Re: [Gendispatch] draft charter text: terminology-related WG

[Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]>]

Ooh... look what just arrived in my mailbox this morning:

The following draft will expire soon:

Name:     draft-gondwana-effective-terminology
Title:    Effective Terminology in IETF drafts
State:    I-D Exists
Expires:  2021-02-26 (in 1 week, 4 days)

I've been mostly following this thread, in between trying to live the rest of my life (mostly, recovering from a rather brutal dental surgery following an incomplete tooth removal back during the worst of lockdown and the subsequent infection, whee, but I digress)

My memory of the discussions lo these many many months ago was that we had reached a consensus within the discussions, and announced it to the gendispatch list, that we would be forming a working group.  It's been on my personal checklist for some months to keep an eye out for when it happens, because I know that I've promised to help revise the draft, and that's going to take both a lot of time and lot of emotional and mental energy - "threading the needle" as it were.

It's quite clear that the terms "master" / "slave" / "{50 shades of}list" are all contentious and create a ton of heat.  That's reasons enough to avoid them regardless of the expected outcome.  *Even if not using those terms makes our documents less clear*, the sad fact is that in CURRENT_YEAR they are attractors for distraction.

(not just those terms - if you want to see another attractor for distraction at work, search "Kyiv" on the tz@iana list)

My main concern is that we don't restrict our list to just the 2021 small set of politically charged terms.  An example that came up at IETF107 was the term "folks" and how some feel degraded or dismissed by it, and I think say "folks is informal and shouldn't be used in professional documents" would be a fair treatment here if we are creating a list of terms.

To those who strongly oppose this charter and this working group - I would urge you to look at this as a circuit breaker to absorb some of this energy and to make our documents more readable to those who care about such things, rather than as a capitulation to all that is censorious in the world.

Saying "these terms are heated and will distract your readers from the point of your document" is on the face of it true, just by looking back at this thread and seeing how heated the responses have been.  That is a sufficient and complete justification for doing this work, and most importantly *does not require that this work make the IETF more inclusive in any measurable or justifiable way.*

**This is really important to me, because I don't believe that such measurement or proof is possible in a way that can get consensus, but I do think that avoiding heated terms so we can get on with producing high quality, readable technical documents can get consensus, so that's what I'm trying to do.

Regards,

Bron.

On Fri, Feb 12, 2021, at 07:39, Sean Turner wrote:
> Hi!,
> 
> Here is some proposed charter text to address the terminology-related WG.
> 
> Cheers,
> spt
> 
> ----------
> 
> Effective Terminology in IETF Documents (TERM)
> ----
> 
> The mission of the IETF as specified in BCP 95 is to produce high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet. As RFC 7322 explains, "The ultimate goal of the RFC publication process is to produce documents that are readable, clear, consistent, and reasonably uniform." RFCs and Internet-drafts are most effective when they use terminology that is clear, precise, and widely accessible to readers from varying backgrounds and cultures.
> 
> 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. 
> 
> The TERM working group is therefore chartered to produce an Informational RFC containing recommendations on terminology to use in technical work produced by the IETF. 
> 
> Milestones:
> 
> July 2021: Adopt draft providing informational terminology recommendations 
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--
  Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
  [e-mail]