Derogatory term used in example

[webstrand]

MDN URL

content/files/en-us/web/accessibility/aria/reference/roles/term_role/index.md

Line 52 in b3fdc10

<dfn role="term">Mansplaining</dfn>,

What specific section or headline is this issue about?

Examples

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

Using a derogatory stereotype is inappropriate for documentation. It's not even defined correctly, for shame.

What did you expect to see?

More neutral options:

Crowdsource—a portmanteau of "crowd" and "source", is the practice of obtaining information, ideas, or services by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, typically through online platforms or digital communities.

More novel but retains the blended structure of the original term:

Abliteration—a portmanteau of "ablate" and "obliteration", is the process of progressively ablating a large language model's parameters to remove refusal behaviors until they are obliterated while preserving other capabilities.

Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mansplaining notes that the term is considered derogatory.

Do you have anything more you want to share?

The example is also duplicated onto this page

content/files/en-us/web/accessibility/aria/reference/roles/definition_role/index.md

Line 18 in b3fdc10

<span role="term">Mansplaining</span>,

[Josh-Cena]

@estelle What say you? IMO it's better to avoid loaded or emotionally heavy examples on MDN.

Also, it's "derogatory" in the sense of "this act is bad". You should not be mansplaining whatsoever! :) ("Propaganda" is also a derogatory word; that doesn't make it obscene or inappropriate to appear in content.)

[webstrand]

I wouldn't say that's what derogatory means. I'd define it more like "a term can be used to disparage or devalue". In the same sense that calling something "that's just propaganda" is devaluing the statements made by an article, but propaganda also has more neutral usage.

[hamishwillee]

FWIW

• MDN definitive reference is Meriam-Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mansplain - which does not consider this derogatory
• IMO The term itself isn't derogatory - it's a useful description of a precise behavior. The only person to be offended would be ... a mansplainer.
• If the definition is wrong or could be improved we could consider fixing that. I'm not sure that it is wrong enough - in that the words illustrate the point.

It is generally better to use terms that aren't emotionally loaded. I wouldn't have thought this was. I guess we'd take a PR/

[estelle]

"Mansplaining" as a term is not derogatory, though the behavior is offensive. Similar to "frenemy" - the term is not offensive to define, but the behavior is not pleasant when you realize it is happening to you.

In terms of the other two examples,

1. people have a general idea of what "crowdsource" means but the exact definition is elusive.
2. People don't know what "abliteration" means, but they also don't know what "ablate" means, and "obliteration" is a nuanced term.

Mansplaining is a phenomena that occurs too frequently in our industry. That doesn't make the term offensive. Including the definition in MDN documentation does bring awareness to this behavior. The intention of the inclusion is both to help visitors identify and label the behavior if they are subject to it, while hopefully also helping those prone to offending others to understand that such behaviors are actually offensive.

We can use MDN documentation not only to help people learn how to program but also to help educate our visitors how to be more inclusive and better co-workers.

Closing.