Re: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

Hi Niels,

As my wife so often tells our kids, "manners cost nothing." 

Considering that the RFC series is archival and therefore our words will live for a long time, it's also prudent to be careful with our words. Consider how casual racism and sexism from even twenty years ago is perceived now.

So I think that this should be highlighted on the shepherd's checklist <https://www.ietf.org/iesg/template/doc-writeup-essay-style.html> -- e.g., "Is the terminology used in the draft unnecessarily specific to one culture, or potentially offensive?".

The RFC Editor might also want to make these considerations part of their process, in consultation with the stream managers.

Cheers,


> On 20 Sep 2018, at 5:25 am, Niels ten Oever <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> On the hrpc-list [0] there has been an intense conversation which was
> spurred by the news that the Python community removed Master/Slave
> terminology from its programming language [1].
> 
> In the discussion that followed it was remarked that in RFCs terms like
> Master/Slave, blacklist/whitelist, man-in-middle, and other terminology
> that is offensive to some people and groups is quite common.
> 
> This is not a discussion that can be resolved in hrpc, but rather should
> be dealt with in the IETF community (because hrpc doesn't make policy
> for terminology in the IETF), which is why I am posting this here.
> 
> If people find the discussion worthwhile, we might also be just in time
> to request a BoF on this topic.
> 
> Looking forward to discuss.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Niels
> 
> 
> [0] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/hrpc/
> [1]
> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8x7akv/masterslave-terminology-was-removed-from-python-programming-language
> 
> 
> -- 
> Niels ten Oever
> Researcher and PhD Candidate
> Datactive Research Group
> University of Amsterdam
> 
> PGP fingerprint	   2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488
>                   643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3
> 

--
Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/