4 ms·

Since you work at Google, maybe you can answer this: does internal tooling exist to flag occurrences of "bad" words in say, code reviews or shared documents?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anothernerd2 4y ago
There is at Amazon, it gets brought up as a code violation while we’re doing security and other kinds of reviews I’ve mostly cleansed myself of these words while I’m at work but I generally let the shit fly once Im out of the setting I just look at it like any other corporate politics, you have to play along to get anywhere Outside of work I’m my own person and use any word I want. Retard, cripple, bum, idiot, motherboard, man, master, slave, fuck, shit, piss! See! Fire me Amazon I fucking dare you! :)
- Tao331 4y ago
  But isn't the name Amazon inherently exclusionary, and one of the oldest distorted stereotypes? The mote in the employee's eye vs. the log in the company's eye
dvirsky 4y ago
Former Googler (until a couple of months ago). I've never seen anything like it, but maybe I just didn't use "bad" words in code? There were presubmit checks for typos and such. Also, IIRC I asked people in code/design reviews to rename white/black lists to allow/deny lists, but it might have just been in docs. I did get an angry code review response from a fellow engineer once, after writing in a commit description (not the actual code) something like "this is a stupid fix but it stops the linter from bitching about so and so" - for using both the words "stupid" and "bitch". I guess the second one was on point but referring to my own work as "stupid" is pretty okay in my book. I would never ever describe anyone else's work as such.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > I would never ever describe anyone else's work as such. But someone reading your commit message doesn't know that. Someone new to the company might see your change and think "That looks reasonable to me", but see that you called it "stupid", and start to doubt themselves. Although it makes technology more boring, I think there is some value in using precise words over emotive words. Perhaps using the word "pedantic" instead, or "no-op", would have conveyed more information, without disparaging the amount of intelligence that went into making it (or into the design/configuration of the linter).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- exodust 4y ago
  > "I asked people in code/design reviews to rename white/black lists to allow/deny lists" Odd thing to do. "Black" is synonymous with darkness, hidden, off, empty space, and things of that nature. For this reason "blacklist" works. There is no clash with people, or any disrespect. Politically correct OCD invents problems. Then dictate to others how they should solve those problems. Add penalties for those who don't follow the prescribed solutions to invented problems, and we find ourselves in 2022 looking at Google's efforts to solve the invented problems. The author of the Vice article states that by removing master/slave and black/whitelist, it "addresses years of habitual bias in tech terminology". Accusations of bias are just accusations. We can't "find" bias on the grounds of matching words in technical contexts to the same words in other contexts. In the S&M world, the context is not actual master and slave, it's a new context that encompasses consent and good times. Likewise, the technical context is not one that involves people, but machines communicating under specific rules which "master/slave" adequately describes.
murderfs 4y ago
Yes. There's even a bot that calls you out if you use "bad" words in internal chats.
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  So is there a committee or person responsible for maintaining the bot bad words list?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

anothernerd2 4y ago

There is at Amazon, it gets brought up as a code violation while we’re doing security and other kinds of reviews I’ve mostly cleansed myself of these words while I’m at work but I generally let the shit fly once Im out of the setting I just look at it like any other corporate politics, you have to play along to get anywhere Outside of work I’m my own person and use any word I want. Retard, cripple, bum, idiot, motherboard, man, master, slave, fuck, shit, piss! See! Fire me Amazon I fucking dare you! :)

Tao331 4y ago
But isn't the name Amazon inherently exclusionary, and one of the oldest distorted stereotypes? The mote in the employee's eye vs. the log in the company's eye

dvirsky 4y ago

Former Googler (until a couple of months ago). I've never seen anything like it, but maybe I just didn't use "bad" words in code? There were presubmit checks for typos and such. Also, IIRC I asked people in code/design reviews to rename white/black lists to allow/deny lists, but it might have just been in docs. I did get an angry code review response from a fellow engineer once, after writing in a commit description (not the actual code) something like "this is a stupid fix but it stops the linter from bitching about so and so" - for using both the words "stupid" and "bitch". I guess the second one was on point but referring to my own work as "stupid" is pretty okay in my book. I would never ever describe anyone else's work as such.

dane-pgp 4y ago
> I would never ever describe anyone else's work as such. But someone reading your commit message doesn't know that. Someone new to the company might see your change and think "That looks reasonable to me", but see that you called it "stupid", and start to doubt themselves. Although it makes technology more boring, I think there is some value in using precise words over emotive words. Perhaps using the word "pedantic" instead, or "no-op", would have conveyed more information, without disparaging the amount of intelligence that went into making it (or into the design/configuration of the linter).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
exodust 4y ago
> "I asked people in code/design reviews to rename white/black lists to allow/deny lists" Odd thing to do. "Black" is synonymous with darkness, hidden, off, empty space, and things of that nature. For this reason "blacklist" works. There is no clash with people, or any disrespect. Politically correct OCD invents problems. Then dictate to others how they should solve those problems. Add penalties for those who don't follow the prescribed solutions to invented problems, and we find ourselves in 2022 looking at Google's efforts to solve the invented problems. The author of the Vice article states that by removing master/slave and black/whitelist, it "addresses years of habitual bias in tech terminology". Accusations of bias are just accusations. We can't "find" bias on the grounds of matching words in technical contexts to the same words in other contexts. In the S&M world, the context is not actual master and slave, it's a new context that encompasses consent and good times. Likewise, the technical context is not one that involves people, but machines communicating under specific rules which "master/slave" adequately describes.

murderfs 4y ago

Yes. There's even a bot that calls you out if you use "bad" words in internal chats.

hnburnsy 4y ago
So is there a committee or person responsible for maintaining the bot bad words list?