LJ, you honestly baffle me sometimes.
LJ:
1. It doesn't matter if it's public or not. "Male, Female, and Unspecified" worked just fine. "It's personal" in place of "unspecified" does not. There are people out there that are quite open about their gender and yet don't fit into "male" or "female" categories. Yes, you ARE forcing people to break your own TOS when you force them to lie in order to sign up for an account.
2. By not announcing a change like this, which is just a teensy bit more important than the "user photo of the week" and what have you, you're making the news section completely irrelevant.
3. You misled your own userbase when you told us that removing the "unspecified" option was only in a "beta" mode that won't be on the live version. No, I guess you didn't flat-out lie to us, but you definitely led us to believe that you were implying one thing when you meant something else.
4. There wasn't anything wrong with the gender field in the first place. If it's not broke, don't "fix" it.
Check it. Also, LJ has apparently said that they're changing it back (according to this, I guess) but as of right now, the options are still "male, female, it's personal."
And if it is changed back? Yes, I still have a right to be salty because of my #2, #3, and #4 bitch-ness above. Communicate with your users, and try to actually mean it when you say "your feedback is important to us."
1. It doesn't matter if it's public or not. "Male, Female, and Unspecified" worked just fine. "It's personal" in place of "unspecified" does not. There are people out there that are quite open about their gender and yet don't fit into "male" or "female" categories. Yes, you ARE forcing people to break your own TOS when you force them to lie in order to sign up for an account.
2. By not announcing a change like this, which is just a teensy bit more important than the "user photo of the week" and what have you, you're making the news section completely irrelevant.
3. You misled your own userbase when you told us that removing the "unspecified" option was only in a "beta" mode that won't be on the live version. No, I guess you didn't flat-out lie to us, but you definitely led us to believe that you were implying one thing when you meant something else.
4. There wasn't anything wrong with the gender field in the first place. If it's not broke, don't "fix" it.
Check it. Also, LJ has apparently said that they're changing it back (according to this, I guess) but as of right now, the options are still "male, female, it's personal."
And if it is changed back? Yes, I still have a right to be salty because of my #2, #3, and #4 bitch-ness above. Communicate with your users, and try to actually mean it when you say "your feedback is important to us."