"given my name is bady, how'd you assume my gender? calling some person what they aren't, for eg. suppose someone calling you a leftist even if you aren't (just an example, i don't know your political alignment), is not a nice thing to do and can be avoided."

So if you are specific about reference on internet. Then you should mention it. In general, my eyes visual conformation is more than enough to refer someone with predominantly and correctly with pronouns like He/She. But, if anyone claimed to refer him with some fancy pronoun of their own personal choice (btw there are 40 plus fancy pronouns already floated in the market) Then I would use my personal freedom and choice, i.e, either to refer that person with that funky pronoun or ignore them completely...

Exactly, my concerns are exactly same and opposite.. under the garb of "Hate Speech" crushing any voice which necessarily not follow the set pattern is purely a fascist/Communist way of thinking, not Democratic at all.

well, that's also a valid concern. it's not always black or white. which part of the proposed text you find as against free speech? what do you suggest instead? if someone raises a threat to someone's life, does it count as free speech? no freedom is absolute. a free country is not a country where one can kill anyone. freedom needs to be used responsibly.

Free speech is absolute only till it not infringe upon my right to live or harm me physically, mentally or financially in any given sense..

But what if I link everything with mental harrasment. what if I don't like the way you think, your ideology and choice of your politics...

How far you ready to cater me? So I am not get offended by your act...

My suggestion is rather cut, copy & paste senselessly from US... Let us be Indian first and have some trust on ourselves.

We are unique yet United for so long. Must be we have something, what the World could learn from us rather we follow them like a sheep.

Though a lot of stuff above has been copied, not all of the original is "from US". There are views from individuals from many parts of the world, including a large number of additions from Indians.

I don't find a lot of merit in not using an idea just because it originated in a different political boundary. Although, I'm sure if an idea is being transplanted from one place to another, it needs to be contextualized to apply to the new place.

What modifications would you suggest to the draft? Are you suggesting that there be no moderation policy at all?

@Sah since no one "voted" against the proposal and you haven't responded further, the above code of conduct & moderation policy has been accepted.

This moderation policy is a stepping stone towards censorship and compelled speech. Misgendering pronouns shouldn't be an offense.

now that we have a CoC in place, we need a CoC team to moderate CoC violations. i think only permanent members should be in the CoC team. or at least one should be an associate and needs to be vouched by two or more permanent members. what do you think?

I think there should be a procedure for moderation. One person deleting messages, muting someone or banning someone can bring some unnecessary backlash. I think there should be a procedure that involves
multiple committee members at least for banning/kicking someone.

agreed. do you have any suggestions about how that procedure should be?

How about this,

1. Any one violating CoC will be warned by a permanent member.

2. If the violation is repeated, there will be a reminder to stop, twice.

3. If the violation continues, they can be banned from participating in discussions.

banning should be the last resort in my opinion, we can try muting members instead. also, what if a permanent members violate CoC?
Preamble of the Indian Pirates Constitution mentions this:

Once you become a member you cannot be expelled from the group for indiscipline, a common tactic used by all parties to suppress dissent.

If a permanent member does not follow CoC, the only option we have is to create another group without that person.

OK, we can change that to "muting for a week, a month and a year in progression for repeating and a ban after that". Does codema has a mute option?

How is this different from the biased moderation policy of social media groups like Facebook that your own political party wants to avoid?

I think at least two permanent members should agree to mute or removal. One should propose and another one should agree before taking the action.

Also we should be specifically say warning one, two and three for specific violations.

It is different because we decided the rules based on consensus here. Everyone got a chance to participate in making that rule and if that does not work, they get a chance to propose changes, just like how you proposed it.

in the List of At Indian Pirates we recognize that there are many dimensions of diversity and this may include, but is not limited to:

The word Race is used this is an ideological word and in scientific terms and based on all Facts when talking about Humans we have no Races so the word Race schould be removed and replaced with Racism.

Dhanesh, can you pinpoint to the study in that website please.

I extended it to a month.

IMHO pronouns must not be forced upon anyone . Pronouns are to be used out of respect for any person. It is as simple as saying that I identify as a girl so I would like to be referred as she/her that's it. If you accidentlly call the person him they can't go to court on you and ask for money. It's just out of respect.

I completely agree with gender being a man made concept. We as humans are inherently animals but as civilization progressed we need some sort of order in this chaotic world and hence concepts like male , female monogamy marriage etc were created.

The idea being propagated in the coc is that you should use gender neutral pronouns whenever speaking . This doesn't mean that if I accidentlly call you him instead of zhe the mods would kick me out but, if you told me explicitly that you are zhe or an apache helicopter then If I call you he then that would be considered a violation.

This is as simple as saying heyguys.cc when you someone refers a group as guys

Thank you for being kind enough to type this out here. I really appreciate your open mindedness in this issue. But just because a minor percentage of folks identify as gender neutral individuals doesn't mean that the whole generation of common public need to abide by this rule.

There are people who are born with 11 fingers while others born with 9. This is a physical impairment of a minor case but the schools don't teach its students that human beings have more than 10 or less than 10 fingers. Exceptions are always there in every case in life but it doesn't mean the rule of exception need to be applied to the majority.

The Coc explicitly states that these individuals can mention their gender neutral pronouns and people should learn to use it out of respect. Compulsion of altering language doesn't give you respect.

And then comes the unscientific presumption of this whole facade of gender being a social construct. Time and time it has been proven it isn't. I don't want to be forced to accept rules that do not hold any logical grounds in science but in whimsical mobs of mass dysphoric individuals.

@Firescar The point of inclusive language is to prevent making people uncomfortable in friendly discussions. Doing something we already know will hurt someone while we could avoid it, is not a nice thing and we all avoid doing such automatically. We all love to see people happy. The CoC under debate is to prevent deliberate harassment, not to attack one's free speech.

The boundary of our liberty lies at where we use our freedom with an intention to harm someone, I don't think the CoC should attack someone's liberty, but neither should it allow deliberate attempts to harm someone.

> Rather than this being an act of inclusiveness, it is an act of compulsion without its grounds in science.

I don't think this is a matter that should be analysed with quantitative methods since subject that should be under study is not clearly defined (is it about the percentage of people get offended by deliberate use of wrong pronouns? or how many pronouns majority of people think should exist? those would be surveys, but then again, it will be just a majority opinion)

NB: its not that hard to use universal pronouns, also some people will really get happy when we use it, isn't that enough reason to do it?

A mass of gender dysphoric people will be happy because of pronouns that they prefer to hear from other people. And that too the common masses need to use zhe/zhers /zhim etc and all such words in their conversation. Go look up the basic tenets of gender pronouns, there's hundreds of them and certain Scandinavian school systems are already confusing their kindergarten students with all these pronouns only to please a minority people suffering from gender dysphoria.

I am sorry, this isn't an evolutionary way of tackling with mental illness and gender studies professors/sociologists can write papers and papers of metaphysical human world of a human being who thinks he's a fox but none of this is grounded in reality or science.

The general Public's free speech and free use of the properly evolved English language is far more important and paramount than the whims of a certain minority. No quantitative methods are available to analyse this issue or studies undertaken to prove the case that gender is a social construct. This whole charade is a giant tool of the acclaimed left who are always licking the boots of minority communities and I mean dysphoric individuals here.

I am strongly against this compelling of language alternation because the neutral helicopters think that this will cater respect. Forceful acceptance doesn't cater respect and the admins adapting this rule in the Coc is their way of making the people submit to their agenda of transgenderism even though science and transgenderism have always been in contrast to each other.

And I am sorry to say this but opinions aren't needed here, studies are needed to disprove my hypothesis. The dysphoric individuals can play and the 50 yr olds who claim themselves as 6 yr olds can also play with whatever the heck they want to, but I am not going to change my language just to prevent from causing them offense. I don't subscribe to their world view and compelling me to change my language just to gain respect isn't an ideal way of gaining respect.

As far as I see leftists are far more inclined to compel this ideology of theirs into the general public so as to virtue signal to the world. Having this rule in Coc isn't a neutral way of maintaining a political party and if the bastions of this party subscribe to a left ideology, they should write it out in Bold letters in their website.

Since you failed to counter the study that I posted, your downvote is invalid. Try again please.

No, you don't get to unilaterally decide what is valid and what is invalid vote. You get a chance to convince people, but if you fail, please respect that and move on. And for deciding what is valid and invalid, we have processes established by consensus here. You can try and change that following the existing process, not unilaterally set the terms.

With all due respect, I humbly disagree. This is a scientific post. If people fail to prove that the above mentioned study is false while disagreeing to the poll, their vote goes invalid. Those are the rules set in the beginning. People like me rely on science for reality rather than jargon and heresy. And besides, no need to flaunt your administrative abilities here as to make me change the rules of the poll. I did extend the polling duration of the poll like you asked.

Abstain from commenting anything further other than the topic in question or mentioning any study. The whole reason why this poll came up is because of the mod's inability to stand with scientific realms. Thank you.

We are willing to take responsibility for the choices we make. If people don't join us for taking these decisions, we own up to it. These rules are for people participating in our discussion forums, no one is forced to participate here. These choices are made after understanding the consequences.

Please rely on talking about the topic in question. Prove to me that gender is a social construct with a valid study, if you cannot, zip it.

No you don't have that authority here. You don't get to decide unilaterally how we make decisions here.

I am sorry. No matter what you say, the down votes are still invalid due to lack of mentioning any study. Bring a study and I'll be more than happy to change my own stance.

You can set your own rules for your personal decisions. But we have established processes for how we make a collective decision as a group. We give agency for people voting. That agency is what you are using to make these proposal and arguments.

And as a precedent to these votes, it is already mentioned that failing to mention a study will invalidate the vote. This isn't an opinion poll, this is a scientific poll. Even one proper study out there that proves gender is a social construct is completely fine to make me abstain my vote if the study is set in biology and science.

@Firescar the paper referenced here is not enough to prove that gender is not a social construct. the first point in the highlights section of the abstract states that "Gender differences in toy choice exist and appear to be the product of both innate and social forces." when it is said that gender is a social construct, it doesn't mean biology doesn't play any role in it. it's just that we're concerned more about the social factors. also, one is free to change their gender or even biological sex if one wants to.

whether you consider gender as a spectrum or not, using 'he' as a universal pronoun doesn't make sense. encouraging inclusive language in the CoC also acts as a measure against maintaining the status quo of a patriarchal society.

there's no doubt that a society should give importance to scientific temper. science is a method as well as tool, it only makes sense to use science to explain objective reality. for eg. there's no use in using science to prove or disprove all humans are equal. would you criticize the indian constitution for considering all citizens as equal saying there's no scientific proof/base for it? you can see that if humans have to live as a society in harmony, there needs to be some basic assumptions, like axioms in maths, such as all humans have innate value and human beings are equal, otherwise we can't function as a society. people, regardless of their gender or sex, are equal in value and we shouldn't discriminate them.

@Firescar what do you propose should we call everyone by the pronoun he then ? There has to be some pronoun right

We can ask them what they want to be called and happily call them that. But making this a default rule in Coc is compulsion because there are many people who do not agree to use those pronouns. If the gender neutral words and pronouns are too much illicit for our own language system, debate would be out of question. People will be scrambling with warnings thrown at them by these mods for violating Coc rules of inclusive language.

See that's the thing which I stated in my reply If I explicitly tell you that please don't call me a he I prefer zhe and if you still call me a he ; isn't that a fair reason to warn someone ?

No it isn't. Misgendering isn't a criminal offense. Those who do it intentionally repeatedly again and again should be warned but what about the the other mass amount of people who sit and rely on studies for world realities? These people see that study and ignore such people who demand for changing their language because of their whim.

@Shamil The whole idea behind gender being a social construct stems from the fact that the society, parents and other social influences cause the children to cater towards gender stereotyped roles. Meaning socialism claims that gender stereotypes are induced in children by external influences, one such major stereotypical example being toys. The study shows that a majority of children even without the influence of external forces still naturally deviate to their gender stereotyped toys, meaning gender being a social construct falls flat on the face. Which automatically renders the forced gender neutral pronouns unscientific.

Since you failed to produce a valid study to counter my study, your vote is invalidated. Yes, Studies do give absolute proof rather than individuals who claim themselves as cats and dogs. Its called gender dysphoria and it is a mental illness which needs to be treated rather than forced upon general public. Try again.

meaning gender being a social construct falls flat on the face. Which automatically renders the forced gender neutral pronouns unscientific.

How? Did you even read the study you linked?

In observational studies of the type reviewed here, it is impossible to determine the degree to which findings are a result of biological predisposition or environment. However, this study attempted to assess the variables most likely to be indicative of either nature or nurture and must conclude that there is some (circumstantial) evidence for both sides of the argument. When assessing the effect of publication year, we suggest that there is more evidence of the effect of environment on girls' than on boys' toy preferences. In the assessment of the effects of age, it could be argued that social effects on boys are stronger or persist longer than those on girls or, alternatively, that there is a stronger biological predisposition for boys' attraction to particular object features. However, these suggestions are necessarily speculative, and we recommend that experimental evidence is required in order to shed light on the specific questions that are identified in the meta‐analysis, including the nuances of social influence

quoted from the study.

Tell me how that is suggesting that gender cannot be a social construct please.

If you are going the scientific way, take a look at the consensus. What is the scientific consensus on gender? How do we see that? We have WHO which a lot of people have linked here and which you seem to have skipped. And what does WHO say? "Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed." [1]

Are you suggesting that WHO is publishing the unscientific view of gender?

Its called gender dysphoria and it is a mental illness which needs to be treated rather than forced upon general public

What does The Merck Manual say about that?

When treatment is required, it is aimed at helping patients adapt to rather than trying to dissuade them from their identity. Attempts at altering gender identity in adults have not proved effective and are now considered unethical.[2]

I wonder where you get all these "scientifically validated" "facts" from. Your "facts" are considered invalid, as "scientific" sources say otherwise. "Try again" and please cite your sources before speaking "facts".

[1]: https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender

[2]: https://www.msdmanuals.com/en-in/professional/psychiatric-disorders/sexuality-gender-dysphoria-and-paraphilias/gender-dysphoria-and-transsexualism#v16224873

However, these suggestions are necessarily speculative, and we recommend that experimental evidence is required in order to shed light on the specific questions that are identified in the meta‐analysis, including the nuances of 'social influence' quoted from the study.

Read this again and again. WHO doesn't give any study report. Consensus isn't a study report but a crowd opinion. Again, provide a valid study. Where majority of children adopted gender stereotypes based on social environment. If you cannot, gender isn't a social construct sadly.

That is your interpretation of the study. and here in scientific circles we don't consider "opinions" as facts. The burden of proof is on you. Cite a study that declares that gender cannot be a social construct. I have already cited consensus while you have cited your interpretation of a study,i e your opinion.

And if you were to follow scientific "facts" only. Address the Merck Manual and cite anything against it. Or change your opinion as it is "unscientific" to make GD conform to biological sex.

Consensus isn't a study report but a crowd opinion.

"Scientific consensus" is the majority informed scientific crowd opinion based on scientific studies. Hate to break it to you, science is not absolute. Just as gender is not absolute :)

And the way the science progresses is by informed consensus. Nothing is absolute truth in science. The consensus today may not be the consensus tomorrow. But it is considered the most valid "fact" today. If you don't believe in consensus and is only holding onto a twisted interpretation of a study, you are not following the scientific method and are holding onto strawmen to try to make your opinion seem valid.

@Eddie Ningombam Since you failed to provide a valid study to counter mine, your vote goes invalid. This is a scientific poll rather than an opinion poll. Failing to provide a valid study that disproves the study I provided invalidates your vote. Sorry. Try again please.

@Firescar This is your third and final warning. You have to respect opinions of people who disagree with you. You have no right to say their votes are invalid. If you continue this behavior, you will be removed from this group.

I have a right to invalidate votes based on the premise that no counter study is provided. It is already mentioned in the poll post. I respectfully invalidate their votes due to lack of study. How is this so hard for you to grasp? And now you are giving out warnings like cherries. At least have an apt reason to warn someone. The post rules say clearly 'Disagreeing to this poll would require you to submit a reasonable source or study with enough sample size that proves otherwise. News articles and metaphysical jargon of blogs isn't appreciated. Your vote wouldn't count if you fail to do the above.'

@Firescar You have the right to say whatever you want. But the title of your poll is "Alteration of the biased moderation policy.". That is not a "scientific" poll. That is a poll to implement change in a community aspect. And we do that by consensus from the community. You cannot implement arbitrary restrictions on community consensus, as that follows the constitution. If you want to implement your arbitrary restrictions, open another poll to amend the constitution to allow arbitrary restrictions. Pass it according to the current rules, and then restrict away!

@Firescar also, please cite a "scientific" article defining what a "scientific poll" is.

With the way you advanced your argument, looks like we are not going to have any meaningful discussion here. Let alone how fallacious of a reasoning to begin with in your construct of the argument. To let us take you seriously you should begin by quoting link of scientific or sociological studies on the subject NOT a doc file.

@Pirate Bady Since your post failed to mention any relevant study that disproves the study that I posted, your vote stands invalidated. Try again please. Bring forth a study this time around rather than personal opinion.

@Kannan V M since we don't have consensus at this level. You can start a proposal in associates sub group.

I do have doubts on 5th point of https://codema.in/d/oTlCjyAx/adopt-a-moderation-policy-for-matrix-room/84.

Hard fork will not be easy or even impractical in a big group. Doing it because one permanent member not following CoC is highly disproportionate.
Facing this issue is tough, but one practical alternative will be making action no.2 in matrix room and action no.1 in Loomio group as the highest punishment available for permanent member.

@Kannan V M what happens if there's repeated violation? should we assume good faith and hope the member won't violate CoC further?

We can repeat the same punishment. They wont be able to post for sometime again. It has to be this way or we will have to introduce permanent ban, which should be used only in extreme cases and only after voting.

@Kannan V M okay. repeating the procedure sounds better than permanently banning permanent members or forking. i suggest you to start a new proposal for making that amendment.

Or can't we update the current proposal?

@Kannan V M but that proposal already got closed. also, i hope creating a new one will get more attention.

The same Procedere for everyone, This COC must be on Equal terms for all who use it Especially Pirate Members who stand for this COC. We are the People Striving for Fair Disscusion on this plattform. One Persona alone must never take these decisions, It must be Voted on. If you are effected directly you also have report to membership in the matter. So we can all have the chance to take a glance at the history. The member effected should never mute people.