A few months back we ran a poll about the Average Age on OGS. It was very interesting to see the results as they came in.
Recent events with other users being misgendered (multiple by me as well, but thankfully only in my own head as I attempt to not use gender pronouns if I’m uncertain which to use) has led me to thinking about the break down of OGS players along gender lines.
Poll removed. See post 12 for updated poll.
EDIT: Out of concern for user privacy this poll has been closed and a new voter-hidden poll will be opened below.
Combined with the age survey from October, I am concerned that this thread could be a wonderful tool for stalkers. I advise against participation on principle.
The October survey’s votes were private. The fact that this poll’s votes were set to public was perhaps poor judgment on my part.
However, to suppress discussion regarding gender identity seems like a poor move for the community. As a member of the LGBT community, I think that awareness surrounding gender identity should be open to discussion. If someone does not wish to disclose their gender identity they have every right not to. However saying that the discussion in general is not allowed? Well, that is rather offensive.
I think @Kosh raises a valid concern that people should be careful about not revealing too much detail about themselves on the internet. However, I think people here generally understand those risks and should be able to make such decisions on their own.
I think @RubyMineshaft makes a valid point that gender identity should not be completely forbidden as a topic for discussion. I think there is room for raising awareness of gender issues in a manner that could strengthen this community. Although, maybe prompting people to fill out a public poll is not the best way to approach such a sensitive and personal topic.
I would be interested to know what kind of variety we have here in the forum, at least among people who would participate (IE the result would have to be taken in that context: it would only represent those who both “are” and “chose to respond”, and would rely on truthful response).
I think hiding the public responses upon realising that they might be misused was wise.
I would not see any problem with a replacement voter-hidden poll.
Enough time has passed that I can now edit the post to unhide it. I could do that, but would need to close that poll and start a new one… Probably the best option at this point.
Note to OGS moderators and staff: If I were you guys, I would be discouraging this discussion. This is the kind of issue that divides and damages online communities, as seen recently on Stack Exchange, Node.js and other places.
It starts with polls and awareness. Soon you will have Codes of Conduct, endless arguments about rules, online drama, public accusations, and people getting banned because they violated somebody else’s petty rule (in the Stack Exchange case, there wasn’t even a violation; a moderator was banned because she disagreed with a proposed rule that wasn’t even in effect yet).
The attempt to make a community more welcoming to a tiny minority (trans = 0.03% of the poulation or so) often makes the community less welcoming to reasonable people who dislike this discussion and want to stay away from it. That is a terrible trade, because the latter outnumber the former by orders of magnitude.
Better to nip it in the bud right now. Just create a rule stating that discussion of divisive or contentious topics unrelated to the game of Go is not welcome, including religion, politics, sexuality, “gender” issues, vi vs. emacs, etc.
For everyone else, I suggest poisoning the poll with fake responses, as I have done.
Just as an aside, I believe the problems with SE are not because discussion on gender got out of hand, but because the community has lost its confidence in the management team. The real issue is a lack of transparency, the fact that mods and community managers get fired without proper reasons, that the management team relicensed the content of the website without consent, that their response to all of this has been very poor, and several other things like this.
The gender discussion is not really what has been the problem.
@BronzeV I understand your concerns, but I - as a user and not a promoter - have read the poll as a normal attempt to have a statistic on how many man/ladies are playing Go on OGS. Yes, there are also other genders that probably are not represented correctly among the proposed choices. Probably it would be enough to add Others as the third option due to their supposed residual statistical relevance.
Do not make a drama for it. And for me… welcome to all the genders.
This was exactly my intention with this poll. In the course of playing on OGS, I tend to think of every opponent as “he” and was simply curious what percentage of players actually are guys.
The inclusion of other genders in the poll was simply my best attempt at not leaving anyone out. I never intended for this thread to turn into a discussion on gender politics. It only veered that way because I mistook the initial flagging of this thread due to user privacy concerns for something that it was not.
The poll is far from ideal, but it will serve its purpose in giving some idea as to the statistics. I’m curious what Google Analytics has to say about it. @anoek Do you have any insights for us?
