Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 11:48:27PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
> > Such a list would, it seems to me, help genart reviewers at
> > least keep the question in mind.
> 
> Yes, but that takes me/us back to suggestions made weeks ago,
> i.e.,
> 
> (i) We treat this IESG statement and the underlying I-D as
> having done a great job of increasing the community's
> sensitivity to the issues of choices of language, largely
> independent or how those issues are defined.
> 
> (ii) We conclude that we really don't need to get to an official
> vocabulary, especially an official negative or discouraged
> vocabulary/ work list.
> 
> (iii) With the community's new-found sensitivity, we encourage
> document reviewers, especially within WGs in addition to IETF LC
> (or any particular review team) to spot unfortunate language as
> they read through documents.  When should language is spotted
> (again, preferably early in the document life cycle) it should
> lead to discussions with authors about whether the language is
> appropriate and possible alternative.  Reviews during IETF Last
> Call (or later) and public comments on the language should be
> viewed as a last resort although possibly a necessary one.

Exactly.  We don't need an official list of verboten language.  If we
do, I'll have to ask why not an IANA registry.  (FCFS might be "fun".
Obviously this is a reductio ad absurdum argument.)

Anyways, where is the evidence that we have a language problem?  I'm not
asking for evidence that the items on the proposed... verbotenlist are
offensive[*].  I'm asking for evidence that we [still] use them
regularly.

Can we see a thorough analysis of their use in IETF RFCs, together with
trend lines?  It's a small bit of research[**].

Propoent(s) should do the bare minimum of analysis to demonstrate that
there is a problem at least in those dimensions that are amenable to
statistical analysis (actual use, as opposed to actual offensiveness).

Supposing a proper analysis demonstrates no current or recent usage,
then what?  Would proponent(s) drop the matter, or press on?  If press
on, is the reason fear that uninformed authors might make use of these
terms and that uninformed reviewers, shepherds, ADs, and RPC staff might
allow their use to go unchallenged?  Would that be sufficient?  Would
such a fear be well-founded?  Are there other motivations I might be
missing?

[*] Their offensiveness may be subjective, though we can objectively
    agree that some/many claim that they are offensive, and perhaps
    whether that is sufficient to ban them.

[**] First, download all the RFCs, and maybe also all I-Ds, then write
     some regular expressions to search through them, then analyze the
     result paying close attention to the possibility of false
     positives.