Hi! It seems like this slow mode has increased to a day, and therefore there will be less frequent posts. Something I noticed is that the OP wants a hiding username feature as shown from their mockups, but some of my opinions and responses are here:
MeepCity is primarily an online dating community - that’s expected for its playerbase. If you put this kind of update in Tower of Hell, an example where the player base is much different, you would not have this level of abuse. About me can also be abused to this extent, but do you see it happening? No, because it can be solved with moderation. After all, I only suggested a text-based implementation with no emoji limited to 25 characters which can also be moderated very easily. Status should not be for under-13 users.
If anything, the leaderboard profile can simply include an excerpt of one’s about me with a button to expand. And remember that statuses once did exist - Roblox clearly knows how it’s like with statuses and my suggestion is also making status content stricter by reducing the character limit and no emojis too.
Correct, my suggestion is to implement Discord’s method so that the space could be utilised by those who do not want pronouns on their profile.
Feature requests exist to make suggestions, and I don’t see why you think that Roblox won’t touch the gender option. Currently I see that the only purpose of it is for the starter avatar unless I’m missing something else, and although I am against this it is possible to expose the user-selected gender and linking it to pronouns. No one would set their gender to male and then put she/her pronouns, since after all the gender option is that you want your gender to be and pronouns simply reflect that.
And character cosplaying does exist - the anonymous mode of the game Flicker is known for its preset characters, and for some rounds I just click the male option for a male character for fun. I obviously don’t care about misgendering at all - it isn’t even misgendering because it’s calling the character for what it is. Locking gender selection based on gender from profile disrupts this kind of free cosplay gameplay.
If harassment is what is making it uncomfortable, reporting is the way to go. If it was a simple misgendering mistake, correction is easy. Once the same mistake is repeated after correction, the logic is that it then becomes harassment.
Why do you want this? Fair enough that pronouns are included in other platforms, but these are adult addresses that also indicate marital status.
A forum is to express and counter opinions about a topic - the responses here that have not been reported clearly address the topic of whether pronouns should be included or not.
According to the person I was quoting, they seem to want a feature that mostly focus on giving others the respect. By adding marital status, it can be suited towards the intention of respect more than pronouns. “Mr. cookiegamerz_YT3.” It still seems absurd as third person pronouns, but it serves the same purpose as pronouns due to its nature of enforcing respectfulness.
Political Criticism
Regarding adult addresses, the process of gender transformation will require you to go through HRT and a surgery to confirm your identity which can affect pronouns. The surgery is pretty much a decision of the adult. If you do not get a surgery, you are not really the opposite gender or neutral. Without the confirmation, you are nothing more than masking your identity, and that is what trollers do. On a platform like Roblox, there will likely be only trollers who utilizes this features.
There are many of those who undergone gender transformation, but will likely refuse using this feature as the side effect of this feature is that it will bring harassment and hate towards them. Before Roblox can add pronouns feature, they should address the moderation issue first and also the language issue that will come
If you believe this is the case, then you are not reading enough or haven’t bothered to analyze mine.
I’ll summarize the key points I’ve stated for you to understand.
Language and issues with conveying
– Humans have made languages to communicate with each other and get others to understand. Adding pronouns will add ambiguity, especially in the English language. An avatar could look like a guy, but the person behind it is actually she/her. Now think about this, when you were a caveman and you wanted to develop a language to describe them in a specified gender, and they look like a guy, would you say him or her? Even with them, it could refer to singular or, in most use cases, THEM as a plural.
– Without concern for the study of languages, pronouns will add ambiguity.
– We have not touched on topics such as how this will be for other languages (mostly Romance) which heavily utilizes gendered pronouns such as ele and ela.
Who are you speaking to?
– When you’re not really speaking to the person you’re addressing to, it really doesn’t matter anyways. Even then, if you were talking to someone else other than them about them, they shouldn’t be aware of it. This is also a subsection of language and issues with conveying. It should get the other person to understand, not the subject regarded to understand.
Prone to harassment
– A “they/them” will likely drag a little timmy who’s so-called “Christian” to harass them as it is obvious. Utilizing this feature just means you’re walking in plain sight waiting for a conservative on the platform to come after you. There are more of these people on the platform than you might think.
– As a result, the use case for this is just rage-baiting.
This excuses “traits”
– Traits is a feature I’ve proposed within this thread. It should be up on the leaderboard for people to describe them better! It is a great comparison when it comes to language and convention issues with pronouns feature.
– If pronouns can be excused, so can traits which allows people to put their self-described characteristics.
– This puts pronouns at conflict with traits
Do you see the problem here? The issue is that when you’re not addressing the person regarded, you don’t really need to refer to them by the traits they gave you about themselves, but rather what OTHERS or YOU think about them.
Thank you to the majority of folks who left respectful replies and not posting the same discussion points over and over again in futile manner.
It’s expected that you leave this discussion alone if you have nothing new to add. There’s no point in reposting the same content or re-engaging with the same individuals every time you come here. It’s hard to change people’s opinions and that’s fine, you do not have to agree.
Read previous replies before posting and use Likes if someone else already had your opinion.
this seems to be a pretty useless feature, and seeing what this topic has turned into, i think its best we don’t add this feature to roblox
i would like to mention that roblox isn’t like a typical social media platform where pronouns generally matter (e.g. X/twitter, discord, etc.) and conversations aren’t really a major thing (but that usually depends on the game you are in).
He is referring to how pronouns are used nowadays, that is to identify someones identity.
Using pronouns themselves is fine, but if a person makes that persons pronouns that persons entire life and ensures that others call that person by the pronouns that person uses then it’s simply dumb and doesn’t make sense. You can’t make someone do whatever you want them to do… at least always.
I think if people want to add their pronouns, they should be free to in the “About” section as they already are able to do, but to add a separate area designated to pronouns will do more harm than good. If Roblox considers this, which I’m sure they will make the mistake and go through with it to appease <1%, I would recommend at least making it visible only on accounts with 17+ verification. We also have to remember there will be a lot of users who will abuse the feature and add swear words and slurs into their “pronouns” as well and kids do not need to be seeing that or anything that may make them confused about their own gender for that matter. In the past, when something on Roblox is abused by enough people, Roblox opts to remove the feature entirely rather than fixing it 9 times out of 10 so we need to keep that in mind.
As I was looking for papers to research and summarize for my psychology class, I came across a paper that directly addresses the issue (based on the abstract of the paper).
The study is from Jan 2024, “Attitudes Toward Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Online Multiplayer Gaming Spaces”. Here’s the DOI: 10.1177/00332941231153798 for it.
I unfortunately can’t upload the paper here because it’s illegal to share research papers like that I didn’t write myself. I can update my reply though after I finish writing my summary. The timing of finding this was awesome so I wanted to share that. Maybe the findings could help with solutions to moderating discrimination.
feel like it being excluded from under 13 users makes the feature entirely pointless? because id assume they’d be some predefined pronouns to pick from (to avoid the filter) and then an option for custom ones that will be filtered
Young children should not be exposed to material which will potentially have them confused or questioning their own identity at an age where they should be focusing on other developments.
even worse rep for Roblox which would have many parents prohibit their child from playing since they wish to avoid identity politics, if you think this has nothing to do with politics then you’re free to think so, but that won’t change minds of many others who do, thus I believe this would be a net loss.
that is a good point, well part of it (I dont agree with most)
But parents with a similar view would take their kids of the platform just cause people could have they/them pronouns, which wouldnt be good for roblox.
As much as I like the idea of this feature cause pronouns can be nice, I think the easy solution we’ve come to is just displaying someones about section in more places.
Say whatever you want about the subject but this probably won’t be added anyways unless it’s gonna be getting Roblox money or there’s protests in the streets.
Plus no offense but they are wayy more important web site features we should get instead. I’m not going to list examples cuz u can think of ur own. Either way even it does get excepted as a feature it’ll be one a low priority one. Many features here take forever to come or never do.
Plus this may give controversy for roblox as well. So in the end there’s no point of arguing if nothing will probably happen anyway
I’ll explain why this is silly. Pronouns are an essential part of most languages, but formatting and showing them in the form she/her or they/them on online about-mes and online texts are a new thing, a thing that came about for promotion of LGBT inclusion. There is a degree of political opposition to topics like this, hence it can be related to politics in some way.
Yes, the confusing nature of being told how to refer to someone. Much like a name. Y’know, we should get rid of Display Names on roblox. People can change those all the time, and that’s not how names work! /s
I cannot believe you genuinely think that children are incapable of using the words “his” or “she” or “them” without going through an identity crisis. Children are not stupid.
Names are also used as part of someone’s identity. Should we remove usernames and display names, too?
Using names themselves is fine, but if a person makes that persons name that persons entire life and ensures that others call that person by the name that person uses then it’s simply dumb and doesn’t make sense.
You are not the first who points out the “pronouns” that I used in my replies. Pronouns are an important part of the english language without which we cannot properly communicate. I’m not saying these are political.
What I’m instead saying is political is having a desginated space on our profiles to put pronouns, exactly what the OP is suggesting. I won’t go into unnecessary detail on why this is political as I have expressed my opinion on this thread countless times.
I am doing my best to avoid engaging with this topic, but replies like these give me no other choice. I’m not trying to flood this thread with my posts, so this will probably be my actual last reply. Thank you so much.
Many in this thread have pointed out how this isn’t politically involved, and while at its core maybe it isn’t, ignoring or pretending like there isn’t an obvious political conversation about the topic comes off as just trying to avoid having that conversation. You can’t ignore aspects that are essential to the business and its reputation.
Certain things in themselves aren’t political, but that does not mean politics won’t have any effect on them, whether you like it or not.
For those pointing out that “you used pronouns in your argument against pronouns.”, you have to understand that these things are not relative to the actual argument, it’s not centered around just ‘language’.
There is a genuine argument to be had, but to succeed in a meaningful discussion, all aspects should be covered; including the ones involving politics.
Dumbing down my point to make an argument isn’t a very good way of convincing me to think otherwise, I also fail to see the point in your comparison of pronouns, something you use to identify yourself & others as male or female, with display names, something you use to identify your online persona which preferably isn’t your real identity.
Sure, both are used to refer to someone, difference being anyone can change their name, but based on individual beliefs not everyone agrees changing sex is a real possibility.
Does that mean said belief should be enforced upon everyone else whether they think differently? Obviously not, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and hence I also believe this feature could potentially lead to a false narrative that gives certain people the idea that it enforces you to refer to someone in a way which goes against their own beliefs, and based on how radical some people might be it would only lead to negativity, as opposed to none or very little of that happening if there is no such feature.
This being an optional feature would be much more viable in my opinion, refer to my original post:
Or preferably what was mentioned here, additionally with the ability to turn this off visually as well (for the sake of UX or other reasons)
This would no longer make it a “pronouns” feature but something far more flexible, but at the same time still able to be used for pronouns, usually the more options the better for a majority.
If you’ve ever worked with or around kids you’d absolutely wish this was the case, unfortunately it isn’t for a large majority. This is far too much of a generalized statement, children are by far the most impressionable group of people, even if witnessing someone with ‘an unusual’ pronouns would likely not drive them to an identity crisis, to say it has no chance of affecting anyone in any way is in my opinion rather ignorant.
But sure, if you disagree with everything I have said thus far, let’s agree to disagree, and even then you’ve only responded to my initial statement which is rather subjective of the two, the latter being more objectively driven.
What is the point in taking a dig at one part of my statement and then ignoring the one that matters more in the sense of this becoming an actual feature, that being Roblox taking a potential financial hit or bad rep?
By not addressing that part your reply is essentially only targeted at a subjective statement I made, not doing much in favor for the actual feature.
I’m not purposely trying to dismiss your argument by pointing this out but that is the effect it has.
If you are in favor of a feature, you should be addressing all aspects/arguments that come with it, only addressing parts of them won’t make for a complete argument and thus won’t be very helpful.
I am open to hearing why this should be a feature and how it will bring more positive results than negative, as I believe for a feature to be pushed out it should outweigh the negatives (ideally by a lot) and should be useful to a large chunk of people (a feature with no negatives is not always necessarily useful).
As it stands now, I don’t see this being the case with this feature, there are too many potential negative aspects, that said if someone were to lay it all out and make compelling arguments, I’m more than willing to change my perspective.
Even ignoring what could be the result for Roblox in terms of finance/rep (which very arguably not everyone thinks matters in decision making, though should & always will be something for higher ups to consider) there is still lots of negative outcomes within the community as well put by @Reditect in the thread, I suggest reading his post(s) if you haven’t already.
TL;DR There is too much division on the topic for this to be shipped without any negative outcomes & I personally think the negatives outweigh the positives.
