Topic on Talk:Inclusive language/Flow

There are many parts of the world, especially South Asia, where "madam" the default way to address a woman you respect, "sir" is the default way to address a man you respect. It seems to be that proscribing their usage as "unnecessarily gendered language" loses more in cultural sensitivity than it gains in gender sensitivity. This is especially the case because, well, I'm not sure how they're unnecessarily gendered. It would be nice to live in a society that uses genderless honorifics, just like it would be nice to live in a society that uses genderless pronouns... but "madam" and "sir" are as necessary as "she" and "he", at least to people who speak in dialects that favor them.

It is not inclusivity to censor aspects of dialects spoken by people of color. I say that as someone who is not South Asian and who is transgender/nonbinary. This provision of this policy does nothing to make me feel safer as a trans or nonbinary person, and just makes me angry that such cultural insensitivity is being promulgated in the name of my cohort.

This is also an interesting case, because unlike all the other examples here which tend to have a long history of use in computer culture as jargon, dear sir/madam has a fairly long history of being considered inapropriate in computer culture (presumably not for gender reasons). So perhaps its inclusion is more about cultural baggage (dear i say imperialism) of historical computer culture than any gendering.

AKlapper (WMF) added it. I don't find it in any of the linked sources that I looked at. Andre, tell us your thoughts on this point.

In short: How would you know if I identify as a woman, man, or a different term, if we have never met before (and if I hadn't exposed my preferred pronouns before)? :)

Maybe "Avoid unnecessarily gendered language" could be changed to "Avoid unnecessarily gendered language if you do not know someone else's identity"?

I definitely agree with that. I even have something on my enwiki usertalk to that effect because I got sick of "Hello Sir"—less as a matter of being misgendered, even, and more of the implication that someone in a position of authority will be masculine.

I think you could make it something like

• Words to be avoided: Words that assume someone's gender, including "sir"/"madam"
• Suggested alternative words: Gender-neutral terms or the person's name; or check their userpage, Phab profile, etc., to see if they've shared how they identify

and that would address my concerns, and also cover the not-uncommon scenario of people assuming that anyone involved in tech will take he/him pronouns.

Makes all total sense to me, +1. Please feel encouraged to edit it!

 Done in Special:Diff/5372369. Glad we worked something out. :D

Does anyone have any suggestions for contacting an unknown person? The "Dear sir/madam" formulation is probably about a 100 years old, and its primary use was for business letters, along these lines:

Big Company
123 Main St
Anytown, ST

Dear sir/madam:
I ordered a widget from your company three months ago, and I have not received it yet. Please let me know when to expect it.
Yours truly,
J. Customer

The equivalent today might be sending a note through the VRT system: you can't know which of the many VRT folks will read your message.

I use "To whom it may concern". Or one can address the team itself. Usually in Wikimedia contexts I'll do the latter—"Dear ArbCom", "Dear OS team", etc.

in wikimedia contexts, i would argue that it is extemely rare for this level of formality to be appropriate.

That level of formality might be what people, especially people from outside the wealthier countries, consider to be normal and comfortable.

Dear humans.