Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

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gramps
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by gramps »

Arctangent wrote:what's the issue with modernizing this
To be fair, some technical issues were mentioned. Besides that, neutering language always stirs up an unpleasant shitstorm and usually pisses off more people than it satisfies, meaning it's probably detrimental to the causes of people who do it because of a political leaning.

Anyway, if I had a vote, I'd vote for quietly changing it back to cyborg (or whatever, something inanimate); that should get rid of the issue with player identifying too closely with character and getting offended at "it" wording, and would be even more in line with the historic origins.
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by Graf Zahl »

Arctangent wrote:
Graf Zahl wrote:This has historic origins.
It plainly doesn't, considering that Doom doesn't have anything of the sort and the Quake 2 thing it was based off of didn't use "other," but rather displayed id had as much of any idea of what various robot-related terms meant as Akira Toriyama.
So you are denying ZDoom its 20 year history? The "historic" origins are not Quake but early ZDoom times.
Arctangent wrote: Hell, ZDoom hardly has concerns for keeping things just for the sake of historic origins in the first place - it's not like wallrunning, Doom 2 projectiles triggering "monster passes" lines, or the intercepts overflow have been kept in even has compat options, despite actually being from Doom itself. In fact, if I'm remember correctly, you yourself have publicly very strong opinions on all of those, so what's the issue with modernizing this when it's a ZDoom-added feature that doesn't have have direct gameplay consequences?
There's a major difference between stabilizing the technical aspects of the engine and peddling to people who get easily offended over the most minor things. The former is a necessity for progress, the latter a clear sign of something going wrong.
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by Gez »

wildweasel wrote:the way gendered pronouns are implemented at the language level means the grammar will not be clean - for example, in the "killed itself" string, that's actually written as "killed %hself", where %h fills in "he/she/it" based on player gender. Oxford says "themself" is not yet widely accepted
"themself" makes more sense to me for the singular they than "themselves" which is an obviously plural construction. After all, we don't use "himselves" or "herselves".
Rachael wrote:I think the best idea is to have it moddable with defaults. But the trouble with this is - then it only becomes compatible with English, or any language that is closely related or inspired by it or whatever shaped its gender structures.
It's already largely the case anyway. For example, most Romance languages don't have a neutral gender, everything has to be masculine or feminine. Some languages like Basque have two genders which correspond to animate and inanimate rather than masculinity and femininity. Similarly, some languages like Danish have a common and a neutral gender, common being used for both masculine and feminine things. And for things like possessive third person pronouns, in English they agree with the possessor whereas in French they agree with the possessed. And speaking of agreement, adjectives in many languages have to agree with gender and number, while in English they are invariable.
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by Arctangent »

gramps wrote:Besides that, neutering language always stirs up an unpleasant shitstorm and usually pisses off more people than it satisfies, meaning it's probably detrimental to the causes of people who do it because of a political leaning.
if "people deserve to exist without hiding" is such a radical idea to a person that it drives them up the wall, then chances are they're giant pieces of shit who would be aghast by the various other ideas like "race shouldn't determine a person's lot in life" and "gonads hold no significant meaning in what a person is capable of doing, except reproduction"

not to mention, again, there's doubtlessly more than enough stuff linked to zdoom for that type of person to cause a shitstorm anyway - if that's something that absolute must be avoided for whatever reason, then it's time to pack our bags and launch it into the sun
Graf Zahl wrote:So you are denying ZDoom its 20 year history? The "historic" origins are not Quake but early ZDoom times.
... which for quite a while used the Quake 2 terminology of "cyborg," not "other." I'm not sure what you're getting at other than you yourself don't know the history of the thing you've sunk years of your life into.
Graf Zahl wrote:the latter a clear sign of something going wrong.
ah, yes, clearly there's something terribly, horribly wrong with being sore about people pretending you don't exist or thinking you're just making a core part of your identity up

who is this graf person, anyway, gez, i think he might just be your imaginary friend or something

Warning issued -Rachael
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by Graf Zahl »

Gez wrote: It's already largely the case anyway. For example, most Romance languages don't have a neutral gender, everything has to be masculine or feminine. Some languages like Basque have two genders which correspond to animate and inanimate rather than masculinity and femininity. Similarly, some languages like Danish have a common and a neutral gender, common being used for both masculine and feminine things. And for things like possessive third person pronouns, in English they agree with the possessor whereas in French they agree with the possessed. And speaking of agreement, adjectives in many languages have to agree with gender and number, while in English they are invariable.
The entire system is not moddable. Period. This thing varies so much across languages that any automated word replacement is doomed to fail. English is pretty much the only language that gets away with it.

@Arctangent:

Are you deliberately trying to turn this into a shitstorm or what?
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by gramps »

Arctangent, I'm really not trying to be rude or snarky here, but I have no idea how you got from "neutering language always stirs up an unpleasant shitstorm" to "people deserve to exist without hiding is a radical idea."

Someone recently posted a link to the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines in a pinned thread. This might be the kind of thing you're interested in if you haven't read it. This part comes to mind:
Please respond to what people actually said, not to exaggerations of their views. Your criticism will not be constructive if it is aimed at a target other than their real views.
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by Graf Zahl »

I'll be blunt here:

Arctangent's attitude here is exactly what I do not like about current times. Everything is painted in black and white - right or wrong - with no shades of gray in between. If it doesn't match one's own political agenda it is immediately being turned into a weapon to stigmatize the other of belonging "to the bad".

And let me say that I'm sick and tired of people acting like that, regardless on which side of the fence they are on.
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by Arctangent »

Graf Zahl wrote:Are you deliberately trying to turn this into a shitstorm or what?
this is something i should be asking you
gramps wrote:Arctangent, I'm really not trying to be rude or snarky here, but I have no idea how you got from "neutering language always stirs up an unpleasant shitstorm" to "people deserve to exist without hiding is a radical idea."
Have you never actually interacted with the people who take issue with referring to people with neutral pronouns - or, if that wasn't the "neuter" you meant, consider neutral pronouns to be "neutering language?" Because they're absolutely vicious about how nonbinary folk don't actually exist, or are just acting it out for attention, or are so deranged that they should be locked up in an insane asylum. It also usually only takes like five seconds of looking at anything they say on social media to see that it's not the only thing they're huge asswipes about, either.

Like, these aren't the people you try to convince, because they'll deny everything to continue their hate train towards people they didn't even know existed until ten minutes prior. It doesn't really matter if they cause a shitstorm, because they're constantly causing a shitstorm. I wouldn't be surprised if, somewhere, there are some screaming about this forum at this very moment, complaining about how many women on here are "just trying to appeal to men for attention, pretending that they can program," or something similarly spiteful and idiotic.
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by Graf Zahl »

I think I better lock this to prevent you from getting into real trouble...
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Re: Change of 'Other' Gender Player Obituary String

Post by Rachael »

I was going to split this topic and then reopen it, but I think my decision is already made clear on this: I'm just going to change the third gender to "Robotic" (it's more PC than "Other", anyhow, and will make the "it" pronouns valid and less offensive) and leave everything else alone. This is obviously too much of a hot topic to touch and do anything else with right now. As for the topic lock, I agree with Graf's decision, so it will remain so. Maybe when the dust settles a bit we can think about adding a fourth in the vein of the Stallman article Enjay linked - but not right now. Not while emotion is high on this issue.

Arctangent - there are things in this world that are worth getting into a fiery shitstorm about. There's also things that clearly are not. This qualifies as the latter. When you hold uncompromising views, you are creating more problems than you are solving. This was a bunch of dust that did not need to be kicked up, but you went and did it anyway - and for what? I apologize if this is a real issue for you and I do not mean to offend you, but you also have to look at the bigger picture here. The world is nuanced, and as long as you continue seeing it in black and white you become just as despicable as the very people who have originally made this such a horrible issue as it is in the first place today. Extremists are extremists - period. It doesn't matter if they're "far right" or "far left" - no matter what views they hold, the EXTREMISM is the issue, not the values they believe that they hold dear.

In the future, when you find yourself starting to do what you have quite literally become famous for doing - take a step back, breathe a little bit, and come back a little bit more calm. People aren't as evil as you try to make them out to be.

EDIT: Further thoughts: Honestly I believe that both sides of the issue is nothing more than a dick stroking contest to see who is "morally superior" - I'll give you a little hint: no one is! Not when you act like THAT, anyway! And also - you attacked someone who is VERY much against extreme religious crap that a lot of people try to pull - and who could've been an ally and an advocate for you on this issue - but instead of trying to see from his perspective, you forced him on the defensive immediately and lost him completely on the issue. When you do that, you're not helping your cause at all - you're pushing people AWAY from it. You're being belligerent for no real reason, and in the end, it hurts your issue more than it helps it.
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