How aware are you of the gender or sexual orientation of other LW participants? Do you mentally assign a gender to each LW user whose comments you read, or who replies to you? Do you often get it wrong, and do you care when you do? Do you react differently based on the gender of other commenters? Does it differ from what you’ve experienced in other online communities?
Note: LW discussions where the gender of the participants is explicitly mentioned, or which are about gender themselves, don’t count.
I try not to form opinions about people’s gender unless it seems indicated by something they say or their username, and I try not to actually pronoun anyone with a gendered pronoun unless I am pretty sure. (I think I’ve been mistaken once or twice even then.) To the best of my knowledge, apart from pronouns I don’t handle posters differently based on gender except insofar as I have different priors on them having had various experiences.
I’m the complete opposite to Alicorn, so I though I’d just pop in and say. I don’t just keep track of gender, but also any other characteristics like age, occupation, nationality; personality etc. While I find it ok to just type like this on the internet, I find it much easier to actually communicate with people. Knowing these sorts of details help me interpret tone, which I think is a vital part of conversations, and the lack of respect for which often a source of internet conflict. I respond differently to aggression, for example, from high-testosterone males to females.
Having more accurate priors of the person I’m talking to also lets me
decide if an argument is a lost cause, helps me choose between ambiguous interpretations, and assists me in making the most palatable presentation of my point.
How aware are you of the gender or sexual orientation of other LW participants?
As for gender, I start with an about 90% prior probability (from the last survey results) that they are male, and update it according to what I read (most often the username alone is enough to bring the posterior to epsilon or 100% minus epsilon). As for orientation,I don’t really care: I know EY is straight but he’d like to self-modify to become bi, and I think Alicorn is bi and lukeprog is straight but I’m not fully sure. That’s it. I have read by comments by others mentioning their orientations but I can’t even remember them.
Do you mentally assign a gender to each LW user whose comments you read, or who replies to you?
As in aliefs? Usually but not always. (And sometimes the alief is wrong. For example, there’s a LWer who, despite having an obviously feminine username, comes across to my alief system as male (not sure why) and there’s a Wikipedian (with an apparently feminine username, but he has explained that it’s actually a Latin neuter plural and he’s male) who comes across to my alief system as a female—likely because of his username and because of the dingbats such as smileys, heartsuits and musical notes he uses to express his mood. I even called him ‘she’ by accident a couple times.)
Do you react differently based on the gender of other commenters?
I try not to. And in discussions which don’t have anything to do with gender I think I almost always succeed.
How aware are you of the gender or sexual orientation of other LW participants? Do you mentally assign a gender to each LW user whose comments you read, or who replies to you? Do you often get it wrong, and do you care when you do? Do you react differently based on the gender of other commenters? Does it differ from what you’ve experienced in other online communities?
Note: LW discussions where the gender of the participants is explicitly mentioned, or which are about gender themselves, don’t count.
I try not to form opinions about people’s gender unless it seems indicated by something they say or their username, and I try not to actually pronoun anyone with a gendered pronoun unless I am pretty sure. (I think I’ve been mistaken once or twice even then.) To the best of my knowledge, apart from pronouns I don’t handle posters differently based on gender except insofar as I have different priors on them having had various experiences.
I’m the complete opposite to Alicorn, so I though I’d just pop in and say. I don’t just keep track of gender, but also any other characteristics like age, occupation, nationality; personality etc. While I find it ok to just type like this on the internet, I find it much easier to actually communicate with people. Knowing these sorts of details help me interpret tone, which I think is a vital part of conversations, and the lack of respect for which often a source of internet conflict. I respond differently to aggression, for example, from high-testosterone males to females.
Having more accurate priors of the person I’m talking to also lets me decide if an argument is a lost cause, helps me choose between ambiguous interpretations, and assists me in making the most palatable presentation of my point.
I’m not a woman, but...
As for gender, I start with an about 90% prior probability (from the last survey results) that they are male, and update it according to what I read (most often the username alone is enough to bring the posterior to epsilon or 100% minus epsilon). As for orientation,I don’t really care: I know EY is straight but he’d like to self-modify to become bi, and I think Alicorn is bi and lukeprog is straight but I’m not fully sure. That’s it. I have read by comments by others mentioning their orientations but I can’t even remember them.
As in aliefs? Usually but not always. (And sometimes the alief is wrong. For example, there’s a LWer who, despite having an obviously feminine username, comes across to my alief system as male (not sure why) and there’s a Wikipedian (with an apparently feminine username, but he has explained that it’s actually a Latin neuter plural and he’s male) who comes across to my alief system as a female—likely because of his username and because of the dingbats such as smileys, heartsuits and musical notes he uses to express his mood. I even called him ‘she’ by accident a couple times.)
I try not to. And in discussions which don’t have anything to do with gender I think I almost always succeed.