Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

["Joel M. Halpern" <[e-mail]>]

Chess Master, as with Master of Arts, and Masterpiece, ... is a usage of 
"master" indicating one who posses a very high degree of skill.

While I do not know what others expect, I do not expect those usages to 
change.  Words have many meanings.

The usage of "master" meaning "the one in charge" has, over time, become 
contaminated with historical usage of a more specific kind of charge. 
While there are usage that may be reasonable to retain (outside of IETF 
purview), it seems to me that we should be looking at the places we use 
that term and see whether it is a good choice.
While "Master key" is outside of the IETF purview, it is actually a very 
odd idiom.  "Master secret", which is in our purview, is similarly an 
odd usage that does not do a good job of conveying our meaning.

We often end up with sloppy terms.  We often just live with them.  Even 
though it makes it harder for folks to understand our work.  In this 
case, we are being asked to look for better terms because the 
historically chosen terms have bagggage we distinctly did not intent.

Yours,
Joel

On 8/9/2020 5:06 PM, Yoav Nir wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 9 Aug 2020, at 22:56, Marc Petit-Huguenin <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> On 8/9/20 12:23 PM, Joe Touch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Aug 9, 2020, at 10:54 AM, Nico Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Really, asserting that "master secret"
>>>> is problematic is simply credibility-destroying.
>>>
>>> Besides your concern, how does one secret actively control another?
>>
>> You are insisting that the only possible meaning of "master" is to control some[one|thing] else.  According to New Oxford American Dictionary Third edition, that's true when used it as a noun, but not when used as an adjective or a verb.
> 
> It is not true for nouns either.
> 
> A master of science does not control science and a master of business administration doe not control business administration.
> 
> A school master (this is a British usage) is just a male teacher. He does not tend to control the school.
> 
> A chess master can beat me at chess, but he doesn’t control the game
> 
> And there are many more.
> 
>