On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 10:25:01PM +0200, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> I have a heck of respect for survivors of thought controlling
> dictatorships, so I’m not asking this lightly:
>
> What are you talking about?
Well, I'm talking about top-down expectations of language conformity.
> In the years leading up to the chartering of this working group, there has been
> discussion in the IETF, in other standards organizations, and in the technology
> industry about the use of certain terms (such as "master/slave" and
> "blacklist/whitelist") in technical documentation and whether those and other
> terms have effects on inclusivity. While opinions vary among IETF participants
> about this topic, there is general agreement that the IETF community would
> benefit from informational recommendations about using effective and inclusive
> terminology in IETF documents.
Opinions indeed vary, to the point that the very notion of there being
such a thing as "inclusive terminology" is by no means uncontroversial.
What some see as "inclusive terminology" is for others "exclusionary
conformity". One's personal hypocrisy filter can be a non-trivial
barrier to participation when the new improved terminology is grating,
and has the opposite of the intended effect (intruding social justice
frictions into previously neutral contexts).
> The TERM working group is therefore chartered to produce an Informational RFC
> containing recommendations on the use of inclusive terminology in the technical
> work produced by IETF participants.
This assumes that working groups are so inept as to not know the
relevant terms of art, and that the informational "inclusive
terminology" document will be a benign tool for authors and WGs,
with no stigma attached making tradeoff decisions that ignore its
recommendations in the name of clarity and continuity.
> The RFC will express general principles for assessing when language is
> inclusive or exclusive.
I think Shakespeare had a pithy metaphor about roses and the
importance of context.
> The principles should match the expectations from a diverse set of
> IETF participants. The WG will identify and recommend an external,
> independently-updated resource containing examples of potentially
> problematic terms and potential alternatives to IETF participants, in
> order to align its efforts with broader activities by the technology
> industry.
This will prove counter-productive. It will be a cudgel to enforce
conformity to non-sensical in-group norms, and will be used to punish
and exclude the non-conformists. Despite the best intentions of all
concerned I am confident that that outcome is inevitable.
The reactionaries will be identified and ostracised.
--
Viktor.
