IETF Logo Mail Archive

Re: USA dominion: Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

Toerless Eckert <tte@cs.fau.de> Sat, 25 July 2020 21:05 UTC

Return-Path: <eckert@i4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
X-Original-To: ietf@ietfa.amsl.com
Delivered-To: ietf@ietfa.amsl.com
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A83B83A0AE6 for <ietf@ietfa.amsl.com>; Sat, 25 Jul 2020 14:05:04 -0700 (PDT)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at amsl.com
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: -1.898
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.898 tagged_above=-999 required=5 tests=[BAYES_00=-1.9, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS=0.001, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001, URIBL_BLOCKED=0.001] autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no
Received: from mail.ietf.org ([4.31.198.44]) by localhost (ietfa.amsl.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id QyI2xXS5gkad for <ietf@ietfa.amsl.com>; Sat, 25 Jul 2020 14:05:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from faui40.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (faui40.informatik.uni-erlangen.de [131.188.34.40]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ADH-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A19B53A0AE3 for <ietf@ietf.org>; Sat, 25 Jul 2020 14:05:01 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de [131.188.34.52]) by faui40.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5D229548442; Sat, 25 Jul 2020 23:04:57 +0200 (CEST)
Received: by faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Postfix, from userid 10463) id 57856440043; Sat, 25 Jul 2020 23:04:57 +0200 (CEST)
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2020 23:04:57 +0200
From: Toerless Eckert <tte@cs.fau.de>
To: Carsten Bormann <cabo@tzi.org>
Cc: IETF list <ietf@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: USA dominion: Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language
Message-ID: <20200725210457.GJ43465@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
References: <35BE966B-63A2-438F-BD61-570E86ED2E1A@strayalpha.com> <297BF899-553D-44DB-AB56-04280F776F7A@employees.org> <6646575A-E6EA-4B4E-AC1B-F8B84B5A1203@strayalpha.com> <20200724225654.GB43465@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> <8F6D2B44-1914-4B3B-9458-3F2BF2CFCA05@tzi.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
In-Reply-To: <8F6D2B44-1914-4B3B-9458-3F2BF2CFCA05@tzi.org>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13)
Archived-At: <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/BEudBIKjCGFzv7vIZPzOSFOvfdg>
X-BeenThere: ietf@ietf.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29
Precedence: list
List-Id: IETF-Discussion <ietf.ietf.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/options/ietf>, <mailto:ietf-request@ietf.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/ietf/>
List-Post: <mailto:ietf@ietf.org>
List-Help: <mailto:ietf-request@ietf.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf>, <mailto:ietf-request@ietf.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2020 21:05:05 -0000

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 10:27:00AM +0200, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> Toerless,
> 
> as a fellow with a German background, let me just say this:
> 
> It???s their language.

Well, we do use US english, true, but we are talking about technical terms.
I think we have a lot of freedom as a communty to decide what to pick and how.

> We are witnessing a change in what is polite to say in English.

That was very politely said!

[...]

> It also would *never* have occurred to a German to call a technical concept a ???slave??? (**), or to ???kill??? processes (***), etc., so the German speaker in me is not too unhappy if some of those horrible usages finally get fixed.

Sure, anything that helps readability is great IMHO (first thing i wrote
in this thread). I have just a lot of concern about process especially
how this becomes a one-off for just the words in the draft that
started this.

For exmple i have to observe a real bad execution on evolving the
RFC abbreviations list, and every time i pointed to problems,
they where not fixed, and ADs did not bother to pick up the problem.

Cheers
    Toerless
> 
> Grüße, Carsten
> 
> 
> (*) I don???t think anybody is suggesting to lead it, although I may simply have ignored those who do.
> (**) the German equivalents of ???master??? are mostly innocuous, including great ones like ???Herrchen??? and the analogous ???Frauchen??? (of an animal).  We also have completely non-charged variants, such as ???Meister???.  So the German in me doesn???t understand the urge to replace ???master???, but then again, it???s their language.
> (***) insert account of IBM???s somewhat comical choice to replace ???kill??? by ???force??? in CP/CMS.

-- 
---
tte@cs.fau.de

v2.23.0 | Report a Bug | By Email