And We're Going To Watch Me Dig A Hole...

And we're going to watch me dig a hole for the angry internet mob to bury me in.

Okay, let me start out that this is half rant, half a call for some gorram sanity, understanding, and compromise. Which makes the second part a hell of a lot to ask for on the internet, I know.

So yesterday there was a huge mess over DA evidently removed the "Unspecified" option from the gender pull down in registering for the site. This removal occurred back during the version 7 upgrade... almost 5 months ago.

So someone that previously left DA, came back, started to sign up again, and came across the change. Hn. They opened a support request about it. I don't know how they worded that initial request, because they haven't shared that. They were informed that the "Unspecified" option had been removed back in May, and things went downhill from there.  Blog write-up by that person: transfinite.dreamwidth.org/215… | transfinite.dreamwidth.org/215…

I'm going to go ahead and say that a solution has been implemented, and I think it's a reasonable (please note, I say reasonable, not "ideal", it's part of that "compromise" business) one, but I'm going to dig my grave by commenting with my opinion on how this stuff was handled.
So here is where I get myself in trouble.

I've got... mixed feelings about the DA kerfluffle yesterday. I hang out in the women-and-LGBT-dominated corners of the US comics fandom, so I am uncomfortably well-informed about many things like the non-gender issue. I say uncomfortably well-informed because I think both sides often take matters to ridiculous in their actions and reactions, do things to intentionally stir up shit, or take things meant innocently out of proportion. BOTH SIDES OF ANY GIVEN ARGUMENT MIND YOU. I'm not calling out one or the other there, because both seem to intentionally either start shit, take offense over something not intended, make giant assumptions, escalate hostility instead speaking to each other like fellow-human-fucking-beings, etc. There are mutually respectful ways to get things done, and then there is trollery, willful ignorance, screaming matches, dismissing someone's entire opinion on grounds of assuming they are racist/ablist/sexist/privileged/etc regardless of if that is true (and sometimes it is true), and etc.

By the way, any person that derails their comment to belittle anything I have to say based solely on assumptions based on my race, gender, class, etc gets automatically ban-hammered. If you derail like that, it's not worth my time to entertain what you have to say. Fuck you.

DA should not have removed the non-gender option to begin with. On the other hand, I think people deeply involved in the LGBT community sometimes forget that to people not so involved, it just didn't occur to them as an issue. I wasn't aware of many such things were out there until the last couple of years, but polite people got me informed, and I deeply appreciate that. I'm still learning new things regularly, but I try my best to be open minded and aware when I screw up. It's not malice, it's ignorance, and polite discourse and information is the best way to fix things. Internet mobs, which is what happened yesterday, are NOT.

As a code monkey, I get why they took out the "Unspecified" option that used to be there. Your gender didn't matter to DA before. When they retooled the site for v7, they started incorporating the gender setting into how the information pages generated sentences (his/her), likely in an attempt to make the site seem more personal and friendly. They also started using it to target the advertising. Sure, I'm a paid member, but the site lives based on ad revenue. Not enough of us pay to make up for the number that don't. Advertisers will pay more for targeted ads. It's worth it for DA to do that. Whomever coded the site probably honestly did not even know there are people that don't have a gender identity, and coded as they understand the world, as the marketers want and need the site to operate. For the sake of allowing customer/user privacy, they set it so that you could choose to hide your selected gender. In their minds and education, this was sufficient due diligence for any one that did not wish to publicly share that information.
Now, they overlooked that the info pages would still display he/she, but when you're re-coding a site that large things like that are not a priority. Making sure complex things like the gallery systems, layouts with various ad sizes, search options are functioning properly, etc. These are the priority. Again, no one meant to offend, and they had a lot of problems with the galleries and image auto-resizing when v7 initially rolled out months ago. I still see problems with the search functionality that I ought to track down how to generate, catalog and report. No one in the site admin even thought of the gender issue as a problem.
A polite contact to the admin (I mean an email, not a public call-out on news and DA journals they may not even see that was occurring in many cases) giving information and clearly explaining what the extent of the issue was would have done loads more than two sentences demanding 'where is my third option'. I don't know what Transfinite's initial contact looked like. They chose not to share that part of the exchange.

Regarding the asshat/uninformed behavior by the staff.
I'm kind of overlooking the first form reply, because it was clearly a form reply, the interchange started from there on out, with RealitySquared's uninformed and impolite reply, "My apologies but there are only two sexes; male and female so one should apply to you. In the unusual case that you are hermaphrodite then I would suggest that you select the one which you feel applies the best."
For one, the reaction to RS's uninformed and impolite reply was not well articulated to explain to an uniformed person why what they said was being rude and inconsiderate. It was rudeness right back, immediately calling RS a "bigot" by the second sentence rather than linking him to informative sites. I get that you're angry, but it won't help matters to immediately sink to slinging insults; it also just put RS on the defensive and thusly less likely to listen to you.
For two, as a long-time DA member, I know RealitySquared is notorious on DA for being an asshat to the members, paid and not. I'm sorry if you're reading this RS, but I expect you know you have that reputation. When the mess over tracing came up, I watched you dismissing people's opinions as being "stupid" or just being "drama llamas". That's not very professional, and many staffers seem to follow that lead.
When one admin acts as an asshat, your best bet is to 1) step away, calm down; 2) try to calmly and fully articulate exactly what is wrong as if explaining to someone with no clue what you're talking about; 3) go further up the chain of command. Personally, if I felt conversing with a head admin like RS had hit a dead end after articulating what was wrong extremely well, I would not go through the regular support ticket means again.  Because the support people usually answer to the same person, and you might as well just be asking him/her/them the same question a second time.

As much as DA staff frequently cheese me off, I will give a ton of credit to spyed (devArt's CEO) for calmly listening, asking questions, and trying to find the right solution when he woke up to find an internet mob at his virtual door yesterday. He read a bit, talked to staff, and within hours, had "Gender" changed to "Sex" hoping that was an acceptable solution that still allowed catering to the advertisers that pay for the site to run. He also had the use of gender-specific pronouns taken off of the info page. And you could still choose to hide the gender option on your profile visibility. That didn't work for people, and I definitely can see and agree with why it didn't. Spyed listened again, engaged in discourse, got informed, and at 4:15pm had his coders working to put "Other" into the options--as he had been informed that "Unspecified" could be insulting. He also said that further mods would be done as he became aware of the need. That is an extremely quick turn around and reaction. spyed.deviantart.com/journal/3…

Of course, people are still pissed because RS is still an asshat. Because there is a long-standing reputation of it, I would love to see RS's behavior investigated, and for people to start reporting up the line in a polite fashion when an admin is unnecessarily rude so that it can be handled.
What baffles me is the people that are pissed and screaming that DA has no business knowing at all. Because hey, DA is a business giving you unlimited space for a gallery and a community setup with tons of bells and whistles for free. The site is paid for by advertisers. If they can do better ads and make more money in order to pay for the equipment and staff that keep DA running and free, yes it is their "business" to know. They allow you to hide your choice from everyone else for sake of your privacy, they're cooperating and trying to fix the system once you got the concern far enough up the chain of command to someone that gives a shit about the user base as individuals.
People seem to be angry because the solution isn't ideal with their personal view of the world, business model and opposing opinions be damned. You have to try to understand both sides if you want your side to be understood, and the solution may not be the ideal for everyone, but that is what compromise is. I don't know what people expect DA to do beyond what has been done. Aside from doing something about the repeated un-professionalism from admin like realitysquared.

So I'm not leaving DA. Not over this. I'll keep ignoring admin like that can't behave professionally, and keep listening to Spyed, because he's reasonable and willing to compromise when stuff goes bad.

[End my $0.02]

EDIT: Can we please not treat the comments of "Senior Members" as if they were official DA commentary? Senior Members are ex-DA-staff, or DA members that have been around a really long time and thusly have been given the benefits of a senior member account. They are usually friends with the staff, but they are not staff members and should not be taken as official voices for the site. Okay? Thank you.
FAQ #106: What are the symbol next to each deviant's username?