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Comment by Buge | Hacker News Reader

On a mod and employee chat group, they were discussing a new future code of conduct. One element said "You must use people's preferred pronouns if given". A mod (volunteer) (Monica) said "Is it OK if I never use any 3rd person singular pronouns?" She got no answer for a while and was then fired as a mod on Friday at 6pm less than 1 hour before before Shabbat and Rosh Hashana (she is Jewish and a mod of the Jewish Stack Exchange). Stack exchange published a note saying she broke the code of conduct. 73 other mods then either resigned or went inactive.

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Could you please help me understand how this relates to Cellio's previous concerns in October 2018 about a problem with Twitter and customer support and moderation?

Does that concern ( https://medium.com/@cellio/dear-stack-overflow-we-need-to-ta... ) have anything to do with the pronoun code of conduct problem at issue here, or is it totally unrelated other than Cellio's involvement?

I have to admit, having read Cellio's summary of the situation, I'm puzzled why "avoid using pronouns to refer to people where possible" would be a controversial view. If you use the wrong one, it may cause harm. If you use none at all, your interaction is more futureproof. For example, if I write about a person who feels comfortable being called "him" but the person later chooses to prefer being called "her", but if if I had avoided using "him" entirely in the first place, then I would never worry about having to retroactively edit or delete my writing to avoid harm.

> Does that concern have anything to do with the pronoun code of conduct problem at issue here, or is it totally unrelated other than Cellio's involvement?

No, it's an entirely seperate issue. However, it's a symptom of the same general problem of the company prioritizing its political/profit-seeking/marketing agendas while ignoring its community (there were dozens of relevant feature requests that had been ignored for years, yet the company took drastic action within 40 minutes of a Twitter post).

> I'm puzzled why "avoid using pronouns to refer to people where possible" would be a controversial view.

None of the details are public; all we really have so far is a couple vague summaries, plus a few more hints and implications. However, it seems the company's reasoning seems to be something along the lines of "if you avoid using third-person pronouns, then you're refusing to acknowledge people's identities."

The October 2018 incident was the previous round of Twitter warriors harrassing SE into kowtowing to their agenda at the expense of the SE user community.

Thank you, if this is accurate it's perfect.

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