Re: Make primnodes.h gender neutral

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 2:17 PM, Gavin Flower <GavinFlower(at)archidevsys(dot)co(dot)nz
> wrote:

> On 18/03/16 09:41, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
>> On 03/17/2016 01:36 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>
>>
>>
>>> (*) I'm probably going to be expelled from the project for saying this,
>>> but I very much doubt that female coders stay away from PostgreSQL just
>>> because some files say "he" in comments rather than "she" or "he or she"
>>> or "one" or "they". They probably have different reasons for staying
>>> away from the project.
>>>
>>
>> Wanna bet? There is a very loud movement about this. We can either:
>>
>> A. Start fighting about it
>>
>> B. Just fix it, it doesn't matter anyway and it doesn't hurt the quality
>> of the code or the documentation
>>
>> JD
>>
>
> I strongly think that gender should not be mentioned unless it is relevant
> - as constructs like 'he or she' are clumsy and distract from what is being
> commented on, not to mention that some rare people are: neither, both, or
> ambiguous (from research I did when I read a rather curious article).
>
> Other than 'one', 'their', 'they', &' them' - there are role specific
> references like 'user', 'developer', & 'DBA', ... that can be used where
> appropriate.
>
> I tend to prefer the term 'Gender Appropriate' rather than 'Gender
> Neutral', as sometimes mentioning gender IS very relevant!
>

​That's only half the issue. If some people want to review every new patch
for gender appropriateness and point out any problems before those patches
get committed I'm doubting anyone is going to complain.

The question here is whether we should fix the wording of a comment that
was added in, and exists unchanged since, 7.2

IMO we can be more sensitive to these issues in the present without having
to apologize for (and fix) this project's history and the writing of people
who may no longer even be around. Hopefully this compromise position is
sufficiently accommodating - I am personally fine if the people with real
control decide to operate under this premise.

​If we are going to make a concerted effort to change historical writing we
might as well just take the hit and "s/he/one/g"​. Later, if someone
reading the revised wording finds it distasteful they can fix those
instances that are so egregious or presently-relevant to warrant the effort.

If we do this how many new developers are we expecting to subscribe to the
-hackers list and make serious contributions - say, by reviewing the large
backlog of patches we presently have?

David J.