The main dev of Mastodon is not American. Toot just means the noise that is made with a trunk, like tweet is supposed to be the same for birds. It's only in the U.S. that 'toot' is some kind of synonym of 'fart' or whatever and I'm honestly tired of Americans imposing their own cultural thinking on everything, instead of trying to actually understand it. The majority of people do not live in the U.S.
It's not just the U.S. I'm from Australia and it's the same here. I would imagine it's also like that in other countries.
In any case, even just considering the US market, it's clearly a very large and important one for any software system. And, what a word means there has nothing to do with Americans imposing things on others.
Why is nicknaming Richard as Dick ok, but toot isn't? Seems way more offensive to me.
I hate cockroaches and yet have deployed CockroachDB in production. The insistence on being puritan seems shallow to me, considering the real problems this world is facing, but to each their own.
In the context when you're clearly referring to a person, it's clear the meaning is "Richard". It's common for words to have multiple meanings and it's easy to navigate those from the context. With "toots" as a verb describing what someone does "Joe tooted about his plans", for many people, the meaning of that word in such a context would normally mean that bodily function. So the difference is in the kind of context-sensitive meaning that comes to mind.
> In the context when you're clearly referring to a person, it's clear the meaning is "Richard".
It's not anymore clear than toot - if I say, "Hey Dick", it might be the insult depending on the context. Now it's unlikely to be if the name is Richard, but since you can't really fart about stuff, it's unlikely that you're farting about your plans.
Ever wonder why "git" isn't very objectionable? Because it is an obscure British insult, not an American one.
In every one of those cases the context makes the meaning clear.
Nobody uses the phrasing "Hey Dick" for the insult. That would be either "Hey, you dick", or "Hey" followed by a long pause and then "Dick".
"Git" -- as a name for the software -- is unobjectionable because it's obviously not calling anyone a git. The term "git" by itself isn't offensive.
All very different from saying that someone tooted, or referring to their toots.
Even if it's "Richard tooted about politics" the thing is that the only prexisting use of the verb "tooted" that applies to a person is the bodily function, so that association is always going to come up -- and remember also that for Mastodon to grow it has to bring in new people who are not familiar with it or its terminology, and first impressions are important.
Nobody is imposing anything, but I don't think publishing something that about half a billion people would read as "I just farted about history of labor relations in 19th century UK" is a very bright idea. The majority of people indeed do not live in the US, but a lot of people do, and even more people share enough of cultural context to know what the meanings of "toot" are to completely overshadow any original intent. If the word has several meanings and one of them is bad, that's the one people would remember.
If I were targeting a global audience, I would still avoid words that are completely benign in the US like "bloody" and "fanny". It's just common sense to make your language more globally accessible.
