Strong community support for a bad answer; why?

Question

I recently joined English Language & Usage because I enjoy the topic of English language and have (so far) had positive experiences at other Stack Exchange websites. I also wanted to comment on what I thought was an interesting question:

Gender-neutral alternative to "craftsmanship"?

This title summarises the question well. The answer, I would think, could either dispute the premise of the question or answer it. In other words, this should not have been a controversial question: you can answer the question by either giving examples of words that are gender-neutral or provide reasoning for why "crafstmanship" is gender neutral. Simple!

The accepted answer does a good job of answering the question by providing non gender-specific synonyms, but the most highly voted answer, which received quite an extraordinary number of votes and was posted by a seemingly reputable member of this community, didn't answer the question and didn't provide (sound) reasons for why the premise was false:

Yes, there is: realizing that "craftsmanship" is gender-neutral. People who think it is not should take it up with themselves, not the word.

If I see discrimination where there is none, the root of the problem is myself and not the language. It is also a textbook example of an etymological fallacy.

Craftsmanship implies "man" about as much as woman does.

I interpreted these 3 paragraphs as follows:

1. The OP is irrational and should seek introspection, as he/she is lashing out at a word.
2. The question contains a logical fallacy, and the questioner is the root cause of a perceived problem.
3. The premise of the question is incorrect.

The first paragraph doesn't add any value, and shouldn't really be part of an answer. If the answerer was intending to make the argument that the word craftsmanship is in fact gender-neutral, he or she didn't make the reasons for this clear, and therefore the paragraph really only serves to deride the questioner.

The second paragraph begins with a dubious segway into the topic of discrimination and then makes the assertion that the question contains a fallacy, neither of which address the question.

The last paragraph seems to be a conclusion based on the "arguments" provided.

This is clearly a poor answer. The answer only addresses the question in so far as it claims the question is invalid, but fails even in that regard because it provides no meaningful explanation as to why.

This website is for linguists, etymologists, and serious enthusiasts, so while I can understand that poor answers come up once in a while (stack overflow is by no means immune to this), I was disappointed to see such strong support for this answer, which was provided by a user with a very high rating who is clearly a significant member of this community.

The community clearly accepts this as the correct answer.

Does this answer reflect the views of the community, or did the question just happen to touch a nerve for some members?

Am I incorrect in my interpretations of the answer and my view that it fails to address the question?

Answer 1

The question apparently hit the network-wide superconducting multicollider, which pulls in drive-by voters from all SE sites everywhere. It is therefore possible that most of those votes were not actually from regular members of the active ELU community.

However, all SE sites’ have postings whose votes totals can seem disproportionately high. There are some truly mystifying examples of one-liners garnering votes far beyond what one would imagine. Some of these high-scoring ELU postings “make sense”, but many of them do not.

Everybody has their own reasons for voting as they do. You should not expect this to always “make sense”. Short, simple postings that are easily digested are always going to draw votes quicker than things that require work to read through; it’s just how people are. Consider this question or this answer. Does that seem sensible? Furthermore, joke postings have always been an issue.

Although we can really never know why this one has skyrocketed, I would not be surprised if the votes came from people strongly agreeing with the sentiments expressed by the poster. You will notice that it has as many downvotes as the OP-selected answer has.

However, I do think that you are coming down too hard on that answer. It is not a bad answer, and it is not derisive that I can see.

It’s perfectly germane to point out that a word’s origins are irrelevant to its currently understood meaning, and that it is a fallacy to believe they do matter. They don’t.

As far as I can see, the answer is correct, because craftsmanship really is no more a gendered term than manikin is, whatever their origins. We don’t need a new word for manikins in store windows sporting women’s lingerie, either, and it is a fallacy to think that we somehow ought to do that. A manikin is just manikin; it is not a man any longer, not even a wee one.

That’s the sort of thing that leads to nonsense like forbidding the use of alternate or between for more than two choices, or avoiding inculcate or connotation because they might appear to contain a somewhat rude word-element (well, if French) inside them, or being afraid to use seminal for ideas unrelated to procreation.

Nobody expects unmanned drones to be carrying women in them, either. A “gay-rights” campaign against the Canadian practice of buying homo milk would be similarly misguided, just as one driven by a bunch of troglodytes to rename the genus of Homo sapiens to something more all-inclusive of women like Pan sapiens would be.

Those all sound silly. Or at least, I sure hope they do.

All this over-sensitivity about non-existent issues smacks of political correctness gone mad, like people are just looking for something to complain about. It’s just like how insisting on the ungainly monster-construct “he/she” instead of the more natural they is bound to annoy people. Quite a lot of people are fed up with all that bother, you see, and for a very simple reason: because being told how you can or cannot talk really rubs people the wrong way!

This is especially galling when it’s making stuff out of thin air as appears to be the case here, but even if it weren’t, it would still vex.

Eventually, there’s going to be push-back in response to these teapot tempests about in-words and out-words. It rankles. Perhaps that’s why so many voted that answer up, because they are tired of being rankled by such silly-in-their-eyes hassles, and they see that posting as speaking to that matter.

Maybe.

In the final analysis, we cannot know why that answer got the votes it got, but it does not matter that we cannot know why. These things always happen, and there is no reason to get upset over them. All SE sites have similar issues — or non-issues, as the case may be.

Answer 2

I agree with tchrist said in regards to why the answer has so many upvotes, especially this bit:

I would not be surprised if the votes came from people strongly agreeing with the sentiments expressed by the poster.

Which is to say: I believe that it is so highly upvoted because, even though the website itself is for linguists, etymologists, and serious enthusiasts, users have all sorts of backgrounds. This answer is not being upvoted for its merit as an answer, it's being upvoted because it addresses the question asked for its perceived intentions, rather than answering it.

To be more specific: the answer presumes that the question has a hidden political agenda (which I also fail to find). And the user answering has a clear problem with the political agenda they perceive, whether or not it is there. And so does the SE community.

In support of this theory, I offer that tchrist's answer makes, more openly, the same assumption:

All this over-sensitivity about non-existent issues smacks of political correctness gone mad, like people are just looking for something to complain about (…) being told how you can or cannot talk really rubs people the wrong way!

This is especially galling when it’s making stuff out of thin air as appears to be the case here, but even if it weren’t, it would still vex.

Let's roll the clock back a bit. The question at hand is:

It's straightforward to refer to a "craftsperson" instead of a "craftsman" if one doesn't want to imply a gender. But "craftspersonship", "sportspersonship", and the like seem pretty cumbersome. Is there a more elegant alternative?

I fail to see anything accusatory in it, it's not proposing that this word be banned or that people use a different one and it's not complaining about anything. So I also fail to see why tchrist thinks it "smacks of political correctness gone mad".

I agree entirely with your interpretation of the answer. It is derisive in presuming that the person wants a gender-neutral alternative because they feel "craftsmanship" is not gender-neutral on its own. It bashes at people who disagree with his view ("People who think it is not should take it up with themselves, not the word"). It assumes the poster "sees discrimination where there is none", while none of this is said in the question.

The answer ignores completely the question and addresses what the user who offered it thinks the context is. They don't care if the author of the question wanted a word that a feminist character in a book might prefer. They are more interested in lashing out on people who might prefer it for political reasons.

In fact, the answer is ridiculous if you ignore the political agenda it forces on the question. The question doesn't even explicitly state that "craftsmanship" is not gender-neutral, it merely asks for an alternative that is. While the use of the word "alternative" might arguably imply this, that is not explicitly written anywhere, and there's no other reason to assume the user who made the question thinks that way.

In a different SE community, such as the cooking one, it might have gone as this:

Vegetarian alternative for margarine?

It's straightforward to use margarine instead of butter if one doesn't want to consume animal products. But for frying, risotto and the like, margarine doesn't add to the flavour. Is there a more flavourful alternative?

And the answer in question would be:

Yes, there is: realizing that margarine is vegetarian. People who think it is not should take it up with themselves, not the food.

If I see animal products where there is none, the root of the problem is myself and not the food. It is also a textbook example of not reading the label.

Margarine has animal products about as much as lettuce does.

I hope this parody sounds absurd, because this is exactly the level of absurdity I see in the answer posted.

In my opinion, even putting aside the unnecessary aggressiveness, the answer is still very poor. It fails to answer the question (as it doesn't present an alternative) and doesn't provide any form of justification for the opinion presented. It would be perfectly fine to answer something like:

According to the Oxford dictionary, the word "artisanship" conveys the same meaning as "craftsmanship". Please note, however, that even though "craftsmanship" doesn't appear to be gender-neutral, it in fact is, according to [insert reference here].

The unprovoked aggressiveness of the answer, the unwavering support for it, despite the utter lack of quality (no matter whatever merits the user who posted it has) and the dimension of the reaction to this question lead me to one conclusion: none of this has nothing to do with the question. The question itself is, paraphrasing a comment, the windmill that several senile Spanish knights were looking for in this website.

I would also paraphrase the infamous answer by saying that there is nothing in the question that justifies such extreme reactions. People who think there is should take it up with themselves, not the question. If one sees political agenda where there is none, the problem is in oneself.

I will, however, do no such paraphrase, as I haven't amassed enough internet-kudos to make this type of outburst acceptable.

Answer 3

There have been many responses to the question and I think it makes the most sense for me to try to collate them somehow, rather than picking a single answer. I'm reluctant to hijack my own question like this but unless someone comes up with an objective review I don't think it makes sense for me to accept the other answers.

I had initially chosen tchrist's answer because it did address my question, but it also contained some the same emotional digressions that prompted me to write this post in the first place. Given the strong response to my post I think this page deserves a more complete answer.

Let's start with (a summary of) the original question:

What is a gender-neutral alternative to craftsmanship?

There are at least 2 ways to read this question:

1. "What is a gender-neutral alternative to craftsmanship?"
2. "Saying craftsmanship is sexist, what's a non-sexist word?"

Obviously these are extremes; the first is a cold literal reading and the second is a disproportionate response that could not have been made by an objective individual. There is a spectrum between these two interpretations and as human beings it seems we are unable to separate emotional inference from the words we see on a page. Those who read the words closer to 2) might have further inferred intention and interpreted this question as something along the lines of:

I wish to impose upon you a non-sexist version of craftsmanship. What word should I use?

When I read the question like this, it makes much more sense why it received the kind of response it did. With this paraphrase of the original question in mind, let's look at the winning answer again:

...[realize] that "craftsmanship" is gender-neutral. People who think it is not should take it up with themselves, not the word.

If I see discrimination where there is none, the root of the problem is myself and not the language. It is also a textbook example of an etymological fallacy.

Craftsmanship implies "man" about as much as woman does.

I was initially baffled by this response, but if we read it in the context of my paraphrased question, it makes sense.

If the original question was an unnecessary attack on our right to use our language freely, I too might have been inclined to respond like this!

If you are still not convinced, here is an excerpt from tchrist's response to my question:

All this over-sensitivity about non-existent issues smacks of political correctness gone mad, like people are just looking for something to complain about

This is another example of a response that is not really a response to the question (mine nor the original question), but a response to a perceived attack or infringement of rights.

I do not think I've taken this line out of context, as there is no mention in that post of this over-sensitivity being only perceived or inferred. He seems to be quite adamantly claiming that such over-sensitivity is real and that the questioner was erroneously propagating such an idea.

If we put down our argument sticks for a minute and accept, for better or worse, that the original question was in fact viewed through a lens from which the literal meaning of the question is skewed, then these responses begin to make sense. The ensuing arguments are then simply the result of a disconnect in perception; one side was defending itself against an attack on liberty, and the other against an attack of bigotry.

Both of these are noble goals which are not all mutually exclusive. Had this difference in perception been communicated there would likely never have been a conflict, or at least a far milder one. I think we have to view the discussion in this light if we genuinely want to understand and learn from the reactions to the original question.

The strong community support is likely to have been in a similar vein. As tchrist pointed out, the question hit the "network-wide superconducting multicollider" and the answer might therefore have benefited from upvotes as new members with only the association bonus didn't have enough reputation to downvote the answer.

Having read through the comments and answers here and on the original question, I think that this is at least a rough description of what happened. I can't of course know what everyone involved really thought. At the end of the day, we're emotional creatures, and my argument that the answer was objectively a poor one was perhaps missing the point as much as those who upvoted the answer in the first place!

This has been a wonderful learning experience for me. I think I could spend years learning about what happened here, how it would have gone differently among different cultures, and what analogues of this scenario manifest in the various conflicts we engage in on a daily basis.

If I were Cai (the poster of the original question), and knowing what I have learnt over the last few days, I would have phrased the question in the following way:

Without discussing whether or not craftsmanship is a gender-specific term, and disregarding any etymological arguments one way or the other, could you suggest a synonym that is less likely to be inferred as having a gender-specific connotation?

I believe that such a phrasing of the question would have had a greater chance of garnering the desired responses, and might have pre-emptively disarmed some of the commentary we have seen.

Answer 4

Strong community support for a bad answer; why?

Because it was a bad question; at least poorly worded. And for whatever reason users decided to upvote the throw this in your face answer instead of downvoting the question or suggesting an edit. Don't y'all get so pissed when your next question is "Closed because it's unclear what you're asking". This is the result of moderator failure and a community bandwagon event; when the cat's away...

I agree with (TLDR- whoever said it) that the OQ should be deleted or fixed as I have also suggested in a comment there: (It is an embarrassment to SE)

This entire page is garbage until the question is altered to ask whether or not 'craftsmanship' is gender-neutral, or unless changed into a single word request and thereby deleting answers that don't provide one; cleaning up this non-applicable NOISE.

Answer 5

TL;DR. I have read the original question and the answer it complained about; that's all. I have certainly not tried to follow all the text on this page. The resultant huhu illustrates a topic we don't really discuss here much -- what to do with false presuppositions. We do about as well as we could expect with linguistic nonsense, I think.

But non-linguistic nonsense, like sexism and racism and political lies, are trickier, since not everyone has the same standards for what's tasty and what's not.

In this case, as pointed out, the question's presupposition was not only false but also offensive to some, and offense was obviously taken. The likelihood of such interactions is one of the reasons we don't discuss these topics. It's easy to distract people.

This answer is not a solution to the problem; nor does it answer the original question, nor this question. But the problem won't go away, and it should not remain unremarked.

Answer 6

As I already pointed out on the question, the situation is extremely simple:

(1) undeniably, each of the five sentences in the answer at hand, is just a political rant against "non-sexed language".

Note that, and this isn't relevant, I personally am completely opposed to the 'non-sexed-language' movement!!!!!! But the situation couldn't be simpler. "Given" the 'non-sexed-language' movement, the question asks a very specific, technical, clear question about a particular word.

(2) In answer to the question posed here

(i) Voting on the ELU site, in particular, is often nuts

(ii) In spite of the absurdist facade of "referenced! encyclopaedic!" answers, voting on all network sites is, often, essentially political.

Funnily enough here we have a couple hundred right-wingers expressing their dislike of the 'non-sexed-language' movement with a vote -- typically it's more the left-wing that crowd votes en masse here.

Please note (OP) that I already marked the answer in question for deletion, since, it should be deleted.

Obviously, on this site the mods just delete any comments they don't like, so this has all been wiped clear on the QA in question.

---

Regarding the sort of pure nonsense the debate on this questionhas provoked, I need only paste in my comment from above:

"Sometimes the right answer is that the question is wrong. This is one of those times."

What a load of nonsense. A non-sexed version of "craftsmanship" could not be a more obvious, clear, good, question in the "non-sexed language" field. Note that indeed a number of sensible solutions were discussed. Any number of eg web sites that ALREADY USE NON-SEXED VERSIONS of this word were brought up! You cannot seriously be suggesting the same question featuring say "chairman" would be "not a question". Give me a break.

---

Here's another example from anotherwise hugely intelligent and astute contributor:

"because craftsmanship really is no more a gendered term than manikin is"

What? OF COURSE "manikin", and "history" ("herstory"!) is a word that is considered and alternatives sought, by the 'non-sexed-language' movement.

Again where is this "obvious" line drawn? Of course obviously "craftsman" would be OK to non-sex but "craftsmanship", not OK to non-sex. How silly.

As someone very astute pointed out in the comments, (in an entrely separate "political language debate") even "niggardly" is treated with great care in the USA, since, (purely "accidentally") it could cause problems.

Good grief.