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

[Fernando Gont <[e-mail]>]

On 12/2/21 17:53, John Levine wrote:
> In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>> However, what I really care about is that any effort to improve language inclusiveness is actually inclusive. Whenever this
>> discussion comes up, it focuses regularly just on a handful of terms that are deemed offensive to one specific ethnicity in one
>> specific country. While of course this is not the intention, this often feels exclusive to people from other countries and other
>> ethnicities; this became apparent during some past discussions on the main IETF list.
> 
> I share the concern that this is an exercise in which a bunch of
> mostly rich white people are trying to guess how people who are not
> rich and white might feel. 

I couldn't have phrased it better than that.

(Would also argue that then said group would probably also later claim 
that the IETF cares about inclusiveness).



> While I agree it is an important topic to
> address, it is my strong impression that most of the obvious things
> one might do, e.g., making lists of words to avoid, are not actually
> productive.

Well, paraphrasing Lewis Carrol, it all depends where one wants to go. :-)

Focusing the effort of inclusiveness on terminology seems to be the sort 
of thing that essentially doesn't affect the status quo at all -- so 
that probably tells you how much it'll do for inclusiveness.


Note: I don't mind it. However, pretending that one is really helping 
the situation by deprecating/banning a list of words, while 
well-intentioned, seems to me like really ignoring the problem.


As a hint, this work: draft-kuehlewind-shmoo-remote-fee does, IMO, more 
for many axis of inclusiveness than any specific recommnendation on 
language.

Thanks,
-- 
Fernando Gont
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