One of the questions people have raised about the new rules about pronouns is how users will know what pronouns are preferred.   We've had a trolling question which got  when the user included their preferred pronouns at the bottom of the question, and I agree that particularly on Stackoverflow (rather than sites like Interpersonal Skills or Workplace), this should be considered as 'noise' since it isn't the strict Q&amp;A this site is about. (The codez should work whatever your gender).  Currently, the suggested way of displaying your pronouns is to put it in your profile's 'About Me' section. However, this is suboptimal, since it requires opening a new page.  I suggest adding a 'preferred pronouns' field in the user profile, and displaying this on a user's usercard. There's currently a 'new contributor' label, so it could be similar to that, with she/her pronouns or whatever they choose.  In comments, it could be appended to the reputation score that currently gets shown when you hover over a name:   4,305 reputation, she/her pronouns  The default would be blank. No flair updates, no hover-in-comments update. If a user fills in this field in their profile, then it will show.
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Pursuant to discussion on the , several have asked how far they'll need to search to determine if a user has expressed their preferred pronouns. This requested feature could create an easy solution for that concern.  On sites where I've reached the  privilege level, users can hover over my picture to see a snippet of my profile:    This is where I've included my preferred pronouns, and where I see many others including them as well.  By making this feature universal, users could quickly and easily check for preferred pronouns without needing to navigate to another page.
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It is becoming more common for people to explicitly state the pronouns to be used in addressing themselves: he/him, she/her, or they/them. For example, a name tag for a conference might read:  Cory Lopez Some Company She/Her   Usage seems to have settled on the singular they and them as gender neutral pronouns. Alternatives that were once widespread in niche communities, such as sie/hir, seem to have died out.   Whether or not one agrees with this language  shift, the pairing between subject and object case is fixed.  It's difficult to imagine someone who uses "he" as his subject case using anything but "him" as object case, and it's even harder to imagine that such a person would succeed in getting people to use a non-obvious collection of personal pronouns. (And you may see what I did -- flat out assumed that "he" and "his" automatically go together.)  What are the roots of the practice of presenting subject and object case pronouns as opposed to just subject case, subject and possessive, or some other combination?   (Note: I am not interested in a discussion of the gender politics and cultural shifts involved, just the mechanics of how the current representation was chosen.)
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This post has two parts: (a) a question and (b) a proposal.   (a) Often, particularly while writing technical papers or user's manuals, I have come across a situation where I need to say:      A user of this software may not need to use it from his personal computer. He can use it from a phone or even from his tablet.   I have seen many authors use female pronouns (i.e. “she” and “her”), but lately this trend seems to have ebbed somewhat.   I, and (I suspect) many other authors, do not want to use passive voice to avoid this.   Is there a gender-neutral way to describe the same situation?   (b) If there is none, I would like to propose using “ze” (for “he” or “she”) and “zir” (for “his” or “her”, rhyming with “fir”) as gender-neutral pronouns. I want to know how you feel about these words.
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It's been more than a month since I have started using . It has these users with user names in the format of "user-random number". I have observed them in some of the stack activities, most of the time asking questions.   Does the moderators create them for their own purpose. If yes what purpose do they serve?   I mean a user is free to have any user name. But it's just a hunch that such users are actually moderators. I may be wrong; just need some clarification.
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On the left sidebar, the first item of the menu is my profile pic + nickname. It seems to be a fake link. Wouldn't be cool if this link goes to my profile instead of doing nothing?  Or maybe, instead of a "non-link", display a summary of my profile (points, number of badges, profile views, helpful tags, etc..).
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I just came across a question by a new contributor to a Stack (in this case, ), as indicated by the new contributor indicator. Since it was an ID request, I launched into a comment linking to  and was about to invite them on the [tour], when I checked their network accounts and found that they had 17k+ rep on Stack Overflow.  Now I know that not everyone will welcome new contributors like that, but still, it would be useful to have an indication if a new contributor is new to Stack Exchange and may not even realise they can edit their own posts (yes, I've encountered those; self-answering just to add new information), or merely new to the current Stack and may only need a couple of pointers on topicality and tagging conventions. Likewise, someone may be a regular on the main Stack, but new to meta.  So please, expand the new contributor indicator to indicate if a user is new to the current Stack, new to the current Meta, new to Meta in general, or new to the Stack Exchange Network.    I realise that a reputation of 101 may indicate a user having received the association bonus, so they may have some experience elsewhere on the Stack Exchange Network. However, that doesn't tell me if they're 200+ on their highest reputation account, or 20k+. The former may still need some help using basic features while the latter doesn't.    I came across a request to . That sounds useful as well, so I've edited my question to incorporate that request.
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Like always I hang around in Stack Overflow's chatrooms. Today, someone posted a link to his new "reloaded" user profile.  Along the lines I read in Arabic "god is a pig". So I asked him to remove it:     Me: I have a lot of respect towards you because of your knowledge but what you wrote there in Arabic is offensive. Could you remove it please?   OP: if it were in English, would it be equally offensive?   I will write it in Dutch because you ask it so kindly.   Me: yeah, I mean what's your goal? You're just seeding hatred   OP: It is an experiment.   After that, the user changed it to Dutch.  My question is: are such statements acceptable by Stack Exchange's standards? If not, should I flag one of his posts like stated ? If yes, could you state why?  My answers to possible questions:   This happened on SO, why don't you post it on MSO?   This happened on SO but I think it's applicable to all SE sites.  Why didn't you link the user or the chat conversation?   I want the user to remain anonymous unless he or she chooses to reveal him/her self. I will give the user a link to this question  Why do you care?   I find it offensive, not only to my religion but to any religion that believes in god. I posted this question to know what you guys and girls think about this. I live by the rules, so if it's acceptable by SE then so be it and I won't bother you again.  If you don't like it then move on.   I know that this is not a mosque/church/temple and that swearing  to a certain degree. But I don't see the point in insulting god, a religion or a race in a public profile. More over, it's not even built on arguments.
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I often see users who appear as user12345 or something similar. I personally dislike this for a few reasons:    I'd prefer to know who I'm dealing with I think the quality of questioning is generally better from users who have an identity Somehow it seems like cheating... disrespectful in some intangible way.. here we all are helping each other for free, and what? You can't even be bothered to show your face?   I've read the question   and there the conclusion seems to be that we don't mind whether the identity is real or adopted.   Fair enough. My problem is with people who can't even be bothered to have an identity at all. (I understand that in some cultures, it might be seen as problematic to make community contributions on your boss's time, even if there's a net gain. Lots of the user12345 folks seem to be asking for work-related answers: even full-blown solutions.)  Coming back to my first point about wanting to know who I'm dealing with; I actually can't tell the numbered users apart. Those numbers just don't stick in the brain, so it becomes like trying to interact with the Borg. Even if people have reasons to conceal their 'passport' identity, why can't they at least be encouraged to put some minimal imagination into making up a fake?   Stack overflow has successfully gamified all sorts of things, so isn't there a way to lean on people (ever so gently) to put a little bit of effort into dumping the auto-generated name. Nag them every 5 logins? Whatever.
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To be honest I find it hard to keep up with all the changes, and very frequently I have to go look at the privileges list to see whether a user (that I'm looking at, so I have his reputation value) has a certain privilege or not.  However, I still don't know what that user will actually see or how the site actually behaves for that user.  There's quite a number of posts here on meta about "where did this go" and "why can't I" and I can't really tell either way how a site behaves for a user with a reputation level of 2500.  So, I propose the following functionality:   For all users, be able to view the site as though you had less reputation than you actually have Bonus-feature: For all users, be able to use the site at that reputation level, unless some features of low-level users conflict with your actual functionality For mods, be able to view the site as a specific users (be able to see all he sees, exactly the way he sees it), but of course not pose as that user (ie. things I do would still be me)   The UI could be merged into the mod menu and the privileges menu:    (Note, I chose a user randomly, Olivier Pons is in no way related to this question or flags, or whatever that I know of.)
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I have been using Stack Overflow for a month now. There are "yes" and "no" options for positive and negative response, respectively. I was wondering, how does this feedback affect my reputation?
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I would like to treat a user as a non-gender noun and refer to it with the gender-neutral pronoun, it. E.g.,     The user defines two variables, x and y. It then multiplies each variable by a prime number.    However, on  I found this:      The word "it", however, has an extremely impersonal connotation, even offensive, in common usage and is rarely used in English to refer to an unspecified human being or person of unknown gender. This is because the word "it" connotes that the person being specified is inferior to a person or is an object.   Is to appropriate to refer to a person of unknown sex as it?  Should I rephrase my sentence as follows:     The user defines two variables, x and y. The user then multiplies each variable by a prime number.
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I just posted a comment beginning with @username, and my @username part of the comment disappeared (it was the first word in the comment).  Is there a lolcat inside the Stack Exchange database nomming on notifications? May I suggest you feed it?    P.S. I'm guessing this is a brand spanking new feature, but I can see this coming up a lot
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I posted a question (  ) and they told me to post that question here. So I'm doing it.   I received answer that John doe is used as anyonymous person (victim in most cases) as placeholder for name.  Is there reason why it's "John Doe"?
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This is a followup to my question  . StrongBad, in a comment replying to one of my comments, suggested that I go ahead and ask something along these lines. This question is directed at those who have experienced unwelcoming behavior. I'm so confused over the nature of the unwelcoming behavior that others have alluded to. If I can't figure out what is happening because it gets deleted quickly, there's little I can do to work toward preventing future occurrences. What, specifically, can individuals in the community do to support those who have experienced gender bias? I'm asking you -- those of you who have experienced bias related to being LGBTQ or some other sort of gender bias. What do you want or need us to do so that you feel welcomed?  Are you looking primarily for greater awareness of the issues you commonly face? That is, there is nothing really that specific for us to do except to attend sensitivity training, show greater empathy, etc. Do you want us to be more vigilant in voting down and flagging unwelcoming content so that it gets deleted quicker? Are there a few specific users that you want to be &quot;taught a lesson&quot;, and the rest of us are caught up in the crossfire? Do you want us to proactively ask you for your pronouns or other biographical or identity details before we engage with you? (I apologize for accidentally misgendering Aza in my previous question, but there's nothing on her profile to indicate her gender or that she wants people to be particularly sensitive in this regard towards her. Perhaps I could have sent her a note &quot;Hey Aza, I'm going to reference you in an upcoming post, what are your pronouns?&quot;, but that seems so awkward.) Do you want help with lobbying Stack Exchange into making changes to the existing system such as adding support for adding pronouns, sexual orientation, etc. to user profiles?
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Occasionally I will see a post with the author displayed like this:    The username is not clickable, but I don't know of any way to make a profile "private."  So is this just an anonymous user who only entered a name when asking the question (can you do that)?
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What is done to prevent people from changing their display name to another persons', for example Jon Skeet, and then also changing their gravatar to match too?  In comments it seems there is no visible differentiator, and the differentiator in questions and answers is just reputation and badges.  This doesn't seem to be a problem for stackoverflow, but I'm just wondering what are possible safeguards against this?  EDIT: Also it doesn't even have to be deliberate, if two people just happen to choose the same display name, and they both participate in the same question/comment thread, that would be confusing right?
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The last time we  was in 2015. In 2014, we added a  for gold tag badge holders, but no new reputation level. So we've been thinking about giving users more reasons to . (I've answered this question with some circumstantial evidence that people do begin losing enthusiasm after they hit 10k.) Please answer with a description of the privilege you think would be worthy of 30k and include your arguments after a horizontal line (\n---\n). These should be on-site unlockables and not . Proposals don't necessarily have to give users extra powers on the site, but they should feel significant to those who have achieved this impressive level of reputation. I left an answer to be an example. I've had a significant head start over most everyone else thinking about this feature, so please don't worry that your idea is underbaked. That said, the most useful answers will include justifications more than &quot;wouldn't it be cool if . . .&quot; Finally, let me be the first to point out how odd it is that I am proposing a new . It turns out that one of the great pleasures of this job is that I can do a small part in helping many other people enjoy writing great posts. I believe that a well-considered additional privilege level will benefit many users across the network. This is doubly true if that privilege empowers more people to solve problems and fix annoyances they come across.