DEV Community

Discussion on: The problem with “you guys”

Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair • Edited

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?


  1. look at me, I have no data to back anything up. 

Collapse
 
mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

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.

Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

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.

Collapse
 
kmelve profile image
Knut Melvær

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!

Collapse
 
v6 profile image
🦄N B🛡

I'm not sure if it is the right approach socially.

To say that this is a well studied question would be a British level of understatement.

Would be an interesting experiment to be sure!

And in the spirit of experimentation, may I suggest including a control group, and allowing live viewing of the resulting data?

Collapse
 
aspittel profile image
Ali Spittel

Oh, I really like that idea -- like Grammarly but for writing inclusive stuff. Hmmm...

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

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.

Thread Thread
 
aspittel profile image
Ali Spittel

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!

Thread Thread
 
v6 profile image
🦄N B🛡

on the cautious end of the spectrum