This makes me wonder if there would be value in a top level post discussing the implications of social anxiety arising from lack of clear gender markers. I have an unverified hunch that gender-related privilege plays a role in this, too.
I'm not any kind of regular here but is "they" really discouraged? Why?
No, not really.
The Pronoun Question is a recurring topic of idle conversation around here that never makes definitive progress, and a fairly standard sub-pattern is someone suggesting "they" and someone else asserting that singular "they" is ungrammatical and thus to be avoided.
Other standard sub-patterns include someone suggesting Spivak pronouns and someone else asserting that they are dysphonious, someone suggesting "he" and someone else asserting that "he" is not in fact gender-neutral, and someone suggesting al...
In the next month, the administrators of Less Wrong are going to sit down with a professional designer to tweak the site design. But before they do, now is your chance to make suggestions that will guide their redesign efforts.
How can we improve the Less Wrong user experience? What features aren’t working? What features don’t exist? What would you change about the layout, templates, images, navigation, comment nesting, post/comment editing, side-bars, RSS feeds, color schemes, etc? Do you have specific CSS or HTML changes you'd make to improve load time, SEO, or other valuable metrics?
The rules for this thread are:
BUT DON’T JUMP TO THE COMMENTS JUST YET: Take a few minutes to collect your thoughts and write down your own ideas before reading others’ suggestions. Less contamination = more unique ideas + better feature coverage!
Thanks for your help!