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Inclusive IT Language Guide [pdf]
- robbmorganf 5y agoDoes anyone know the etymology of "black box"?
- secondaryacct 5y agoYou cant see in it because there's no light ? Maybe some crude analogy to the first cameras dark chambers ? French wikipedia says it entered our language during WWII to describe enemy military strategies we had to analyze by interacting with them rather than reverse engineer from specs. Black is the color of the night and mystery, white of the sun and openness. I find it insane this is misinterpreted as good/bad, with the mystery color being bad. We're fighting hard in my company against the same people as usual now brigadding to stop saying black/whitelist, because it does nothing to help black people in America (we're in Asia), who suffer from problems which go well beyond even white people: they entered a cycle of self defeatism where every problem has an external source and therefore solution, to the point of complete apathy. So when a chinese says "this system is a blackbox" I will not, me a European, tell him to say something else because americans cant fix their shit and now need to pretend me and that chinese guys are part of their problem. It's THEIR problem, they fix it, and for real.
- riskneutral 5y ago> "this system is a blackbox" According to this inclusive language guide, you should say "this system is a functional testing" or "this system is an acceptance testing." Pretty soon we will just not be allowed to mention colors anymore in any context. Just refer to it by its hex code. "this system is a #000000 box."
- helge9210 5y agoA box with holes (with long sleeves attached) to manipulate undeveloped film. No light gets inside to protect the film from accidental exposure.
- vanusa 5y agofeed two birds with one scone Tone deaf doesn't begin to describe the people who come up with these not-so-voluntary, thought-crippling "guides".
- threatofrain 5y agoTone deaf is such a thoughtless idiom!
- nix23 5y agoTrue! "Listening in a Vacuum" would be more inclusive ;)
- tasogare 5y agoI just got a message from git in my terminal related to "master" branch. Whatever your sexual orientation, gender, race, disabilities FUCK OFF, I'm gonna stick to proper English instead of Newspeak. The same statement is true for my native language, French, where I'll never use the "écriture inclusive" bullshit except to mock it. Luckily the Académie is with me on this one.
- secondaryacct 5y agoYeah but the Académie is really just consultative. I will still never say mot-dièse for hashtag. And that master thing is really stupid, like every population has been enslaved at some point, the word comes from the romans, and it's not like anyone is promoting slavery by saying their master branch dominate their slave branches in git. We also still enslave animals and we can say "human friend" instead of "master" to indicate your relationship with your dog, you're still not asking him for tax advices. And should we stop saying Maitresse for kids' teachers as well to avoid remiding everyone of slavery...
- erik_seaberg 5y agoI’ve seen a linter complain about "mastercard" in a JSON commit. It’s the payment processing system, we cannot let anyone change that.
- secondaryacct 5y agoOMG wait until people realize it.
- riskneutral 5y agoWhere is the uproar over Mastercard needing to change its name now? This is a social media powder keg waiting to explode. Waitaminute, is "powder keg" still an allowable metaphorical term? Powder keg was a central tool of colonialism and racism in the 19th century. Cancel it?
- snowflake556 5y agoThis is just ridiculous I am leaving California I cannot take working for companies here. My workplace is this bad or worse.
- WaffleIronMaker 5y agoThis raises some valid points, like the validity of the singular they. However, I think it is a bit to aggressive in listing unacceptable terms. I understand "off the reservation" because that still has a direct connection to racist origin. There is a defensible argument that it is referring directly to many atrocities that the United States government committed when moving Native Americans to reservations. Fine. However, whitelist? That's just based off of a color. There's nothing directly racist about it. I'm sure some people feel uncomfortable when the word is used, but there's no logical reason why it should be a problem. Just because one person is uncomfortable about a phrase doesn't mean the phrase is bad. I once had to leave the room when watching a movie because it had a scene that reminded me very strongly of an traumatic experience I had. However, there is no objective problem with the movie. I am not the main character of the universe, and it is not anyone else's fault that other things remind me of the trauma I experienced. I don't believe people should be put in environments that are actively triggering, but "native feature"? There is no logical reason to be triggered by that. This type of rhetoric is problematic because it vilifies people unnecessarily. Killing a process is fine, because processes aren't people. I'm not being violent. If you see the word "kill" and get distracted, that's a problem with your reading comprehension. All in all, I agree that documentation should not be triggering or have terrible connotations. However, many of the words here are not triggering, and they do not have terrible connotations.
- secondaryacct 5y agoWe kill processes, destroy variables, put objects in blacklist, push to a master branch, are we monster ? Meanwhile in my language, every word has a gender, from table to banana, should I then be triggered by gender neutrality, a concept that "destroy my gender-heavy culture"? :D Singular they is fine when you dont know the gender, it's true it's weird to favor masculine, or what I see in English favoring feminine. But putting your fav gender in email signature is a bit like... is it truly such a massive problem that everyone must comply and not just people for whom it's not clear ? Im not saying it s not a problem, just is it that massive ?
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
- xupybd 5y agoReally house keeping tasks is offensive to a group? I can't think of any race, creed, gender, sexuality or other group that is excluded from having to clean their house?
- nix23 5y ago"Rich" Students at elite university are excluded from cleaning their house....so naturally it makes sense ;)
- DarylZero 5y agoInclusive language for use by exclusive institutions. All talk and no action.
- da39a3ee 5y agoLest you thought this was s joke, looks like Google’s version of this document is just as bad: https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation I’ll mostly use these documents to remind me to use these terms more. What the fuck is wrong with “native”, “housekeeping”, “sanity”? The authors of this surely must be joking.
- marvinvz 5y agoThis is laughable. I'm not even sure this comes from an honest intention to improve the world.
- France_is_bacon 5y ago
- nix23 5y agoHappy that "Human Resources" is still accepted (the ~only english expression i actually find disgusting) ;)
- lazyeye 5y agoAre these kind of language "guides" limited to English or is it happening in other cultures too?
- ukoms 5y agoI understand (to some degree) if someone is willing to enforce things you shouldn't say. Although right to free speech is/should be universal, but it doesn't mean free of consequences of what has been spoken. But I strongly oppose situation and any attempts to enforce what I should say. No. No pasarán. Ni wuja. Claiming power over what one should or ought to be saying is claiming power over what one should or is allowed to think. "1984" of Orwell's says hi.
- peakaboo 5y agoI had an amazing time laughing at this document :) Best morning ever.
- nix23 5y agoHas that University still a "Master degree" or is it just not ok with Git and DB's?
- riskneutral 5y agoThe mob just needs to be pointed in the right direction, and universities will have to start canceling the term "Master's degree." It seems inevitable, because soon or later the mob will turn its attention towards this, once they've gone after all the low-hanging fruit. Is low-hanging fruit still an inclusive term? Or it discriminates against short people? Cancel it?
- nix23 5y agoFallen fruit would be better...because it just discriminates people with backpain.
- gorgabal 5y agoI read a lot of criticism on guides like these. And that makes me wonder, am I the only one that thinks that the 'inclusive' language is simply more clearer? * blocklist/blacklist, I find blocklist clearer because it does what it says. Same for whitelist * master/main, same as above, main describes it's function more accurately. Regarding the genger wording, I have memories as a child where I was confused because for some reason, only the boys where adressed. Not thinking it through, I simply assumed that was intentional. And thus, if a teacher said 'boys, lets go that way!' I would be arguing with the girls since I thought they where not supposed to follow along. Of course, this is not the case for ALL proposed inclusive language. I simply notice that most of the time, the inclusive alternative is a lot clearer.
- tablespoon 5y ago> I read a lot of criticism on guides like these. And that makes me wonder, am I the only one that thinks that the 'inclusive' language is simply more clearer? Even if that were true, you could say the same thing about English spelling reform (which is never going to happen, for good reason).
- nix23 5y agoNot all blacklists are blocklists, and what do you call a greylist? BTW: Blacklist has nothing todo with skincolor: ~1183 AD Andronicus -> "His memory was stored with a black list of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit, opposed his greatness, or insulted his misfortunes" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting
- bloak 5y agoCompound nouns in English are usually formed with the first element being a noun or an adjective, not a verb, so the natural way to understand "blocklist" is as a list of blocks, like something you'd find in a file system, or here, for example: https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Block-list-syntax.html https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Bloc... My suggestion would be that if you're allergic to "black" for some reason you go with "redlist", giving you "greenlist" and "amberlist" as alternatives. But I don't personally have a problem with "blacklist".
- robbedpeter 5y ago
- archerx 5y ago
- FooBarBizBazz 5y agoSay you come from this worldview, in which word choice is stealthy psychological aggression. Then, when you could have said "point out" "highlight", or "bring attention to" you instead choose to say "call out" which is the same phrase used to mean "publicly denounce (typically on Twitter)". Do you know what you're doing? Are you trying to make your coworkers remember that they can be stoned by the crowd at any moment? To imply that you can cause that to happen? In a world where wordgames become very serious surprisingly quickly, I wonder.
- twomoonsbysurf 5y ago
- brnttst 5y agoI read the comments before reading the document and completely expected a 50 page manifesto on the origin of the English language. It appears more like a service organization trying its best to not put it’s frontline workers in what is likely already an uncomfortable position - apply the standard, albeit unfair, criticisms of “dealing with IT.” The brevity the lists makes me think that these are possibly specific instances they’ve encountered.