Posted by oc on December 11, 2004 at 6:33pm
12 followers
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| Project: | Drupal core |
| Version: | 5.0-beta1 |
| Component: | user system |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | closed (fixed) |
Issue Summary
please change the text at http://drupalsite/admin/user:
No participant can use his own name to post content until he signs up for a user account.
to:
No participant can use their own name to post content until he or she signs up for a user account.
Comments
#1
Damned politcorrectness.
#2
Yeah, who cares about 51% of the world's population, anyway? ;)
But if this suggestion is taken up, how about grammatical correctness, too:
"No participant can use his or her own name to post content until he or she signs up for a user account."
#3
Or simply 'their', to avoid problems with neuters.
#4
That's mixing the plural with the singular. But it can be done:
"Participants cannot use their names to post content until they sign up for user accounts."
#5
"This is the login screen. If you can't work out what to do, ask your friends. If your friends can't help, shun them."
#6
LOL!
#7
*sigh*
Traditional proper English grammer is to use the masculine form for a noun indeterminate gender. Admittedly, there is much debate on this topic (google "gender-neutal language"), and gender-neutral language has become much more common, but it is far from being the rule. This is especially true when it comes to the bad grammar of mixing plurals like "they" or "their" with singular subjects (as noted by media girl). My vote is to leave it alone. It is quite acceptable as is.
#8
"Traditional proper English . . ." That traditional practice is considered politically insensitive. Contemporary English grammar instruction is not to use the masculine alone. The feminine, the feminine and the masculine together, the plural. or even alternating use of each throughout a text is okay. While not politically insensitive, repeatedly using the feminine and masculine together--i.e. "he or she"--is inconcise, so the other options are better
I personally tend to use the plural when possible since it's completely non-gendered, as with media girl's recommendation:
"Participants cannot use their names to post content until they sign up for user accounts."
And here's an improvement in conciseness:
"Only registered users can post with their own names."
#9
Traditional proper English grammer is to use the masculine form for a noun indeterminate gender.
Well, drupal doesn't seem to be a traditional project to me, if we want to get semantic about it. It may very well seem just fine to you, but that's not the point.
This request could be seen more in the light of changing the language to better communicate to the users. Another change that seriously needs to be made is the reduction of geekese, especially if drupal really wants to move out of a narrow, developer oriented group of users. That's one thing I think Movable Type has a big edge over drupal on--they've found a way to make their software usable to a community beyond "programmers and geeks", and part of that is how they communicate to their end users (who also so happen to include a significant number of persons of the female persuasion).
#10
No polishing changes will be made for Drupal 4.5, changing to cvs.
When crtiticising the use of English in Drupal please keep in mind that many if not most of the developers do not have English as a native language. Valid criticism is therefore appreciated (and needed). For the same reason it is difficult for us to say which version should be used in Drupal. Most developers tend to not care too much about the help texts anyway. ;)
If a suggested change will make texts shorter it is likely to find approval, though.
So, if any of you wants changes to be committed, you should make some patches.
Since I don't run sites in English I do not have any opinion on which form to use. In any case, it is possible to change the English terms through the locale module, too, in case you find them to be too 'politically insensitive' (Learned a new word, is it the follow-up of 'politically incorrect'?)
#11
media girl:
> Yeah, who cares about 51% of the world's population, anyway? ;)
Sorry, media girl, just I think politcorrectness vs respect and equal rights between people of both gender is completely unrelated things. Politcorrectness will look good in the world where all people will look same - same nationality, same visual apperance, same gander :) I hope such world never come :) Any case different countries has own cultural traditions and such things as gender in interface texts should be adapted to their traditions. Especially for countries, where total politcorrectness is 'idea fix'.
#12
I think "he" and "she" could in all cases be replaced by the more accurate "the visitor", "the user", "the administrator" and "your" and "their".
Gender neutral documentation would be more accurate, and conscise, than politicaly correct documentation.
#13
I'm more interested in how I can change the admin text for my users, especially in things like the content info page referring to 'his blog'. I have users complaining about the language...
#14
I set the version to 5.0 beta 1 because this is "fixed" in that the text no longer appears in the files and in places that I was with similar text we now use neutered pronouns.
@rosanne - you can use the locale module to achieve what you want - see http://drupal.org/node/24593
To get the phrases changed in core, you will probably need to file individual issues and provide patch files - see http://drupal.org/diffandpatch
#15