Re: [Terminology] TERM & NISTIR 8366

[Dan York <[e-mail]>]

Lars, (or perhaps for John Levine or a member of the RSOC)

[Disclaimer: I work for the Internet Society but am writing in my personal capacity and this does not represent a statement of the views of the Internet Society.]

> On May 3, 2021, at 6:14 AM, Lars Eggert <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> It seems like we have broad consensus to refer to NISTIR 8366 (https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8366) to provide guidance to IETF contributors on using inclusive terminology, in lieu of documenting our own guidance.

It’s been great to see this gathering consensus (I support it), but before we abandon this working group (your item 1), I have a question about *how* we make this reference to the NIST document. Most of the broad consensus I’ve seen on this list has been in response to Brian’s note last week:

> On Apr 29, 2021, at 4:50 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Yes. The IESG could suggest to the RFC Editor team to add an informative reference to the NIST document to the style guide, and remind the IETF that Internet-Drafts should aim to adhere to the RFC style guide, and we're done.

Personally, I do agree that this guidance makes sense to live in the RFC Style Guide. NIST has also included this in their style guide equivalent ("author instructions”) and the W3C added a section to their manual of style earlier this year. ISO also has a section in their style guide.

https://www.nist.gov/nist-research-library/nist-technical-series-publications-author-instructions#inclusive 
https://www.w3.org/Guide/manual-of-style/#inclusive
https://www.iso.org/ISO-house-style.html#iso-hs-s-text-r-s-inclusive

There are any number of corporate/organization style guides that now include similar sections on inclusive language. The work of the Inclusive Naming Initiative (INI) - https://inclusivenaming.org/ - aims to help organizations update their own style guides and provide recommendations. I suspect many more style guides will publish new versions with such language in the months (and years) ahead.


So if we can agree that the RFC Style Guide should be updated with an informative reference over to the NISTIR 8366 document, then…  

HOW does the RFC Style Guide actually get updated?  (I ask because I honestly don’t know.)

Looking at https://www.rfc-editor.org/styleguide/ I see that the style is guide is formally RFC 7322 ( https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7322 ) which has been updated by RFC 7997 ( https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7997 ). I also see from RFC 7322 that there is a “Web Portion of the Style Guide” at https://www.rfc-editor.org/styleguide/part2/ that includes newer decisions since 2014 when RFC 7322 was published.

Further I see that back in 2018 Heather Flanagan started to develop a (now expired) 7322bis draft - https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-flanagan-7322bis-03

Is the first step to add a row to the page for the “Web Portion of the Style Guide” linking to the NIST doc? If so, who does that? (John?) 

And in the longer term, who would bring forward the 7322bis document that would include this reference to the NIST.IR 8366 document?

Do these steps fall to John Levine in his role as Temporary RFC Series Project Manager?  Or is this something the RSOC needs to bring forward? Or the IAB? Or someone else? And to whom do they bring it? Who approves the new version of the RFC Style Guide? The IAB? RSOC?

Or does it need a working group such as what was in the process of being chartered here?

If we are going to stop the work proposed for TERM to produce an Informational RFC with guidance for IETF participants - and instead link over to the NIST document, I would find it useful and helpful to understand how we are actually going to do this.

Thanks for any info,
Dan