On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 05:30:14AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > On Wed, 16 Jun 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > > Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > > > I suggested in [1] that the "alice" and "bob" examples in our > > > documentation would be better written without a reference to such > > > fictional characters, for reasons that have nothing to do with trying > > > to bend over backwards to avoid any reference to people's gender. It > > > just makes for better documentation. > > > > I actually do not mind cast of characters with concrete names, > > especially when there are more than three parties involved and > > having names for them help clarify the description. But I agree > > with you that Alice and Bob should be reserved for situations where > > appearance of Eve would reasonably be anticipated, or the use of > > these two names become distracting to those who happen to be aware > > how these characters are often used in CS literature. > > > > Perhaps s/Alice/Tabby/ and s/Bob/Fido/ or something like that ;-)? > > i look forward to the renaming of "git" to something more innocuous > and palatable because, somewhere, someone could conceivably, > hypothetically, theoretically take exception to it. > > seriously, can we start a second mailing list where people want to > talk about, you know, version control? Can you please tone down your responses a bit? One of the points under discussion here is whether those names end up being confusing to users because of their use in other places (like cryptographic examples). And I think the comprehensibility of our documentation is quite relevant to the project. But even if this were done purely for reasons of gender-neutrality, I still think your response is inappropriate. You are quite welcome to argue against such a change, but snarky or dismissive responses aren't welcome. (I'm referring to the last paragraph of your other response in this thread, too. I did find the wikipedia link you sent earlier helpful to the discussion, and personally I don't find the names confusing at all, for the reasons it mentioned. But that may not be universal). -Peff
