From: Florine W. Dekker <florine@fwdekker.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2022 16:59:23 GMT
Subject: Re: Wildcards in mailmap to hide transgender people's deadnames
Message-ID: <045e7914-ab16-4d5e-ea9d-8e3c7c758fff@fwdekker.com>
In-Reply-To: <CANgJU+Wt_yjv1phwiSUtLLZ=JKA9LvS=0UcBYNu+nxdJ_7d_Ew@mail.gmail.com>

On 14/09/2022 11:58, demerphq wrote:
> Yes. The way that git models identity is flawed as it makes the 
> mistake in assuming names are constant attributes of a person. Of 
> course this is not true at all, people change names for all kinds of 
> reasons and in some countries close to half the population will change 
> their name over the course of their lifetime at least once, when they 
> marry. So this is not some woke issue, it's a long standing issue in 
> how men traditionally model identity in software systems. I'm a man 
> and I've made that mistake myself, it's a common blindspot.
>
> Git really should use some level of non cleartext indirection on 
> identity, and store that data outside of the change log. Then history 
> wouldn't need to be written to update someone's particulars and many 
> identity concerns would just go away.
>
> Arguably .mailmap is just a workaround for the mismatch between model 
> and reality and doesnt really solve the problems of names changing and 
> actually makes it worse. Really this should be fixed at a deeper 
> level. The trick I guess is how would one do that in a back compatible 
> way.
>
> Yves

I understand what you mean, and agree that mailmap is just a workaround 
for this issue, having been designed to unify a user's multiple 
identifiers, rather than helping move on from a now-invalid identifier. 
Being completely new to this mailing list, however, I feel that solving 
the issues you raise might be a might much for me to take on.

Instead, for now, I'm interested to see what we can do with mailmap as a 
workaround. I like the idea of using URL encoding, and would like to 
hear others' opinions on doing so. I think it provides a social signal 
on its obfuscated state, it prevents people from accidentally finding 
out, and is easy and efficient to execute.

- Florine