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

[Mallory Knodel <[e-mail]>]

A big thank you to everyone who has worked on this! More:

On 2/11/21 8:43 PM, Bron Gondwana wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 12, 2021, at 07:39, Sean Turner wrote:
>
>> 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.Â
>
> I hadn't suggested naming specific terms, but seeing them there I 
> think that having the examples improves this charter, because specific 
> cases are always more useful than generic, all encompassing phrases 
> ("certain terms") in isolation.
>
It risks meaninglessness to be totally generic and fully open to any and 
all interpretations of the words "inclusive" and "exclusive" as others 
(Dan, Vitorrio) have said.

I think we should use the former for the group name-- Inclusive 
Terminology in IETF Documents.

And I think that we should put in the charter that we will start with 
the specific issues related to race, as it is now. If you'd like a 
rundown of why that's important, please watch this from the W3C on 
essentially the very same approach: 
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-idcg/2020Sep/0020.html

BTW the W3C also put out a recent decision, too, on the same: 
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/spec-prod/2021JanMar/0017.html

-Mallory

-- 
Mallory Knodel
CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
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