Don't highlight "actor" in male colours (Gender)

Issue #182 resolved
Peter Halasz created an issue

The word actor is highlighted in the same way as "he" and "his". As it is a gender-neutral term, it offers little help and shouldn't be highlighted.

Comments (6)

  1. Waldir Pimenta

    I've reverted this change in 94a933b. Let's not be pedantic here, "actor" is in practice used pretty much 99% of the time to refer to men. "his" and "he" don't always refer to the subject of the article either, so every hint should be used with caution.

  2. Peter Halasz reporter

    I found the term distracting at best when using the tool. Where are you pulling this 99% number from? If the word "actor" on a new article is the only evidence you have that the subject is not female then you shouldn't be updating their gender on Wikidata. There are plenty of articles that mention "best supporting actor" or other such phrases that use the gender neutral term because an associated organisation does, e.g. there is no "Screen Actresses Guild". Also, articles that appear on the tool are often only previously written by only one person so you can't guess if they're being politically correct or if they're sticking with the old convention. It's just not useful to highlight it.

  3. Waldir Pimenta

    Fair enough -- I concede, even though those items are not likely to appear in the intro paragraph, while the actor/actress form is quite common there. I don't have hard stats for this, evidently, but I've come across quite a few instances myself of the latter, and none of the former. Nevertheless, you're technically right, so I won't argue further.

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