I've been convinced, I really don't see a downside to a textbox. Forcing people to pick out of three pre-determined options kind of defeats the purpose, no?
I value having a designated place on user profiles where I can easily refer to see what specific words to use when addressing a user I don't already know.
While we're at it... If we the site is open to a user-input field, I would love a lot more flexibility for that field other than just pronouns.
For instance, short-paragraph "bio" text box where I can put whatever I want. Pronouns, yes, but also how best to reach me, a couple of my interests, occupation, languages spoken, whatever other parts of my identity I would like to share.
Edit: I'm on desktop now and just noticed the pronouns appear on the forums under the posters' usernames. It makes a lot of sense, but it's definitely missed on mobile. This also means that my suggestion above in this post doesn't make as much sense, as I was thinking in terms of how it appears on the profile page and not the forums next to each post.
That's cool that there seems to be a way around it to add in freetype. I haven't been able to figure it out myself. I still think it should just be the standard that people can freetype.
Trolls are going to exist everywhere in the world, it is ludicrous to suggest that people who would benefit from this change in good faith should be penalised because some future troll may abuse it. Punish the infraction when it occurs, not everyone else for a pre-crime.
People found out that you can edit it a couple days ago. Instantly, it was used for stupid pronouns that was used to degrade those who use pronouns/neopronouns.
It would be nice to have it be an option but there is unfortunately no way to prevent abuse of it at this moment, and banning every single person who abuses it isn't an option, nor is talking to each individual user who abuses it to knock it off.
What's wrong with just ignoring them? If they want to be all Im14AndThisIsEdgy, doesn't harm me none. I'll be judging the hell out of them, but hey, they earned it LUL
It's actually a pretty bad thing if you think about it. If people start doing this, then this type of behaviour will just be encouraged more and more.
I don't love that we can't have something that would tangibly help people, because internet trolls exist.
Identifying as an apache is not abuse, if the person actually means it. edit: someone said identifying as an Apache would be an example of abuse within the idea of having a custom textbox.
I was writing a very long paragraph about the textboxes but what I actually realized is that in general a custom textbox would be nice below your username. Some people like having a custom flair, just like on reddit for example.
Within this flair you could put in your pronouns. Maybe this way it actually disincentivize the trolls from abusing it and making fun of pronouns. I quite frankly would like to have simply a custom box to put whatever I want into this, maybe I like to point out that I am a glitchhunter or just as the current system does, my pronouns.
Last but not least we have to ignore the trolls and people who break rules with offensive flairs need to get banned. I am well aware that this might add a lot of extra moderation but other platforms and sites can handle this as well. The question here is: Is it due to a lack of moderators in total to handle the workload? Or a missing system to review reports for a user? Or a missing system for user punishments? Or a reporting system in the first place is missing?
Anyways just my 2 cents. Add a custom box.
[quote=Liv]Perhaps there could be no "pronouns" sections at all, but instead a small section where you can choose to include your pronouns and also a short "blurb" about yourself?[/quote]
Yeah exactly what I said earlier. This 1000x (for the love of god I really need to learn how to quote on srdc) (edit: I found out how to quote)