Re: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

Mark Rousell <mark.rousell@signal100.com> Fri, 21 September 2018 02:18 UTC

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Subject: Re: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs
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References: <cafa1282-ae6a-93de-ea4a-d100af28d8b8@digitaldissidents.org> <20180920174256.GC68853@isc.org>
From: Mark Rousell <mark.rousell@signal100.com>
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Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2018 03:18:09 +0100
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On 20/09/2018 18:42, Evan Hunt wrote:
>  The use of a term that's likely be *perceived* as weighted by some
> readers -- even if the author didn't intend it that way, and even if
> person who coined the term in the first place didn't intend it that
> way -- can still hinder communication with those readers.
[...]
> If it's easy to find an equivalent term without the baggage, then it
> seems like common sense to use that term instead. 

Reasonable common sense to my mind is to use clear, established,
industry standard terminology and for people with baseless perceptions
that such terminology is somehow aimed at them to learn that the context
matters (i.e. that contextually relevant usage of certain terms is not
"weighted" or negative in any way whatsoever).


-- 
Mark Rousell