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Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

Carsten Bormann <cabo@tzi.org> Sun, 09 August 2020 16:52 UTC

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Subject: Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language
From: Carsten Bormann <cabo@tzi.org>
In-Reply-To: <aa4292e-79a6-3df4-9bc3-18558ba2c190@taugh.com>
Date: Sun, 09 Aug 2020 18:52:14 +0200
Cc: Stewart Bryant <stewart.bryant@gmail.com>, IETF general list <ietf@ietf.org>
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To: John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
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On 2020-08-09, at 18:28, John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
> 
> This is a problem that the IETF really needs to solve itself.

While I agree with that, I also think there might be some help out there that we might avail ourselves of — maybe not so much in other SDOs, but in professional organizations such as ACM.

I just know some of us (me included) can’t help with this, for the same reasons that Baudis gives for his choice of the term “master” for the main Git branch in 2005 [1].  It’s your language, and those of us who have acquired very different connotations for terms (through the technical context they learned the language in, and through different connotations of the equivalent word in their native languages) will need some guidance.  So I’m very skeptical with throwing back the ball to the authors.

Grüße, Carsten

[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave

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