Xi wants to experiment with using xi/drag person-independent pronouns on this account. So far xi likes using the pronouns, but xi’s only written 4 comments and already someone accused drag of talking about Chinese politics when xi mentioned dragself. Xi knows xi’s pronouns are confusing, so xi would like to put xi’s pronouns in xi’s displayname to clear things up.
But the character limit for display names on lemmy.nz is only 22 characters, and xi’s handle already takes up 16 characters. Xi would need 24 characters to put xi’s pronouns in xi’s display name. Xi knows some instances also have a separate field for pronouns, and the pronouns get displayed next to the name without taking up displayname characters. Xi would like a place, or at least enough room, for xi’s pronouns, please.
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Why refer to yourself in third person? Or are you using xi as a pronoun and don’t know basic grammar?
Xi’s pronouns are person-independent. That means they apply the same way in first, second, or third person. Most people have subject, object, and posessive pronouns for all three grammatical persons. That’s 9 pronouns. Xi only has 2 pronouns, so xi’s pronouns are very simple and very easy to remember.
Might wanna add that info in the bio field.
Not sure I’ve fully graped the intended grammar myself. Anyway, this issue might benefit from a longer form explanation which the bio would support. Whereas the display name is inherently limited, the bio supports multi line rich text.
Good luckThank you, xi’s expanded the bio a bit
I did not know that was a thing. I thought xi were a troll when I first read xir post. I’ve got some catching up to do!
Thank xi for letting me know!
Feel free to let me know if I’m messing up this grammar. I am not native English
You, your, and you again, are all gender neutral already.
I don’t see the point of this.
To us, there isn’t. To them, there probably is. To each their own
It’s thank drag, since xi is the object of your sentence. You’re doing something to drag, which is thanking. If you’d say he or she, xi’s pronoun is xi. If you’d say him or her, it’s drag. Thank you for being curious.
Thank drag for explaining! I am afraid I am going to mess this up in the future. It’ll get better with practice though. I don’t quite meet people with pronouns like drags every day, but I am glad to learn regardless!
Hey sorry I’ve had a play and it doesn’t look like this is a configurable setting in Lemmy.
Lemmy.nz runs the Lemmy software, but we don’t develop it. I suspect the limit is set that low on purpose, though. Mobile screens are not that wide, and there’s a lot of info to display for every comment, so it would need to be quite small to account for that. Note that not all people we interact with on Lemmy are using Lemmy software (e.g. they could be on instances using Mastodon, Kbin, Mbin, Piefed, etc), so different users may have different restrictions.
Xi knows xi’s pronouns are confusing, so xi would like to put xi’s pronouns in xi’s displayname to clear things up.
Reading this is a little confusing; I am trying to map the pronoun to the usual grammatical structure and it is difficult.
It would be good if there was another line in this image for 3rd person, gender neutral pronouns.
What should be in that imaginary line
Why not just use the bottom line for third person?
I get that, but this person is specifically not using they/them; I’m just trying to figure out how “Xi” works, in the context of normal grammar.
Xi say(s); there are only two pronouns which is “simpler”; but English is built around having the regular five.
e.g. in the following sentence, I’m unsure what pronouns Xi would use:
This opinion is mine; you have yours. That is fine, we don’t have to agree.
We would still use “yours” when referring to Xi in the second person (I assume); but what would Xi use as the personal possessive pronoun?
It doesn’t really work at all in my view, which is why you hear xi as a pronoun so rarely.
I was wondering what the leader of the CCP had to do with NZ for a moment.
Also, I keep reading OP’s comments in the voice of Gollum.
Maybe two pronouns is too many. Maybe drag will only use one pronoun. Drag would fit in the display name.
I don’t understand why they/them pronouns isn’t the option here. It’s already the default if you don’t know a person’s gender.
Drag doesn’t want gender neutral pronouns, drag wants pronouns that specifically indicate drag’s gender.
Does your instance have a bio? Maybe you could use that? On my instance, the character limit for the bio is 300 chars, that should probably be plenty :o
edit: Another option might be to get a hexbear account? I know they’re pretty good with the built-in pronoun selection, but they are defederated from many places so that might affect your user experience
Xi doesn’t like Hexbear’s record on trans issues. Xi thinks the average hexbear user is the kind of person who brags about supporting binary transes while oppressing anyone who’s a little bit more different than they’re used to. Xi thinks they would call drag a delusional troll. Also xi is an anarchist and Hexbear doesn’t like that very much.
Some possible workarounds: you could fake out the space and use a hyphen to separate your pronouns rather than brackets. So
Dragon"Rider"-xi/drag. Or, if it’s not essential to you, you could remove what appear to be scare quotes from your name instead, which leaves room for the more conventional brackets.Thank you, xi likes that solution. Unfortunately it seems Lemmy does not.
Sorry, but what is it that “Lemmy does not”? Was it the hyphen? That’s unfortunate. Maybe a colon (:) or em dash (—) would work? I’m surprised, considering I’ve seen users with far more absurd characters, like 𝕕𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖-𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕦𝕔𝕜 (𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕕) 𝕥𝕖𝕩𝕥 in their display names.
Though I have to be honest, I don’t particularly like any use of display names other than custom capitalisation and appending pronouns. If I can’t read someone’s display name and type it with an @ mention and get autocomplete because their display name is significantly different from their username, they’ve fucked up and are misusing their display name, IMO. It creates user experience problems.
Xi messed up counting the characters. Looks like Lemmy’s character limit is 20, not 22. Display names are good for special characters. Lemmy doesn’t allow special characters in usernames because it messes up the URLs. Xi wanted to be Dragon “Rider”, but Lemmy doesn’t allow quotes in usernames. Luckily, quotes are allowed in displaynames, so xi took dragonfucker for a username and Dragon “Rider” for a display name.
