GND, are we gender yet?

A bot to monitor the German National Library’s GND gender vocabulary and check whether any new concepts have been added. Can post updates to Bluesky and Mastodon.

Why?

The German National Library (DNB) currently limits gender identities to only female and male in their controlled vocabulary, with a third option for “not known”. This bot runs daily and checks for any additions to this vocabulary.

How it works

• Fetches the GND gender vocabulary RDF file
• Checks for any concepts beyond female, male, and “not known”
• Posts result to Bluesky and/or Mastodon
• Runs daily via GitHub Actions

Installation

This project is packaged as a Nix flake. You can run the application using:

nix run github:v-ji/gnd-gender -- --help

If you do not have flakes enabled, you must use:

nix run --extra-experimental-features "flakes nix-command" github:v-ji/gnd-gender -- --help

Note

When using nix run, any arguments you want to pass to the application must come after --.

If you would rather call the application by its command gnd-gender, you can enter a Nix shell:

nix shell github:v-ji/gnd-gender
gnd-gender --help

Authentication

To authenticate with Bluesky and enable posting, set the following environment variables:

Bluesky

• ATPROTO_HANDLE: Bluesky handle
• ATPROTO_PASSWORD: Bluesky app password

Mastodon

• MASTODON_API_BASE_URL: Base URL of your Mastodon instance
• MASTODON_CLIENT_ID: Mastodon client ID
• MASTODON_CLIENT_SECRET: Mastodon client secret
• MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN: Mastodon access token

Usage

usage: gnd-gender [-h] [--platform [{bluesky,mastodon} ...]]
                  [--filter [{positive,negative} ...]] [--dry-run]

Check GND gender vocabulary and post to Bluesky and/or Mastodon

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --platform [{bluesky,mastodon} ...]
                        Specify the platform to post to: Bluesky, Mastodon
                        (default: None)
  --filter [{positive,negative} ...]
                        Filter outcomes to post on: positive (changes
                        detected) or negative (no changes detected) (default:
                        Post on both positive and negative outcomes)
  --dry-run             Only authenticate and fetch data, but do not post.
                        Useful for testing authentication

Notes

Use --platform to specify whether to post to Bluesky, Mastodon, both or none. Specifying no platform can be useful if you only want to check for changes without posting.

The --filter option allows the bot to check for changes every hour without flooding the feed with “No.” posts. It posts any updates once a day without filter and only positive updates hourly with --filter positive.

The script exits with code 0 if no changes are detected, and with code 99 if new concepts are found.