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You seem unconcerned about the people who might feel marginalized and harmed by the rampant use of offensive language, and really concerned about people who cou

You seem unconcerned about the people who might feel marginalized and harmed by the rampant use of offensive language, and really concerned about people who could simply substitute another word with no impact. It's a really, really false equivalence. If you're offended by being asked to behave civilly you really have a bigger problem to deal with.

zug_zug 6y ago
I don't feel you're arguing in good faith. We should define "offensive language." How will we measure it fairly? Will we poll the english-speaking and set a thresh-hold? Because I sure hope we don't find out "aborting" a process is offensive language to religious coders with a polical agenda.
- notafraudster 6y ago
  I mean one way to do it would be that when someone brings up a specific term that they feel is a problem, we decide to change the term or not, and if we choose not to, we can revisit later. If someone brings up that they feel the verb abort is an issue, the community can have that conversation. There are no shortage of idioms that are synonymic -- halt, stop, terminate, end -- and it would be trivial to make the changes if it came to that. Either the decision will be to replace with another idiom, or to keep the existing one. If Linux had never used master/slave, and instead used primary/secondary, no one would open up a discussion to say "replace primary with master, primary is unclear and too much work to type" or whatever. So clearly there's no obligation to use the disputed terms, just as there wouldn't be for "abort". Are you hung up on using "abort"? Like, we don't need some cosmic answer once and for all about whether or not ever possible term will ever be offensive. We can just respond to people who bring the issues up. If they seem to be bringing it up in bad faith (for example, if the username is "DefendTheWestGroyper" and they have an anime avatar, probably you don't need to take them seriously) then that can be part of the conversation too. If this is the worst bikeshedding you're experiencing in a team project then you've got an uncommonly productive group. But also you can just opt out of the conversation. If you try to submit a PR later with a banned word in it, someone will flag it. The consequences on the code side seem de minimis.
bavell 6y ago
I'm not being asked to behave civilly though, I'm being asked to coddle infantile behavior of thin-skinned people taking things out of context. I'd much rather have a civil discussion about substantive changes we can make to society as whole, not wasting everyone's time with trivial and performative conformance.

zug_zug 6y ago

I don't feel you're arguing in good faith. We should define "offensive language." How will we measure it fairly? Will we poll the english-speaking and set a thresh-hold? Because I sure hope we don't find out "aborting" a process is offensive language to religious coders with a polical agenda.

notafraudster 6y ago
I mean one way to do it would be that when someone brings up a specific term that they feel is a problem, we decide to change the term or not, and if we choose not to, we can revisit later. If someone brings up that they feel the verb abort is an issue, the community can have that conversation. There are no shortage of idioms that are synonymic -- halt, stop, terminate, end -- and it would be trivial to make the changes if it came to that. Either the decision will be to replace with another idiom, or to keep the existing one. If Linux had never used master/slave, and instead used primary/secondary, no one would open up a discussion to say "replace primary with master, primary is unclear and too much work to type" or whatever. So clearly there's no obligation to use the disputed terms, just as there wouldn't be for "abort". Are you hung up on using "abort"? Like, we don't need some cosmic answer once and for all about whether or not ever possible term will ever be offensive. We can just respond to people who bring the issues up. If they seem to be bringing it up in bad faith (for example, if the username is "DefendTheWestGroyper" and they have an anime avatar, probably you don't need to take them seriously) then that can be part of the conversation too. If this is the worst bikeshedding you're experiencing in a team project then you've got an uncommonly productive group. But also you can just opt out of the conversation. If you try to submit a PR later with a banned word in it, someone will flag it. The consequences on the code side seem de minimis.

bavell 6y ago

I'm not being asked to behave civilly though, I'm being asked to coddle infantile behavior of thin-skinned people taking things out of context. I'd much rather have a civil discussion about substantive changes we can make to society as whole, not wasting everyone's time with trivial and performative conformance.