Rename package?

[jradavenport]

Source Extractor is well known as a gold standard for rapid and reliable source extraction within the community. Congrats on its continued success with the Next Gen!

However, it is also well known for being unfortunately named. At best the "sex" joke makes people giggle, but at worst (and I can report hearing this complaint first hand from both senior colleagues and students alike) it makes people very uncomfortable. Can we rename this package to something less offensive?

Why not rename it "Source Extractor" (SE for short?)

[cwwalter]

I would like to support this suggestion. I am a faculty member and have personally seen how this has made young (especially female) students uncomfortable. I now try to make the point to always say "Source Extractor" instead to help with this; but it is really unnecessary.

Since it is early, I think you should consider changing this as soon as possible. I'm sure the community would be supportive of helping you come up with replacement names if you desired it.

[frossie]

I am old enough to remember us pronouncing it ess-extractor (which I may add, is also pedantically correct since the original package is capitalised as SExtractor) which we certainly used to do at Starlink where we distributed the software to the UK community for many years. FWIW I think I only heard the sex-tractor pronounciation after I moved to the US and so I find it jarring for more than the obvious reason.
And FWIW my first thought on seeing this repo was "Really, sextractorXX? want one more X in there??" so that's definitely making thing worse.
I don't like telling anybody what to name their software, but there would be wisdom in reconsidering the name - @cwwalter explains why quite well.

[jradavenport]

I too recall hearing "ess-extractor", and commonly hear it carefully spoken as "Source Extractor" nowadays too.

I also want to emphasize I don't relish finger wagging or telling people how to build and name their tools. My sincere hope is folks will see this issue and think "You know, it's time for a change. If people will enjoy using our software even MORE as a result, so much the better!"

[dkirkby]

I strongly support this proposed renaming.

The machine learning community recently went through a similar process for one of their major annual conferences.

[crosstrainor]

I also support the proposed renaming. Having been a part of two departments (Caltech and Berkeley) that recently had major, public issues with sexual harassment, many of my colleagues and I are recognizing that using even vaguely sexual language creates an uncomfortable environment for our students (and obviously "sex-tractor-xx" is more than vaguely sexual). I would love to share Source Extractor with the next generation of astronomy enthusiasts, but it's hard to do so under the current name!

[HeloiseS]

I also support this.

I understand making a sex joke can be funny at the pub with your mates but this is a professional environment and you don't know how uncomfortable this might make people, men and women alike.

I've had some sweet male friends made very uncomfortable by that name, and let's not forget all the women that have to deal with sexual harassment in the work place.

So can we not?

[christinahedges]

I have used the original, and support changing the name to something more inclusive. When I used this tool in grad school, it didn't feel inclusive, and made a bad impression.

[fedhere]

I support this. I remember it being awkward when I was a grad student bring taught how to use it.

[robminchin]

It was puerile when I was a PhD student, a long time back. In this day and age it's pretty much unacceptable. Please change the name.

[henry-ngo]

I also support this. Source Extractor was one of the first packages I learned to use as an astronomer. It's a great tool and a vital part of our field. Although "SExtractor" is a well known name now, everyone knows what it stands for and the suggested "Source Extractor" will be unambiguously the same product. Because of the tool's success, the name change will likely have very little negative impact in terms of recognition.

I also remember it being very awkward when I learned about this tool as an undergrad, teaching it to myself and also learning how to use Unix and its own set of commands/packages as well. I thought little jokes like "less is more" was funny. But, I wasn't sure if this package requiring me to repeatedly type sex into my terminal was supposed to be funny and if I didn't get the "joke" then that's my fault.

Since then, I have introduced this useful package to undergraduate and graduate students working with me. Every time, especially when it's a student's first exposure to astronomy research, I need to take the time to discuss this package's name and how it does not reflect our community and our collaboration guidelines. This name creates extra discomfort for new (and old) astronomers as well as added labour for experienced astronomers training new astronomers.

[lacalaca85]

Fully supporting this. If you have to spend conscious effort NOT to draw attention to the pun when introducing this package to undergrads or grad students, it's not worth it anymore. And yes, having "SEx" in the name is less funny as one would assume at first.
Going from there to a name that sounds like it's explicit 18+ content is... not a direction many of us would take.

[martinjohndyer]

I support renaming as well, or at least keeping the name Source Extractor and changing the abbreviation to SE or SoEx or something less purile.

To be clear, it's not just the fact that Source Extractor is officially called SExtractor and people pronounce that "sex-tractor". Like some of the others above, I've always tried calling it by its full name or pronouncing it "ess-extractor". But the name just encourages an environment I find incredibly off-putting. I never liked writing or talking about .sex files for configuration, is this new version going to use .sexxx? And the worse time was when I had to speak up in a teleconference, with many people much more senior than me, to point out that maybe naming a database column for "number of objects detected by Source Extractor" sex-objects was not a great idea.

That's the sort of behaviour SExtractor encourages, and while the program itself is fantastic the name, as evidenced by everyone replying here, is clearly problematic. This is a perfect time to admit that and come up with something better.

[ayllon]

Hello all,

All your objections are duly noted, and we will follow up internally.
I will lock now the conversation just to avoid a flood of more +1 comments. The point, and its support, stand clear.

[Dubath]

Hello all,

As already acknowledged, we have heard your comments. Our intention was not to offend anyone, nor to make anyone uncomfortable. We have decided to change the name. This will be communicated as soon as we can find another convenient name.

Thanks for your understanding!

[ebertin]

Thank you for your interest in that new package and for voicing your concerns. Let me put aside my feelings and speak as a team.

As Pierre @Dubath already stated, we hear your concern. The whole purpose of this new package is really to encourage the world community to contribute to what is now a more maintainable code base, through plugins and the like. Unlike the original package, renaming the executable and the package to your taste won't cut it. So it would make no sense to impose a name that makes most people unhappy throughout the world just because we once felt differently about it.

We welcome suggestions for a new name in a new issue #137 (please use thumbs to up/downvotes). I hope we can converge to something interesting by the end of next week (Oct 11).
It will obviously require some find and replace in many parts of the code, so please be patient.
Thank you again!

Note: the xx at the end of the link is only because Github does not accept ++ in the name as far as we know, so it is like cxx being used instead of c++.