Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

I don't see a need to litigate the phrase y'all absent a plausible reason
such a word would be used in an RFC or standards process document.
Colloquial language is best avoided regardless.

On the broader topic, I recall a very hotly contested issue that consumed
much time in Westminster and at cabinet level a few years back where the
absence of females serving in a particular role in a document was used to
argue that they must never be allowed to serve in that role: ordination of
women priests.

Now I recall that at the very same time the CoE was going through that
issue, the use of gender neutral language in specs was being dismissed by
some people (all men) on the basis it was 'nonsense'.

Language has consequences.

Nor are facts or history the relevant measure, the question should be
whether the terms are used to give offense. In the UK, to 'Welch' on a bet
means not paying after losing and the name goes back to a pair of bookies
called the Welch brothers who did a runner after taking a large number of
winning bets in the 1860s. But that is now a term that is avoided because
in speech it is easily mistaken for a slur on the Welsh.

There are numerous cases of this type where no ill intent might be intended
but might easily be taken. But why introduce unnecessary ambiguity? The
whole point of the IETF process is to produce clarity.

Whitelist and Blacklist are best avoided because they carry no semantic.
The association white=accept is purely cultural. Acceptlist and Blocklist
are preferable because they provide more clarity.

There is also a technical argument to be made against at least 80% of the
uses of master/slave: the terms simply do not reflect the technical
reality. The term is ambiguous in any case, the online dictionary I just
scanned has six separate meanings as a noun plus three adjectives and two
verbs. That is not a word to use in a spec.