Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Joseph Touch <touch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jul 23, 2020, at 9:13 PM, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 24-Jul-20 15:45, Joe Touch wrote:

On Jul 23, 2020, at 7:34 PM, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Master" on its own is here to stay, anyway; in some contexts the proposed alternatives (like "main") simply don't work.

I have no idea why you could claim one works and the other does not.  

Master of what?

There may be better alternatives, such as canonical.

"Canonical" applies in some circumstances but not always. You can sometimes use a
complicated formulation like "Authoritative server". But if you need to convey that
the entity in question gives instructions to other entities, any word you choose
will be synonymous with "master".

Not in all senses; it is a few senses we’re trying to avoid.

Commander, leader, etc. all work - and don’t have the same problems.

Either we - as a community - care about using such words or we don’t. 

But “master” isn’t a unicorn word.

It's very common word with multiple meanings and applications.

Although I agree we can’t avoid using the quoted term “IEEE 1588 Best Master Clock Algorithm”, we don’t need to use the term master beyond that sort of direct quote. “Master” on its own need not be here to stay. Words come and words go. It’s OK for us to choose to use other words except when citing legacy or external names.

In this case, it’s actually a poor choice anyway. Leader/follower is more accurate in this example anyway for many reasons (better aligns to multiple levels of the relation, better aligns to the sense in which each party participates, etc.).

But then this is what the doc could help with - providing useful and often more accurate alternatives.

Joe