Raising my opinion as well. As a Swedish person, I've always
associated whitelists as a list of things you can see, since white is
bright.
Likewise for blacklists as something in the darkness that you cannot see.
I personally would use the same connotation as the project I'm writing about.
If I'm writing about Redis I will write about master-replica.
Likewise if I'm writing about something that uses whitelist/blacklist
wording, I will use that as well.
Using a different connotation than is documented is just confusing.
I wouldn't edit the Fedora Magazine article either, even though
allowlist/denylist 100% makes more sense in firewalld the article
talks about it as a problem and proposes a solution - their
firewalld-blacklist package.
If it was to be edited across the article to mention denylist instead,
and in the end link to a firewalld-blacklist package they created, one
would be confused as to why it was coded with one word and released
with a different one.
I would vote for discouraging master/slave, and blacklist/whitelist as
long as it makes sense and doesn't take away any meaning that needs to
be explained.
Having a style guide sounds great, I'm presuming something like
codespell can correct custom words as well like RedHat,
NetworkManager, fedora, etc.
Eric Gustavsson, RHCSA
He/Him/His
Software Engineer
Red Hat
IM: Telegram: @SpyTec
E1FE 044A E0DE 127D CBCA E7C7 BD1B 8DF2 C5A1 5384
On Tue, 23 Jun 2020 at 23:03, Paul Frields <stickster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 4:35 PM Ben Cotton <bcotton@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Several comments on yesterday's fail2ban article[1], as well as some
> > internal Red Hat mailing list traffic, raised concern with the use of
> > the word "blacklist". While the etymology of the term is not racist,
> > there are reasonable arguments to be made that it can contribute to
> > unconscious bias. Its meaning is also less obvious than alternatives
> > like "block list".
> >
> > So there are two questions here:
> >
> > 1. Should we discourage the use of whitelist and blacklist in Fedora
> > Magazine in favor of alternatives like "allow list" and "block
> > list"/"deny list"?
>
> Yes.
>
> > 2. Should we start developing a style guide that addresses this and
> > other issues (e.g. the style of projects like "NetworkManager" (not
> > "Network Manager") and other things both malign and benign (like using
> > the words "simple" or "just") that a style guide normally covers)?
>
> Yes.
>
> > I am in favor of both of the above.
> >
> > For anyone who is interested, I learned today that the latest update
> > to the codespell package (currently in testing[2]) can flag some of
> > these issues:
> > codespell --builtin clear,rare,usage <filename>
>
> I had no idea this exists and that's awesome.
>
> Frankly, 'allowlist'/'denylist' makes way more sense anyway. It
> doesn't force people using some other languages to figure out a weird
> etymology. And it has precedent (/etc/hosts.{allow,deny}).
>
> Can we fix the article that's out there now?
>
> --
> Paul
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