Last modified: 2009-04-09 02:16:53 UTC
Will be good idea to introduce gender switch (male/female) in user preferences. It is great for Slavic languages (and most likely for other languages too) localization. For example in Russian user namespace should display "Участник" for male and "Участница" for female. For user talk: "Обсуждение_участника" and "Обсуждение_участницы" correspondingly. At least user and user talk namespaces should be affected with default signature. If database workload will be not too big, special pages (recent changes, page lists, etc) should be improved too. See also bug 12924.
Just a note -- if user namespace aliases are in place, it should be possible to use {{DISPLAYTITLE:blah}} to specify which one will be used to display the title on the page itself. Of course, every other link everywhere in the system will use the default.
But what will be more easier and transparent for average user? To modify 2 pages and signature or select gender in one place?
Babel extension will definitely benefit from using this option.
In Polish is not a politely to say "he" about woman - it is very offensive for Polish womans. (Note, that the Polish custom is to kiss woman's hand on greeting. The gentleman in action must be a gentleman in conversation.) Gender inflection is problem in many messages diverted to users. To the man and woman I say in English: "You taken this", but in Polish to the man "Wziąłeś to" and to women "Wzięłaś to". To resolve this we try to write in messages something like this "Wziąłeś(-ęłaś) to", but this is not convenient for reading. I think to complete gender support in software we need GENDER function like PLURAL. {{GENDER:UserName|he|she}} should return "she" if UserName is a name of women or "he" for man. Without UserName function GENDER should use of current logged user gender value or if user is not logged in - the default gender setting for not logged users from global settings.
remember that you would have to have three options; Male, Female, and Undefined, as some don't want to be forced to specify their gender.
I do not know grammar in another languages, but all Slavic languages is similar. In Polish I can say sentence: "Where are you been?" if three gender forms: male: "Gdzie byłeś?" female: "Gdzie byłaś?" unknown: "Gdzieś było?" Last form can be used for object or children. Object subject is used in poems in sentence like this "Sun, where are you been?". It is not needed in MediaWiki. For one children it is correctly to say in unknown form, but this is pejoratively and practically used only by irritated parents. If sentence is addressed to children's group last form is used in unknown gender, but in plural. I think we need female and male support only. In Polish it is impossible to say politely to human without determine gender. Global gender default setting (for not logged in users) can be changed to female if wiki is used to build female's dedicated site.
(In reply to comment #5) > remember that you would have to have three options; Male, Female, and > Undefined, as some don't want to be forced to specify their gender. "Undefined" is needed for anons anyway.
I'm not sure what's the best way to pass user genders into the message is... inconveniently enough they'll be needed much more frequently in various languages than in English so they'll be less likely to appear in English original messages, which kind of messes up the traditional model of "pass everything in and hope it's obvious to the translator what parameter is what" -- you'd have to throw extra params on the message and hope somebody looks up the code to find them. :(
Several languages have a "gender issue". Many languages do not have this. There are two things that we need to find out 1) what languages require gender support 2) what messages need change because they require gender specific addressing When we learn in Betawiki that a language requires gender support, we can use a bot to FUZZY all the messages known to be relevant. When a message is known to require differentiation in gender, we can FUZZY the message for all the languages we know to need gender support. In this way, the messages will be slowly but surely be improved. Developers who as a rule will be unaware of these issues will not have to deal with it.. It is just that the MediaWiki Internationalization needs to have a way to deal with this. Thanks, GerardM
> When we learn in Betawiki that a language requires gender support, we can use a > bot to FUZZY all the messages known to be relevant. > When a message is known to require differentiation in gender, we can FUZZY the > message for all the languages we know to need gender support. AFAIK It is not possible to define, which messages require marking as FUZZY. Translators will have to read all messages and put {{GENDER:}} to the appropriate messages depending on the context in their language.
We need to know two things.. the languages that know genders and the message that needs gender support. Only one new thing is required; the language we would like to provide gender support for. This goes into a table and we just need a script that takes this into account. Marking messages as FUZZY happens "all" the time. It is likely that this could also be used for formal and informal German.
There's not much point in identifying which messages need to be gender-fied when there's no support in the software for that and there's no indication that anyone is working on such support.
This bug is to get the support for gender specific messaging. When the required functionality is written, the messages need to be found. Once one is, all the localisations for the languages that have gender support can be FUZZIED. This bug IS to get development for gender support. So you are quite correct that nobody is currently working on it. It is however a legitimate need.
{{GENDER:}} is definitely necessary for Belarusian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian. Highly likely for all other Slavic languages.
Preference switch in r46246 and {{GENDER:}} for interface messages in r46247. I suggest opening a separate bug for namespaces altering in gender, or any other places where gender information should be used.
Note that this preference should be changed automatically to all projects if the user has a global account (SUL), just like password and e-mail.
(In reply to comment #16) > Note that this preference should be changed automatically to all projects if > the user has a global account (SUL), just like password and e-mail. That would be bug 14950.
(In reply to comment #15) > Preference switch in r46246 and {{GENDER:}} for interface messages in r46247. I > suggest opening a separate bug for namespaces altering in gender, or any other > places where gender information should be used. So is this FIXED?
