A Quick Experiment Around Representation on dev.to
Tags: community, representation, meta
Published: 2018-09-16 01:52:00

---
title: A Quick Experiment Around Representation on dev.to
published: true
description: 
tags: community,representation,meta
---

Hi Folks! 

I'm a big fan of the community here on dev.to, and I love the idea and the potential of this place.

One thing I've noticed is that in a lot of posts on dev.to begin with the phrase `Hey guys` or `Hi guys` or `I have a question for you guys`.

Here's the thing, though -- it can be a little problematic because:

* It centers men and their experience. Men are the default when we use this phrase. If you doubt that's the case, imagine saying to the same group "hey ladies!". If you wouldn't do that roughly ~50% of the time, there might be an imbalance.
* It can make people feel excluded, even when there's no intention of excluding anyone. Tech is often a less-than-welcome industry for people who don't identify as "guys". Would it kill us all to make their experience a little easier, or even to signal that we value the experience and inclusion of others in the community? (No. The answer is no, it would not).

## Some Example Alternatives to "Guys"

* Hi guys --> Hi all!
* What's up guys? -->  What's up, everyone?
* How's it going guys? --> How's it going, folks?
* Question for you guys --> I have a question for the community 

I've found that "folks" works really well for me with my muscle memory, so I stick with that primarily, though I'll often start e-mails with "Hi all".

## Saying "You Guys" Doesn't Make You a Bad Person!

The intent of this experiment isn't to shame anyone. Nobody's saying you're an evil person if you use this phrase or that people who don't use it are somehow above critique. I know plenty of folks, including women, who default to it. I still slip up sometimes. It happens.

## ...But changing it up can make things nicer for everyone at no cost.

This is a great community; surely we want to see it be even better for all those who are a part of it. I've found that changing this muscle memory is beneficial for me as it's a reminder of what my defaults are. I've also been thanked by at least two people who've noticed it, so my personal experience says it at least has some small effect. 

## So what's the experiment?

I'm going to post comments on posts that use phrases along the lines of "hey guys" or "you guys" to refer to the community in general, with the following text:

> Hey! I've noticed that in this post you use "guys" as a reference to the entire community, which is not made up of only guys but a variety of community members. I'm running an experiment and hope you'll participate. Would you consider changing "guys" to a more inclusive term? If you're open to that, please let me know when you've changed it and I'll delete this comment. For more information and some alternate suggestions, see [link to post]. Thanks for considering!

Hopefully, this inspires people to make a quick edit or learn a little more, or even to think about representation for an additional second. If so, I'll call it a net win. 

## Additional reading on "guys" as the default for a group of people

* ["The Problem with 'Hey Guys'" - The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/08/guys-gender-neutral/568231/)
* ["Why I'm finally convinced it's time to stop saying 'You guys'" - Vox](https://www.vox.com/2015/6/11/8761227/you-guys-sexism-language)
* ["You guys?" - Teaching Tolerance](https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/you-guys)


## "I like this!"

Awesome! If you encounter a similar situation, feel free to use my example comment above or tweak it and link back to this post.

## "This site is about tech!"

Well OK then, here's some code.

I used [artoo.js](https://medialab.github.io/artoo/) to check the search results. I clicked the artoo bookmarklet to insert it into dev.to, and then in my browser console, I typed:

```javascript
artoo.scrape("div.article-engagement-count", { link: {sel: 'a', attr: 'href'}, count: {sel: 'a'} }, artoo.savePrettyJson)
```
That gave me a good way to comb through search results to reach out to the more popular posts that used this phrase (a big improvement in effort over clicking on every link in order!)

I also used some powershell to convert that json to a CSV file:

```powershell
((Get-Content -Path "hey-guys.json") | ConvertFrom-Json) |
    Export-CSV "hey-guys.csv" -NoTypeInformation
```

From there, I easily opened in Excel and sorted by most interactions (I could have likely done it faster but this seemed straightforward enough.)

## "Guys is gender-neutral!"

It literally is not. It's a default; that doesn't make it neutral. It puts one group in a default position. That's anything but neutral, and words matter. People in this line of thinking probably have been shielded from the impact of such default language, so they may perceive something that favors them as neutral. It's a normal human instinct; it's just incorrect

## "It's not a big deal!"

I'm not saying it's the end of the world. I'm saying that every little bit helps.

## "You're just doing this for clicks!"

Nah, I'm doing OK on that front. I'm just out to make the world better in little ways that add up. No popularity necessary. 

If you're truly worried about that, I invite you to copy the post entirely, make it your own, and say "inspired by Sean". You don't even need to include my last name. Promise!

## "Roar! You're being politically correct / censoring / controlling! Social Justice! Blargh!"

This post is meant for those who are generally empathetic and want to improve the experiences people have within the community. 

If you feel similar to the heading above after reading, you are not the target audience for this post, as you may be more interested in your own experiences than the feelings of others. Feel free to disregard this, but I hope you'll consider it someday.