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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

How about just: don't use it if you don't like it.

> If the authors had wanted this to be a cute in-joke for the bros, then why did they publish it to the entire world?

Are you suggesting that people should refrain from publishing things that are contrary to mainstream fashions? (I can't call all this let's-see-gender-issues-in-everything crap anything else than a stupid fashion that hopefully goes away soon)

Also, the joke is about the man pages. Not woman pages (though those exist in Emacs). I suggest we burn Unix and derivatives (and Emacs, this sexist bastard) on the stake of gender issues.

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> How about just: don't use it if you don't like it.

But I want to use it, it looks like a great tool. Forking it just to use a different name seems unfair and waste of everyones resources.

> Are you suggesting that people should refrain from publishing things that are contrary to mainstream fashions?

It's not about mainstream "fashion", but about a certain cultural neutrality. I don't ask for this neutrality when you publish articles, essays etc., but when you write tools (or name tools for that matter) I greatly appreciate a mindset where you care about the vastly different context people might come from.

> Also, the joke is about the man pages. Not woman pages (though those exist in Emacs).

But - as said before - man pages have nothing to do with men and everything with manual. To underline the point: I didn't get the joke until I read the third Hackernews comment. I just don't associate man pages with gender.

>I just don't associate man pages with gender.

You should ask yourself why this is. Would that be the same for an outsider who is trying to find her way around programming?

You don't associate man with gender because in your mind is associated with documentation. The usage of it in that context for X years has superseded the default association with gender. Eventually the same will happen for bropages. Either way, newcomers do not have the luxury of this association so will have to deal with the gender reminder from man and bro pages. Would you be in favor of eliminating the term man pages in favor of making programming more welcoming to women?

> The usage of it in that context for X years has superseded the default association with gender.

Well, no. ^^

I just looked up `man` in the book I learned basic Linux usage from and the section is labeled "Manpages" and before the first "man" occurs the abbreviation is explained: "You can look up these manual pages with the program `man`." (Translated from German). Not being a native speaker I didn't even associate it with men before.

> Either way, newcomers do not have the luxury of this association so will have to deal with the gender reminder from man and bro pages.

They can if they are introduced it correctly: "Hey how does Y work? - Take a look at the manpage - The what? - The manual page. Let me show you…". And this abbreviation can totally be justified in a context where even "move" and "list" are shortened.

> Eventually the same will happen for bropages.

Possibly, but the bad joke will always stick. Heck, you can't even explain where the name comes from without explicitly invoking this association.

Maybe the divide in our community also partially originates from different associations with `man`. Even if bropages didn't have any gender issues I would still think its not a good name, because (as said before and before) for me man pages have nothing to do with men. Possibly if I would "get" the joke I would be more reluctant to give the name up.

>They can if they are introduced it correctly

Language doesn't work that way actually. Associations persist long past the point of it being "explained" in a different way. Associations are not logical, they're more emotional than anything. You may not experience it the same way because of english being your non-primary language, but the association is real to native speakers. I remember very clearly when I first learned of man pages (as a native speaker) the association with "male" was real and made the term awkward to me. After 15 years its just documentation now.

With this much concern in the community a fork actually isn't a silly idea. Anyone prepared to actually fork this thing? Anyone have other name suggestions?

Someone else in the thread suggested 'tin', which I love!

"What does 'curl' do?"

"Does what it says on the tin page."

  $ tin curl
  # get the contents of a web page
  curl https://news.ycombinator.com/

Foreigner here (French). Why is Tin funny? It stands for the small metal box with food inside, like Can, doesn't it?

'Does what it says on the tin' is a common phrase in English, usually applied to mean a product is simple and effective. I guess it's meant to contrast against the marketing hyperbole that you often read on tin labels.

I saw another suggestion elsewhere for 'tldr'

I like that very much. It accurately describes my use case for bropages. And - getting back to some cultural neutrality - you can explain its meaning just fine without referring to the recent usage context in "the" Internet.

The perfect answer to 'rtfm'!

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