Re: [Terminology] [Gendispatch] WG Review: Effective Terminology in IETF Documents (term)

[[e-mail]]

(I am a new subscriber, so I apologize in advance if I break any 
conventions.  Thanks.)

A couple of points concerning a list, I would think that any list of 
good words would have to say the bad words with which the good 
correlate.  Otherwise one is in the position of a person trying to guess 
from contextuual clues what a redacted word might be.  Which is common 
in living languages, but is difficult without some amount of shared 
context.  But including the bad words leads to the problem of 
auto-filtering eliminating the list; which leads to the need for a 
special status by which bad words can be identified as being merely 
written about.  (This is the usual problem of confusing meaningful use 
of a word versus merely talking about the word as a word, ie mentioning 
it.  There is a lot of philosophy and logic about this.  The usual 
solution is to distinguish mention cases by identifying with some or 
other quote mark--including finger quotes--any occurrence of a word 
being mentioned.)

As for having a list, I think any occurrence can be taken to be a list, 
eg a singleton word-pair can be taken to be a one-member list, normal in 
computing.  If the example is in regular prose writing, there is more 
context than there is for the usual idea of the efficiency of the list 
form.  A hybrid could be a list entry being a word-pair plus a brief 
example usage.

As for controversy, these are controversial times.  If IETF wants some 
internal advice people--internal or exteral--can refer to, why not try 
to do one's part to help.

Cheers.
Tom

On 24.04.2021 16:25, Stephen Farrell wrote:
> On 24/04/2021 09:31, Lloyd W wrote:
>> Stephen
>> 
>> how can you support this if you think a list of bad terms is a
>> mistake, which means that you don't support this?
> 
> No that's not correct. The list is only one aspect of the
> overall charter.
> 
> I'm fine with a WG crafting an informational RFC that gives
> us better guidance as to how to write better drafts, and am
> ok that that includes a few examples of terms that are now
> considered less good.
> 
> I think a curated list of bad terms is a mistake because it
> threatens to prolong and occasionally re-ignite controversies
> around terminology. Secondly, no matter what opinion one
> holds on any specific term, the risk exists that the list's
> then curators have the opposite opinion at some future date.
> So, I think it's a mistake to consider such a list from any
> starting position.
> 
> Cheers,
> S.
  . . .