Male? Female?

[naamah_darling]

If you all would take just a moment to go and read this entry over on Dreamwidth and then go to Livejournal feedback to tell them what you think, I'd be grateful. Be polite, but firm

Comments

[sanat]

Oh HAY-YELL no. :straps on asskick boots and stomps over:

[lots42]

And even those comfy with saying they are female don't want to say it because they don't want fifty eight million 'OMG BOOBIS' emails.

[snowcoma]

I am now unspecified and politely requesting that they pull their heads out of their asses!

[witch_wolf]

Why do I have to declare my gender to any one??

[witch_wolf]

I have a permanent account I don't see adds. but even if I was what are they going to do sell me a broom because I am a woman, and not advertise a drill to me because I am a woman - There loss not mine. It's stupid and really backwards way of thinking.

[donnaidh_sidhe]

I.e. show you ads for weight loss schemes and cosmetics if you're female. Dunno what guys get!

[isabelknight]

Apparently enough people wrote in. The DW entry you linked to has the following ETA

[aj_hyena]

See my icon. I don't buy it. I think it was a quick excuse to shut off the flood of trouble they saw they were bringing down on themselves. But eh, as long as the code doesn't go live, it doesn't matter. At least they know it's a bad idea if it gets pitched in any future meetings or something.

[naath]

Reading the code... it looked to me like a fuck-up. I think if there were a policy-change in this direction the code change would have been more comprehensive about that (unless they specifically wanted to try to slip it in under the radar, which I'm not sure I'd put past them).

But even if it is a fuck-up it speaks of a lack of diversity/awareness training at LJ-HQ. I mean, this kind of mistake is made much easier if you don't really care about what it is you are meant to be implementing. If you think the feature is important you are much less likely to forget about it (you might still mis-implement it).

[pauamma]

Quoting from the answer naamah_darling received (see ETA in entry):While the code in question had gone to our beta (testing) server, it had not gone to our production server, and will not do so due to this problem. Furthermore, we'd like to clarify that code posted to the changelog community is not always final, as such code must then go through the beta testing process and can often be changed before actual implementation.
While I don't know the specifics in this instance, I can attest that this is in general true. (I follow the code changes, and submit code and informal or spot reviews occasionally.)