Suggestion: Option to display gender along with name/title/avatar on posts.

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Daimera

Daimera

Terrarian
A suggestion as stated. Include a toggle option to have a ♂ or ♀ next to or somewhere around one's title, name, or avatar based on what they've selected as a gender in their preferences.

There's been some lighthearted 'drama' regarding mistaken gender about, and 95% of it seems to stem from people going off of forum avatars rather than taking the time to check people's profile pages to know what pronouns to use.

Naturally, this doesn't help much for people who leave their gender blank, choose to leave the option off, whether as an oversight or on purpose, but really, that's up for them to iron out. However, for people who do take the time to make that selection, it would give others an at-a-glance knowledge of how to refer to someone rather than just guessing or assuming.

It wouldn't stop the "Wait, [so and so] is actually [gender]??" banter if there is any disparity between the a avatar and immediately displayed gender symbol, but it'll make it a lot clearer for those who are just making an honest mistake and not specifically trying to troll for attention. :dryadsmile:
 
This would help.
I know some TCF People with a girlish name/avatar, but are male.
 
always assume male. If they say anything about it, just tell them it's hard to notice under the armor.
 
Probably something that could be done - but the option to hide it or leave it blank will remain (as you note), so the issue will never really be resolved per se
 
I understand. It's less to solve a widespread issue and more for giving an option to those who'd like it. People who simply don't find their own representation important need not use it. However, for people who do care about their representation, enough to find themselves correcting people more often than not, it would be nice to have the option to make it plainly visible without having to click through an additional layer. :dryadsmile:
 
Sounds good but it also sounds like something that should be put on the back burner. The purpose of profiles (which can be accessed directly by clicking their username) is to contain all this information. It's one click away to find out someone's gender or if they even have one to represent themselves.
 
Yeah, it's not meant to be a super important suggestion, just something that came to mind because it's an issue that's been coming up a bit recently. I think I've seen up-front gender identification on other XenForo-based forums, but I'm not 100% sure...

The main issue with it being on the profile page is that a lot of people have demonstrated that they would rather just assume a gender than take the second to click the profile to check first. This is just meant to streamline that and remove that one click, but only if the forum devs have time to look into it, and also provided it's not a pain to implement. :>
 
To be honest, I don't think this would accomplish much, given the surprisingly large number of people who mark themselves as the opposite sex for . . . trolling purposes. You still wouldn't be able to rely on it, and you can always just check their profile anyway (IF they even bothered to list it).
 
I wonder why gender pronouns were ever necessary enough to come into existence? I always found it odd how we put so much importance on someone's gender. Anyway, we do use these words, so something like this would avoid mixing up genders.. to those who set a gender, at least. :dryadindifferent::indifferent:

...though, it would help if a lot of people wouldn't freak out if they found out someone was of the other gender. It should be an "Oh, alright," and not a "WHAT!? You're a [gender]!?!? O__o;;"
 
Snickerbobble said:
I wonder why gender pronouns were ever necessary enough to come into existence? I always found it odd how we put so much importance on someone's gender. Anyway, we do use these words, so something like this would avoid mixing up genders.. to those who set a gender, at least. :dryadindifferent::indifferent:

...though, it would help if a lot of people wouldn't freak out if they found out someone was of the other gender. It should be an "Oh, alright," and not a "WHAT!? You're a [gender]!?!? O__o;;"
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I had the same thought. The only reason this is even a consideration is that finding out someone isn't the gender they expected, or worse "can't figure out the gender they are" causes people intense, unwarranted discomfort. Personally, I don't think that facilitating gender identification is a good thing, but hey, I'm just one person.
 
I am kinda against this because it will be just more packing into the forum (which CAN cause issues with the software and those bugs people are so excited for) to spoonfeed people who just can't be bothered to click on someone's name to find out their theoretical gender. That's my issue with it. It also doesn't help that people lie about their gender, or in my case, don't know what the :red: to even do with it and will pick unspecified. I just learned after checking that unspecified doesn't even show up if you picked that.

Either way I personally haven't seen a compelling argument for this. It's like the signature line thing people were having so much trouble with on the other forum.
 
It doesn't affect me but I can understand Daimera getting weary of the frequent "Oh you're a female".

In the meantime, you could put it/something in your sig if it bothers you.
 
I don't really have a compelling argument beyond "Having options is always nicer than not having 'em," yaknow? As long as it doesn't mess things up.

As for other issues:

- If people lie about their gender, then they're asking to be misrepresented and that's not really the issue at hand. If people are unsure or want something neutral or really just don't care, they can just leave it blank. Again, it's all about having the option to display something if one so desires.

- Sure we could put it in a sig, but I prefer my signature to be simple and single-image, personally. I guess I could slap a symbol on the picture, but whether or not people get the relevance of it is up for grabs; if there's a single, consistent place to put it across multiple users, more people might get the idea after a while. Operative word might.


Again, I thought I'd seen it utilized on another Xen-forum and thought it might be possible because of that, and it was primarily spurred on by the sudden memefication of "...Wait, Milt's a guy??!" The two thoughts joined together and seemed like a valid suggestion from a technical standpoint at the very least. Whether or not people agree with it... well, that's what discussions are for, right? :dryadsmile:
 
Daimera said:
Again, I thought I'd seen it utilized on another Xen-forum and thought it might be possible because of that, and it was primarily spurred on by the sudden memefication of "...Wait, Milt's a guy??!" The two thoughts joined together and seemed like a valid suggestion from a technical standpoint at the very least. Whether or not people agree with it... well, that's what discussions are for, right? :dryadsmile:
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I don't know if I've seen it on other XF forums, but the old V-Bulletin forums had (in default) toggles on profile settings to display your gender, age, and birthday, along with custom fields the admins could set under their profile picture (called an avatar on XF).
 
Leinfors said:
To be honest, I don't think this would accomplish much, given the surprisingly large number of people who mark themselves as the opposite sex for . . . trolling purposes. You still wouldn't be able to rely on it, and you can always just check their profile anyway (IF they even bothered to list it).
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to be fair, if they choose to do so, they have no right to complain, and very damn well know that they don't.
 
I was thinking about using it. It's easier if we know the gender, because at least I am more used to using he or she to refer to someone, instead of spamming their usernames.
For blank and hidden we could just have a question mark.
 
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