Re: Bug#1014908: ITP: gender-guesser -- Guess the gender from first name

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
>On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 11:14:43AM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>> 
>> Do you have a real use for this package? 
>
>Why in the world is that even a relevant question?  There are plenty of
>packages in the archive which are useful to essentially nobody apart
>from the maintainer and there are even packages which are maintained
>without being useful to the maintainer at all (but rather useful to
>others).

I think it's a valid question to ask.

>> There are a *lot* of issues
>> in this area, and mis-gendering people is not something to risk
>> lightly...
>
>"There are a *lot* of issues in this area" seems rather nebulous.  In
>which area?  Given the fact that we have clear and rather unambiguous
>guidelines for what constitutes software which is appropriate for
>inclusion in the archive, and given that on its face this software does
>not seem to be in conflict with any of those guidelines, what then is
>the problem?

I'll link to

  https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

again, as a start. Assuming *anything* about names is iffy at best,
and trying to derive other information (whether that's gender, age,
nationality, whatever) from names is unreliable as all hell. When
there is the potential for *also* causing offense from that unreliable
information then I'd hope that people would know better.

>BTW, I'm not interested in any sort of "well I don't like ..." or
>"such and such could offend so and so ..." sort of arguments.

Thanks, I'm well aware that you don't care. Maybe you could try?

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
"We're the technical experts.  We were hired so that management could
 ignore our recommendations and tell us how to do our jobs."  -- Mike Andrews