Hi,
This is the most sensible email on this thread.
Yours Irrespectively,
John
Juniper Business Use Only
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Nico Williams
> Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2020 11:55 AM
> To: John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language
>
> [External Email. Be cautious of content]
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 12:59:36AM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
> > (2) Creation of a dictionary of bad words (even to the extent that the
> > I-D does it) is unlikely to be satisfactory, especially if, in
> > practice, it devolves into "anything not forbidden by the list is
> > allowed". Encouraging some group of people to participate in the IETF
> > by playing enforcers of cultural norms (whether as "language police"
> > or otherwise) or in the form of a WG is unlikely to work out well for
> > either the IETF or the portions of the Internet that we are supposedly
> > trying to make better... and the people who depend on our work.
>
> Yes. The way to enforce reasonable language is to review for it as empathetic
> adults rather than with a list of verboten words, and to raise and discuss any
> issues with document authors. This would be (is) much broader and effective
> than a list of verboten words. And the group involved in enforcing this rule is the
> entire community (rather than a special group of "enforcers"), starting with
> editors/co-authors, WG/RG participants, shepherds, responsible ADs, the
> IETF/IRTF (e.g., during IETF LC), the I* leadership, the RPC, and the RFC-Editor.
>
> BTW, regarding {color}lists, we generally refer to "local policy" in RFCs, not to
> specific implementation designs for local policy. I've checked my cache of RFCs
> I frequently check and there are many many more hits for 'local policy' than
> '(white|black)(-| |)?list', and many more hits for 'master' than 'slave' (only NTP
> and DNS in my cache refer to 'slave'). There are also more instances of 'primary'
> than 'master', and 'replica' than 'slave'. I can happily say that none of my RFCs
> (unless I've somehow failed to cache some of them) use offensive language.. My
> cache is fairly small though. A more complete analysis of Internet RFCs' use of
> problematic language would be useful.
>
> Speaking of which, I don't see in draft-knodel-terminology anything like a survey
> or performed a survey of RFCs, current I-Ds, and maybe even expired I-Ds, of
> how many instances of offensive language appears in them, and even the
> frequency of offensive language as a function of publication/submission year.
>
> It would seem that evidence in this matter is important. Evidence of our having
> a problem would help drive faster adoption of better solutions. Conversely, lack
> of evidence, or even evidence that we don't have a problem, would help us
> quickly dispose of solutions to non- problems.
>
> > (3) We are an international community with aspirations to be
> > even more so. That may imply that a term or acronym that is
> > neutral or otherwise acceptable in English may be offensive,
> > oppressive, or exclusionary when translated or transliterated into
> > another language. We should probably be aware of that too.
>
> There are limits to how sensitive we can be to issues we're not aware of. I.e.,
> we depend on reviewers to tell us about the issues they are aware of. Which
> brings us back to your point about banned word lists not possibly being
> sufficient.
>
> Nico
> --
