Gender not mandatory!

[asterroc]

From LJ Support:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns. We understand that gender is not binary, and intend to respect that understanding for our users.

At this time, the code you reference is not live on the site, and will not become so in the future. We know that you, and many other users, have serious concerns about any requirement to specify gender, so we'd like to take a moment to explain events and our position further.

The intention of this code was to change the sign-up process to include a field for the selection of gender; that the code would completely disable the "Unspecified" option at the same time was deemed unacceptable. 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.

Additionally, some erroneous information has been spread regarding the potential public display of the gender field. We would like to clarify that gender is not currently publicly displayed on the profile, nor anywhere else on the site, and there are no plans to change this behavior.

Regards,
LiveJournal Community Care Team

From Anjelika Petrochenko

hi Zandperl,


thank you for your feedback.
However, the code update that you refer to is not live and did not have any chance to go live. That was a beta release, we always push code to beta to see if everything works correctly. In many cases it does not and we either fix bugs or pull the code from the final release plan.
We were going to add a gender field to the sign up user flow, which is fine, but by mistake it became a mandatory "female/male" field for everyone. This is why this is not going live. And this is what beta releases are for, to see problems and solve them before any user faces a problem.

I would appreciate if you share this information with your friends that are also concerned. I am sorry that you were misinformed.

Best regards,


--
Anjelika Petrochenko
GM, LiveJournal US

Comments

[best-ken-ever.livejournal.com]

I was a little surprised to hear that this sort of thing was happening on LJ, but I'm glad it was just a miscommunication/beta.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

No, it wasn't just a miscommunication/beta, just like AmazonFail wasn't just a glitchy algorithm. It was an unthinking edit to the code, intended to make advertisers happy, that they retracted when a huge number of users pointed out how much of a problem it was. Cisgendered people simply don't think about the feelings of people for whom answering "Male or female?" is not a simple question.

It's good that they're retracting it, but don't think that they wouldn't have brought it out of beta if they could have gotten away with it.

[fireaphid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree, but at least they're correcting it quickly.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I'm still torn about whether to shop at Amazon. I mean they fixed it, and behavior is important, but intent is also important (and AFAIK Amazon's intent was to appease the evangelical Christian masses).

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

I fail to see how unthinking edit is not the same as miscommunication/beta. Are we now responsible for having no stray thoughts/edits, anywhere, for any reason?

[best-ken-ever.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not saying that it was right for them to have it there.

We're not a perfect society. There is a lot of reteaching and rethinking of gender that is going on now and will likely continue for decades before we arrive at a society that no longer thinks of the gender concept as binary.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

"Miscommunication" means they intended something else but messed up.
"Beta" means they knew everything was in progress and were honestly looking for feedback.

"Unthinking edit to the code, intended to make advertisers happy" means they had a very definite intent to do only two genders, and they really did intend to roll this out as is, but they're backtracking now to make members shut up.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

The email in the OP tries to suggest that the mistake was in implementation, not in intent. It argues that they never intended a mandatory M/F, but mistaken beta code made it mandatory when it should never have been. I'm arguing that the coders knew what they were doing would create a mandatory M/F, which they thought was the correct thing to code because they didn't consider people who don't have a binary gender identity. There is a difference between a computer engineering mistake and a social engineering mistake. I think this was clearly a social engineering mistake.