other sites and forums that would just delete the comment altogether.
And the “shooting”-part of your comment is just unwarranted and unreasonable.
On the one hand it is very annoying to have people correct your speech. On the other hand anything that can help others introspect on their position and privilege within a system is useful. I wonder what response you would get if you suggested 'you gals' instead of 'y'all'.
I agree: It's super annoying if you haven't decided to be OK with it (and even then it's hard). As for 'you gals', I suspect some would point out that in most cases it's unnecessary to gender a group, or perhaps it would make the bias even clearer?
Speaking as someone with "lived experience of not being included in all sorts of ways, in a field still dominated by mostly men", I appreciate the desire to help communities do better on inclusivity but I'm really, really not a fan of the approach. I think the comments here make the case in point: the people who need to be reminded to use inclusive language are exactly the people who will dig their heels in at robotic finger-wagging. And I don't blame them, because automated nagging is annoying however high-minded the intent, and I would absolutely do the same if I were in an analogous situation (in fact, I have done the same in analogous situations!). I've posted on bulletin boards which made extensive use of automated text replacement; that has the advantage of being direct and not coming off as condescending, but of course realtime chat platforms would have to have it built in.
Thank you for your comment @dmfay !
Yeah, as you say from the various comments I've gotten both here and on Twitter, I think you're completely right. Not even a wagging-finger from the adorable BMO gets past them. Next time I'll use Clippy 😄
You implicitly agree to the Code of Conduct by registering an account and continuing to use this site, as you agree to Terms of Service subject to change for literally anything you sign up for.
Are you implying that women wouldn't be included if you said "hey developers" to a group of people? Because that's just ludicrous. The only people it wouldn't include are people who aren't developers, which is likely situationally appropriate.
I honestly do not see why so many people continue to see "hey, consider wording things inclusively" as censorship and inherently offensive. No one is enforcing your use of guys in your own life, and I'm very sorry you've been inconvenienced by being asked to regard other people's feelings.
Well done!! :)
Oh, you would be more careful also in a shame-driven culture (like some of the largest ones in Asia or basically whatever was under the aegis of the catholic church), not just in communist or fascist regimens.
I still see what troubles people so much if they are collectively called "guys" just by convention: in my team (which, again, I definitely like and respect), basically everyone makes cultural references I do not get, on top of speaking a language which is not my native one (although I have been just using that for years): should I ask them to avoid mentioning anything too British for my ears or to speak in Esperanto, so that I can feel like I belong in there?
Come on, let's be realistic: harassment or discrimination are serious issues, while this paranoid campaign to make everybody thread on eggshells (I am not referring to you in particular, it is a general though) it is either useless or actually really offensive towards people who have actually experienced some kind of unfair work environment.
I am pretty confident I am still entitled to say that imho that is censorship and can lead to even worse situations, in the same way you are entitled to disagree: I would never dream to censor these kind of ideas :)
"Guys". Let me state: I am generation or two older than most in the field. I've generally tried to quit using the term and that is too bad. In my generation we used "Guys" when addressing our group/team. It was an interesting word, both exclusive and inclusive. It excluded the rest of the world and included those in our group/team. My experience with women in the workforce has led me to believe that most I work with want nothing more than to be "just one of the guys". Included in that group/team and treated no differently. I work for a woman, the smartest person I have ever met, and I am currently paired with a female teammate. I assure you, both are "just one of the guys". I started by stating I'm old but I learned long ago to roll and update with the times. I've started using the term "Folks", which for me is almost as good as "Guys". It will be a cold day in Hades when I address my group in California with "y'all". As far as the bot...I would never subject my group to machine correction of their speech. That sounds Orwellian. We strive to maintain our humanity amid a world of constant change and update as tech takes over more of our lives.
Well whatever you decide to call yourselves, please prioritize the quality and effectiveness of your code, because our lives (though less of them, these days) are in the balance.
How about adding a charity they can donate to as well? just an idea that would emphasize the importance of helping minorities :3
(if you do take this idea could you please include Venezuela? we need all the help in the world <3)
just an idea ~
I like it, sort of a digital-charitable version of npm’s "you guys"-jar. I didn't plan to spend much time developing the bot further, but since all the code is on glitch.com, anyone can easily remix the code and e.g. make it possible to change the link from Slack with a charity of choice.
It's sad and worrysome reading about what's going on in Venezuela. I hope you're OK considering the circumstances. Do you have a charity you would recommend?
I'm currently in Mexico so, I'm cool. There's a few things I'm not okay with but that would be a huge post that might make people sad because there are so many layers to leaving a country in shambles without really wanting to.
As for the charity, I'm asking in a group, they're really touched by this!
They've recommended the following:
meals4hope.org/#venezuela with a link to a man (a best friend of one of the group members) who with help from meals4hope wants to do a marathon to help more kids!: migranodearena.org/reto/19507/run4...
gofundme.com/nomoremalnutrition this one is to help the Perez Carreño Hospital in Caracas. She has an instagram as well :3
There's also the #serviciopublico HT in twitter that while it might be difficult to donate to, you'll be able to see how much people ask for medicine. It kinda puts in perspective the medicine problem which not a lot of people understand D:
There's a lot of instagram accounts, there's one for animals but I'm kinda worried about posting it here because it's very "omg trigger warning" since animals are having it very very very rough right now, her cases make me cry sometimes ;U;
anyway, if I find anymore I'll reply again <3 thankies :D
I once had a boss that called us ninjas... Was an interesting way to be inclusive.
I reckon you didn't actually work as ninjas then ^^_
Good ninjas never tell!
Your boss was right to be paranoid, then. Assume everyone is a potential ninja... they lurk where you least expect them. So expect them everywhere!
I would exit any community that implements something like this, without a backward glance.
Being inclusive leads to inclusiveness. Being nice to people leads to inclusiveness. Being human, empathetic and talking to people leads to inclusiveness. Listening to people leads to inclusiveness. Accepting people leads to inclusiveness.
Language policing does not lead to inclusiveness, it leads to *ex*clusiveness . It leads to people being afraid to speak. It leads to people who are in the know to be comfortable speaking within carefully circumscribed bounds, and those who just don't "get it" to be excluded.
Techno solutions do not lead to inclusiveness. Your bot is part and parcel of tech exclusiveness. If you feel that someone is using exclusive language, talk to them. Be real and human with them. Be empathetic.
Thanks for your feedback, @rendall ! As you know, from having read my post, I’m aware of the backside of calling out how people use language.
But I find it interesting that an automated private reminder to be more emphatic is so outrageous that you would blankly exit the community. Some people actually prefer it to having a moderator contact them and making a whole deal out of it.
But to your higher point, I do agree that we should strive towards human interaction and empathy. But I don’t think we can rule out how technology puts constraints and can augment this. Because after all, even here we’re typing in text fields over the Internet.
Language policing, and in particular automated language policing, indicates deeper problems, as I partly outlined above.
You would be hard-pressed to find my saying such a dramatic thing in all of my online presence, stretching back years, but I am that certain of it.
I note without surprise that you literally had women telling you that they found the bot not helpful for inclusivity and you overrode their opinions with your own. That is not inclusiveness.
Be honest: there is no rational argument that would make you take it away, is there. I mean all of this feedback kindly to you: this behavior from a moderator is precisely what I would expect from a community that implemented this, and why I would see a language-police-bot as a huge red flag.
On top of all of that, when I saw the title, I expected to read an article arguing in favor of the proposition that 'you guys' is exclusionary. I was hoping to be convinced. Instead, this article is a story about a bot that takes it as given and then ignores any feedback to the contrary.
If I can offer any advice at all, do the hard work of exploring the topic with your community, of first discovering if "you guys" is actually a problem, if people are actually feeling uncomfortable there, and if so, what to do about it. Imposing a cop-bot is a cop-out.
This kind of slippery slope argument is exhausting and unproductive. And again, you did in fact agree when you signed up. That's what a Terms of Service agreement is.
What my concern would be with a feature like this, is that people who are mildly positive to neutral are turned off by this language correction.
Or, in other words, it might be that being picky about 'guys' might create resistance and reduce support for bigger problems -- like gender pay gaps, discrimination, difficultly getting respect for work achievements, and more.
I'm for inclusiveness, of course. But if this reduces support for matters that seem more pressing, then I'm not sure if it's worth it. Does that make sense, or am I being too pragmatic here?
Ok, I've managed to lose the thread here, but you sure assume a lot about someone you don't know. You haven't given me much credit for actually agreeing with a lot of what you say, and dong so in the text. I even included a clip from Demolition Man!
Once you toned down the useless rhetoric, you actually touch on different interesting points that proves how challenging and difficult this can be – which is frustrating, because it seems that it doesn't need to be. I haven't claimed to sit on the definitive answers, nor do I think you do, but what I think is worth thinking about is:
– What is the distinction between being offended and feeling excluded?
– How are efforts to influence, dictate or control communication experienced by people of different cultural and historical backgrounds?
– What is reasonable to expect from whom when it comes to inclusion in a tech community?
– Can we discuss how communicative actions can leave someone left out, without having to go down the rather unproductive “SJW”/partisan/whatever route?
I don't expect you to post the answers here – is just what I got from this whole ordeal.
Perhaps, if you've acquaintances who've managed to get their way away from any of the various "regimes" out there, especially any older ladies & gents who've surcame any of the darker than usual times in such places, you might buy one of them a beer or two some time, encourage a spirit of convivial honesty, and might ask them their thoughts on this.
Couldn't hurt to ask, no?
And if you do, perhaps I'll buy you a beer sometime if I'm in Oslo.
Funnily enough, the bot pinged me as I was having a discussion about “guys” and Southerners’ use of “y’all.” I joked that we had to come up with an alternative to “you guys” because it was “too Northern.” I think it’s pretty fair to guess that Southerners didn’t coin it to be more gender-inclusive in their spoken language. In any case, I wasn’t bothered by the bot, and I think it’s a worthwhile exercise.
Friends and associates are becoming more willing to call out “whoa dude, that’s ___ist” when someone intentionally or unintentionally uses fraught or discriminatory speech. Why shouldn’t our machines, especially those built for communication, try and do the same.
If your version of truth is that you think it's reasonable to compare being thoughtful about language to mandatory tearing the wings off of flies, then I think you might need serious help.
Thanks for your input @Turle Biker Girl!
As I hope you can see from my post, I too have my hesitations to the bot and if it's the right approach to whatever we're trying to solve here.
I think I share your disappointment in people being dismissed simply because of their gender — whatever it may be, and I see how my quoted comment could imply that I did dismiss objections because they came from men (But then again, I do engage with the objections in the following paragraphs).
I think you're correct that word-choice and language are very much under scrutiny in tech nowadays, and that it's hard to be in a position where you raise concern upon what's agreed on as ideologically correct (It's not just tech, by the way, you'll find this discourse other places too).
I'm curious to learn what reasons for not wanting this bot / or don't mind the "hi guys" expression there is outside of those I raised in the post. And don't worry about reliving the debating. I'm not here to further justify the bot or make it my mission to convince you to change your opinion. But I do want to learn about your perspective if you care to share it.
You seem like the thoughtful, subtle sort.
Have you made any controlled experiments with this?
And if you wanted to make a bibliography, might be worth peeking at some of Durkheim's work rather than Sapir's to understand the motivations and effects of the kinds of systems in that Demolition Man video.
And it would be unreasonable to say, I guess, that there's no market for the bot. And many will be grateful for it.
Really interesting article and discussion. Definitely got me thinking Knut, takk! 😁