Request for adding more genders

[anewrecruit 0]

Please add more selectable genders in account setting, for example, I need to choose "non-binary" or at least a gender alternative than male/female, but there is no such a selection. The only one I see is "not telling" (or blank). 

[Tech Jedi Alex 1522]

The gender is a more or less unnecessary piece of information around here. Even if you wanted to provide your pronouns, no one would be able to see this preference when replying in a thread. It's not in the quick info dialog when hovering over the poster's name, and by default profiles are inaccessable to all, so no one would be able to see that info in the first place. You could use the Location field to enter those, it's visible directly under your name, but that'd be displayed with a Location label, see the example on the left under my name (and compare it with how I formatted it in the profile).

You must also be advised that this version on IP.Board comes from a different internet era altogether (~10 years ago, I believe), one that didn't have the custom of providing pronouns, or having a variety of genders to identify as.

So, you may treat Not telling simply as virtually equivalent to non-binary.

[flat4 94]

this is actually a post.......

Ich bin ein Berliner

[dIecbasC 39]

On 11/24/2025 at 8:34 AM, Tech Jedi Alex said:

So, you may treat Not telling simply as virtually equivalent to non-binary.

This logic isn't sound. 'Not telling' is not the same as identifying as non-binary. As unimportant as this might be to you and I, for some folks including the OP, this is an important differentiation and your statement risks trivialising what is an important data point for some.
 

[Tech Jedi Alex 1522]

18 hours ago, dIecbasC said:

This logic isn't sound. 'Not telling' is not the same as identifying as non-binary. As unimportant as this might be to you and I, for some folks including the OP, this is an important differentiation and your statement risks trivialising what is an important data point for some.

The logic becomes sound once you take into account everything else I wrote before that sentence, and I sincerely hope that everyone reads posts for the purpose of understanding the gist of them, not for the sake of rebuking every line written.

The gender is, and I reiterate, a more or less unimportant piece of information around here, here being the forums dedicated to AirVPN products and everything related to them or the wider area of topics related to VPNs. Plus, as written, this piece of info is invisible to the whole community when set. When the purpose of that info is for the user to be referred to correctly, it doesn't help that user here if it's not seen by anyone. So the choice of whether I set it to "Non-binary" or "Not telling" doesn't matter in the context of these forums if the outcome – no one will see it, anyway – is the same.

If we talked about a context outside of the current environment, then yes, of course, having more choices is a valid request. But as the software does not provide that option, Not telling seems to be the closest thing to Non-binary. The other choices are binary, after all.

[anewrecruit 0]

16 hours ago, Tech Jedi Alex said:

The logic becomes sound once you take into account everything else I wrote before that sentence, and I sincerely hope that everyone reads posts for the purpose of understanding the gist of them, not for the sake of rebuking every line written.

The gender is, and I reiterate, a more or less unimportant piece of information around here, here being the forums dedicated to AirVPN products and everything related to them or the wider area of topics related to VPNs. Plus, as written, this piece of info is invisible to the whole community when set. When the purpose of that info is for the user to be referred to correctly, it doesn't help that user here if it's not seen by anyone. So the choice of whether I set it to "Non-binary" or "Not telling" doesn't matter in the context of these forums if the outcome – no one will see it, anyway – is the same.

If we talked about a context outside of the current environment, then yes, of course, having more choices is a valid request. But as the software does not provide that option, Not telling seems to be the closest thing to Non-binary. The other choices are binary, after all.

Yes you are correct that this is a technical forum and the VPN problems are matter more. But if that so, why do they provide the choice and also the birthday one? If they provided them, please add alternative options, or just delete this system.

[Tech Jedi Alex 1522]

21 hours ago, anewrecruit said:

But if that so, why do they provide the choice and also the birthday one?

That's because the AirVPN team didn't write a forums software from scratch, they picked an existing software and adapted it to the special needs of their infrastructure. A gender field in users' profiles is not a special need, given that 98% of people around here don't bother changing profile settings, let alone edit their profile.
IP.Board is a "generic" forums software which can be used in many environments. In some of them contact info, birthdays and genders make sense. In some of them, including airvpn.org, they don't.

[anewrecruit 0]

On 11/28/2025 at 6:28 PM, Tech Jedi Alex said:

That's because the AirVPN team didn't write a forums software from scratch, they picked an existing software and adapted it to the special needs of their infrastructure. A gender field in users' profiles is not a special need, given that 98% of people around here don't bother changing profile settings, let alone edit their profile.
IP.Board is a "generic" forums software which can be used in many environments. In some of them contact info, birthdays and genders make sense. In some of them, including airvpn.org, they don't.

Stop making excuses for your homophobia ideas. The 2% of people should ignore this because you're a part of another 98%? Let me ask, how about add one more selection, "Race: White, Non-White, not telling"?

[Tech Jedi Alex 1522]

On 11/29/2025 at 3:01 PM, anewrecruit said:

Stop making excuses for your homophobia ideas. The 2% of people should ignore this because you're a part of another 98%? Let me ask, how about add one more selection, "Race: White, Non-White, not telling"?

You are making absolutely zero sense with that comparison. It's 98% of people who don't bother changing profile settings. Which also means, 98% of profiles will be hidden, as the default visibility setting of the profile is Hide for all.
Now, you could, of course, change that setting for you yourself, open up to the community, and provide that info, especially to explicitly provide your gender as to foster correct referrals to your person. I sincerely believe, that's what this is all about: Reducing the risk of hurting someone in a conversation.

But, let's explore this situation a little. Suppose someone wants to find out how to refer to some other poster around here. First hurdle: 98% of profiles are hidden. Means, one in fifty is open. So the profile is clicked to find out "so, do I say him, do I say them?" and, oh darn, hidden profile. Then that person answers another person, clicks the profile, oh darn, hidden again. And a third, hidden. And a fourth, hidden.
That person quickly learns: "Why bother, all the profiles are hidden, anyway", and defaults to "he", "he/she" or "them". Or even "per".  So even if you sincerely wanted to do so, correctly referring to another person without the chance of having the necessary info left of every post gets tedious and downright impossible to do with all the profiles being hidden. Hence why the gender info might provide the choices for many genders, but what's the point if no one can look at it?
Even if one of those profiles was opened, it doesn't mean all the fields were filled. The probability of finding a correct pronoun for referral gets even lower.

As I wrote, we are here for discussions around AirVPN and VPN technology in general (actually, tech support for AirVPN), with some related topics around it. It would be a first for me to find out that gender is important in discussions about VPN tech. You are right that, in the past, I mostly defaulted to the masculine form when referring to any one poster (I prepended a Mr. to every username when referring to that user) but am shifting to @ mentions instead, those are neutral and even cause notifications. That's probably the most scandalous thing in regard to genders one can accuse me of. Homophobia… just really isn't.

And, please, do not start the race thing. There is a good, tangible reason to publish pronouns. There is absolutely no reason to publish race, so it's incomparable.

A little bit of warning: I will move this discussion to off-topic as, while it refers to the forums software of AirVPN, it does not relate to AirVPN tech directly. Don't think anything bad about the move, it is not an attempt to silence you. Simple moderator chore: Every post to the correct subforum.
I am futhermore happy to continue discussing this matter with you (and everyone may join, I might add). But, should your tone of discussion not shift to be more constructive, with less baseless slander against any one person here, I'm putting a warning point on the table. This will come with being put on moderator queue which will see all your posts being screened before publication (as is actually the case right now as you're a new poster). Thank your for your understanding in this matter, and to a good, fruitful discussion. 🍷

[ASiC666 0]

On 11/29/2025 at 2:01 PM, anewrecruit said:

On 11/28/2025 at 10:28 AM, Tech Jedi Alex said:

 

Stop making excuses for your homophobia ideas. The 2% of people should ignore this because you're a part of another 98%? Let me ask, how about add one more selection, "Race: White, Non-White, not telling"?

And this is exactly how you loose the argument: throwing the toys out of the pram and start calling people you do not even know *phobes *ists etc when someone does not echo your personal believes back to you.
When you ask people to be open minded and susceptible to new ideas and views, you should have at least the common courtesy to do the same.

To the idea of having more genders, races etc on a VPN site, I would argue that this might be a giveaway of someone's personal identity.
My feeling is that you want everybody around you to be aware of gender identity which might be tracked back to your actual id; not a smart move I might say...
 

[flat4 94]

🙄