On second, though, no, I have nothing to say at this point.

Naah, just sit back and see what (if anything) happens. With luck, it will turn into a lukewarm, then a cold, cup of tea.

And we shall dump it into the sink and brew a fresh pot!

Hi...

I disagree with you here, I think the OP raised an important point about "political correctness" and its growing influence on everyday life. I am one who agrees that it's getting out of hand. In the national arena (here in the United States,) this concept needs to be confronted and debated.

Regards...

Political correctness got ridiculously out-of-hand a long time ago. Remember about twenty years ago, when there were campaigns to: replace boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife and spouse with the generic term significant other?; and to stop referring to short people as short and call them vertically challenged? As much as I hate political correctness, I doubt it could have any impact on software development. So the subject of this particular thread is much a do about nothing.

I tend to agree that "political correctness" can be a problem but I am struggling to imagine why somebody's race, gender or any other such thing is apparent in their code enough that somebody would feel the need to make reference to it?
Why would the physical appearance or similar of anybody matter or even be noticed on a mailing list?
Do people on these lists really review the code and reply with things like "way to go my brother!" and "You can't code because you're a girl!"?
I really don't understand how racism or sexism can even come into this.
For example, with a few exceptions I don't know what anybody on this site looks like and have no idea of the gender of many yet I haven't yet found it necessary to find out in order to help somebody.

To the OP i would like to say.

has to be bad, particularly when you have largish, loosely joined groups with some of them meeting only on the net.

This seems to imply that if you have consent, it is OK.

It's of course a culture thing but in my view, even among consenting adults, this type of physical or text thing should be in private or on a personal email id.

OK

So "group hug" is out. Ha, ha. (When will LQ get a laughing icon?)

the famous facebook poke... heh... stop it, i don't want it ... ouch, you're hurting my online personality...

finnish language does not have grammatical sex/gender (you know like in e.g. german, a teapot is female, a table is male) and it also doesn't have seperate words for he and she.
so, in a finnish kindergarten there's a kid whose single mother want's him/her to grow up without sexual discrimantion. gender neutral. she also doesn't want to be called mother, but simply parent. she also has a significant other of the same sex.
the adults are having a hard time remembering to use the proper terms when addressing either kid or parent.
the kids are unfazed. they say "of course he's a boy. i've seen his wee-wee. he also has two moms."

The dynamics of Internet discussion forums have been the topic of many psychological research studies. Even though people are using text, and therefore writing to one another, they are speaking to one another, often "off the cuff."

Furthermore, except in the case of "Facebook posts" (say) that are being "pushed" to a phone by a "Facebook app" (which the user of the phone has, nevertheless, voluntarily enabled so to do ...), the recipients of this text/speech must do something explicit in order to receive the text/speech at all: in our case, they must navigate to this particular region of "linuxquestions.org." They have no other economic or mandatory reason to do so, and they can leave at any time. Furthermore, once there, they must explicitly navigate to a particular "thread" or "topic" in order to receive the speech. They do so, voluntarily.

Nevertheless, people can, and do, take serious offense at things ... claim that they or something dear to them has been "harmed" ... exercise "down-voting" if it is available in the forum that they use, and so forth. Lawsuits have been filed against other forum participants and against forum operators and even hosting companies, although (so far!) judges remain unpersuaded and none (to my knowledge) have yet gone to trial.

The actual difference between "text" and "speech" cannot be overlooked. You cannot "see" me now. You do not know my tone of voice, body language, inflection, whether I am drunk or sober (*hic!* "itsch schmoooooth!!"); ... ... any of those things. No, you read what I "say," and there is an enormous practical difference between these two forms of communication which causes anything and everything to be taken with far more "force" than the "speaker" may ever have anticipated or intended ... or that the "listener" may be aware of.

i always say that text-only online communication leaves a void & vacuum in the emotional sector, and the reader tends to fill that with what they find inside themselves... or maybe it's just fear of the unknown.

It's also how cyber-sex is often conducted...

Note that that type of behavior has never come up at LQ. You don't need to describe yourself touching (or backrubbing) someone to give feedback on their contributions. Therefore, I think that the reason that most organizers chose not to have their codes of conduct ban that behavior was because they didn't feel it needed to be spelled out.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...7/#post5362469

?

Well, maybe that wasn't appropriate. After all, we do have a *hat tip* emoticon that I could have used instead.

I'm flattered that you remembered that, btw. It must be because you're another Quake fan.

(And if was appropriate in that context, well, there's a pretty big qualifier there. The nature of that qualifier could easily be a discussion in itself).

I didn't remember. It was just a coincidence of finding that thread at around the same time as having read this one. I do like Quake, though.

That's right. Why do physical characteristics have to be brought up at all. It isn't an issue until certain individuals make it an issue.
The objective should be to make good code, not to bring personal feelings into it and not to make sure there are equal numbers of males and females and people of every race involved.

It is difficult to accurately convey emotions over text. Tone can only be conveyed in a very limited way.

You know, a gender neutral language might go a long way sexism. But what you pointed out is too extreme -- radicalism doesn't get people anywhere.

I don't know about you but cyber-sex text doesn't sound fun at all.
I agree. There should be no reason to ban it because why would it even come up? Although I don't think that all touch references are harmful -- like "high-5" shouldn't offend anyone

I have no words about this statement