Re: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

[[e-mail]]

> Hi Niels,

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

Sometimes they do:

  https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130709-asiana-flight-214-crash-korean-airlines-culture-outliers/

There is a cost to political correctness. Even converations like this one have
a cost.

				Ned

> 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/