Re: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

[Yoav Nir <[e-mail]>]

> On 20 Sep 2018, at 22:56, Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 20. Sep 2018, at 21:46, Evan Hunt <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 09:10:51PM +0200, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>>> The up-to-date term of art is “middleperson attack”
>> 
>> Perhaps "on-path attack”.
> 
> No, that includes attacks where you are on path just to listen in.
> (“spy-in-the-middle attack” has the same problem.)
> 
> That’s why I like Janus attack — middleperson attacks are about giving one face to one end and a different face to the other end.  

I don’t think we are promoting inclusiveness by resorting to obscure mythology, any more than by using Star Trek references, Dr Who references, or Monty Python references [1]

There is a lot of value in being consistent in terminology between old and new documents, and with terms of art that are well-known throughout the world. It may say something bad about human society, but terms like “master” and “slave” are well understood throughout the world. The association of the colors black and white are less culturally universal, but everyone who has worked with a spam filter or with routing is well aware of these terms.

Making up new terms based on very specific cultural references or the sensitivities of the day are bad for clarity and make our documents less useful.  Blacklist is a word. You can look it up in a dictionary. “Allowlist” or “permitlist” are neologisms. Yes, I can figure out what they mean, but I shouldn’t have to.

Yoav

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7725#section-3