Re: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

[Riccardo Bernardini <framefritti@xxxxxxxxx>]

I think that it is important to discuss it in order to avoid further degeneracy in this direction.

I expect that what I am going to say will be quite unpopular, but I think that a line need to be draw somewhere.  Do not get me wrong, I am totally in favor of diversity, inclusiveness and avoiding offensive language, but in the cases at hand (master/slave and blacklist/whitelist) the expressions never had any negative or offensive weight and if someone gets offended by some concatenation of ideas, that is a problem of its.

I mean, it is like a neighbor that complains because when you come home from work at 6pm you take a shower.  "I am having dinner at that time and hearing the water of your shower make me thing about bathrooms just when I am eating."  If this seems exaggerate to you, please note that it is not too different from being offended by master/slave because reminds you about slave trades happened few centuries ago. (BTW, slavery has not been limited to that period, so I guess many people should be offended).   Also whitelist/blacklist _never_had_any_racial_meaning_ at all.. .  If they remind you about racism, the problem is definitively on your side.     Another example is currently discussed on inksscape mailing lists: someone complained because inkscape has a translation in pig latin (as I understand was added for testing and then it remained there) and the term "pig latin" offended him (I know it is a "him" because I know the name).

The idea "let's not offend anyone," while good in theory leave you open to the attack of definitively oversensitive people.  I mean, if I say "Do not wear a tie.  It looks like a phallic symbol and it offends me.  Moreover, it is sexist." are you going to prohibits ties? 

What is the limit of reasonable complaints and when a complaint is excessive?  Difficult to say, as in many other cases the border between reasonabilit and excess is fuzzy, nevertheless there are cases that are clearly on one side.  The cases master/slave, whiteist/blacklist and "pig latin" are definitively, IMHO, on the excessive side.

Running for cover...

R.

   

On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 11:27 AM Niels ten Oever <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,

On the hrpc-list [0] there has been an intense conversation which was
spurred by the news that the Python community removed Master/Slave
terminology from its programming language [1].

In the discussion that followed it was remarked that in RFCs terms like
Master/Slave, blacklist/whitelist, man-in-middle, and other terminology
that is offensive to some people and groups is quite common.

This is not a discussion that can be resolved in hrpc, but rather should
be dealt with in the IETF community (because hrpc doesn't make policy
for terminology in the IETF), which is why I am posting this here.

If people find the discussion worthwhile, we might also be just in time
to request a BoF on this topic.

Looking forward to discuss.

Best,

Niels


[0] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/hrpc/
[1]
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8x7akv/masterslave-terminology-was-removed-from-python-programming-language


--
Niels ten Oever
Researcher and PhD Candidate
Datactive Research Group
University of Amsterdam

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