Last modified: 2014-01-04 10:17:41 UTC
Currently, we have gender support for - the male gender - the female gender - gender unknown (although caguely attributed "neutral" in the code sometimes) Many germanic languages, including English, require the neuter gender at times, such as when having to make a distinction between: - (Missis Smith) "she" - (Mister Miller) "he" - (a bot program, a person nicknamed by a word of neuter gender) "it" Gender agnostic wordings such as "user xyzzy" fits them all and is not outright wrong in the neuter gender case, but having the correct grammatical gender at hand even in these comaparatively rare cases will be much better language use.
related Bug 25834
Would this only be used for bots?
(In reply to comment #2) > Would this only be used for bots? There are people that don't identify to a gender (or to the normal gender identities). Which is what we try to keep our unspecified/undisclosed as (or at least should be doing)
(In reply to comment #2) > Would this only be used for bots? No. As said above, Nicknames of neuter grammatical gender may require it, too. This includes, for instance all diminiutives of names such as "Maria" (Mary, feminine) -> "Mariechen" (little Mary, neuter) for all local languages of the western part of the West German continuum from Swiss German over Swabian, Alsation, Palatinean, Ripuarian, (East) Limburgish to Low German (including Westphalian) Usage is depending on language. It would not be used for bots having Names of non-neuter grammatical gender in Colognian, e.g. Off-Topic: As a side-note: it may be useful to make user "right" or group or status information available to message handling occasionally. We translate a user name to the string "the user named 'xyzzy'" in cases of unknown gender, since articles must be used with names standing alone, and there is no genderless article. It would of course be both clearer and more informative to use "the bot named 'xyzzybot'" instead. With some log messages, we would have take care to keep the status at the time of logging, then. Another side-note: In order to get nicknaming with grammatically gendered words right, we would need to know both grammatical and natural gender. For example, a male boxer nicknamed "the Ape" ("Ape" is feminine as per grammatical gender) hit his father in law K.O. -> newspaper headline: "Die Aap hät singe Schwejervatter verkammesölt!" -> Grammatical analysis: "The Ape (feminine) is referred to with "his" (masculine) -> The nick's article goes the nicknames grammatical gender while references to the person otherwise go with the natural gender. Yet another side note: It is not uncommon, that people use Nicknames that include articles, such as ":w:de:User:Der Hexer" or ":w:de:User:De Uli". For languages that require articles to be used with names, we have those articles in messages files of course. At least for the langues I know, adding Articles should be avoided, when names already contain ones.
(In reply to comment #3) > There are people that don't identify to a gender (or to the normal gender > identities). > > Which is what we try to keep our unspecified/undisclosed as (or at least should > be doing) Not to select a gender, whatever the cause, is possible. To the best of my knowledge "unspecified" is not posing any grammatical or other problems in the context of multiple language support (i18n).
Another context requiring the neuter gender surfaced in a radio interview with one of 15 members of the German Pirate Party, who were recently elected into the Berlin federal state parliament. The interviewed person is well known with his nick Plaetzchen (cookie) and confessed that he likes eating cookies, hence the name. Asked whether he wanted to be addressed "Mr. Cookie" or just "cookie" he said "das Plaetzchen" (the cookie) - "das" being the neuter article in German grammar. Standard German does not put grammatical articles in front of names usually, but many regional and local varieties do. Having articles in front of names of processes, jobs, or bots, and some nick names, is at least established jargon, dispersing into standard language use through computer magazines, and other press. Grammatical articles always convey grammatical gender. German has three of them. Analysis: We have: - natural gender: "male", "female", "undisclosed", ("other" being discussed) We need in addition: - grammatical gender: "masculine", "feminine", "neuter" - use article before name: "yes", "no" so as to be able to completely map German language use in our German L10n. Btw. the German Pirate Party is running a MediaWiki wiki. Das Plätzchen is of course using it.
Interesting story. Adding neuter gender (different from unspecified) is probably the next step we will do at some point.
undisclosed (what unspecified is now called) should already be a gender neutral for the languages that support it...
(In reply to comment #8) > undisclosed (what unspecified is now called) should already be a gender neutral > for the languages that support it... Not really, many languages default to masculine form instead of grammatical neuter.
(In reply to comment #8) > undisclosed (what unspecified is now called) should already be a gender neutral > for the languages that support it... That is not so. For most Germanic languages that I am aware of, the actual use is not compatible with the neuter Gender. You need to be aware that quite often, grammatical and natural gender deviate from each other, and while the natural gender governs the genderized use of very many languages in the world, this is not so for a large number of Indo-European languages, most notably Germanic ones. In addition to what Niklas Laxström wrote, we also have at least one language that does not have a true default, and thus resorts to constructs like "the user named X..." which does not imply a gender. While this fits for neuter, too, it is definitely not the way you would talk about a neuter.
Without wanting to seem insensible to those of undetermined gender, wanted or unwanted, I am closing this issue as WONTFIX.
(In reply to comment #11) > Without wanting to seem insensible to those of undetermined gender, wanted or > unwanted, I am closing this issue as WONTFIX. ? Usually things get wontfixed because a) It is infeasible to do. That does not appear to be the case. b) It is a "bad idea". The comments so far don't really seem to indicate that that is the case So why the wontfix?
*** Bug 59643 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
