Quoting Enrico Zini (2022-07-16 10:17:11) > On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 12:43:16PM +0100, Edward Betts wrote: > > > I've been writing some code to work out the gender balance of speakers at a > > conference. It parses the pentabarf XML of the schedule and feeds the speaker > > names to this module. > > > > Here's the results for Debconf 22. > > > > 72 speakers > > > > male 48 66.7% > > unknown 16 22.2% > > female 4 5.6% > > mostly_male 2 2.8% > > andy 1 1.4% > > mostly_female 1 1.4% > > If the library works as the author intended, it will identify "Enrico" > as male, which is a gender *I* don't identify with. > > This kind of extends to anything related to a person's identity: any > software trying to determine an aspect of a person's identity is bound > to eventually conflict with how a person lives their own identity. > > That conflict can be quite painful, so it's not surprising you get > strong reactions when intending to package something that pretends to > tell people what a person is, without asking them first. > > This external determination of identity will then extend to the library > to any software or research using it. I totally understand the good > intentions, but the result honestly amplifies the pain. > > I think the right way to get the statistics you're looking for would be > to ask speakers to state their own identity on pentabarf, so that > statistics are based on self-determination, rather than external > overrides of it. I am not aware the the author or packager or any user of gender-guesser would *override* explicitly stated identity annotations. What makes sense to me is to apply a tool like gender-guesser *after* asking for explicit annotation and then apply guessing only when the speaker (or whoever was involved) answered "Don't care" (which I would find sensible to place as default answer). My point being that I see a use-case for this library that is respectful - am I missing something and the existance of such tool is *always* painful for some? (sure, it *can* be painful is used wrongly or sloppily, as is the case with any tool - so I think the more relevant question is if it *always* is painful for some). - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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