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These changes make sense even outside of any sort of political charge. "Allow list" is frankly a much more descriptive and easy to understand term than "white

These changes make sense even outside of any sort of political charge. "Allow list" is frankly a much more descriptive and easy to understand term than "white list". It's a list of things that are allowed. If you were trying to learn the English language, I'd imagine a self describing term is much easier to understand.

dchftcs 4y ago
>These changes make sense even outside of any sort of political charge. They only make sense if you disregard any costs associated with the change. In addition to logistical costs, it's culturally costly to make many people change, and even more costly that people who fail to adapt are demonized. Generations of text was written to use blacklist/whitelist, and people who read them would naturally be more comfortable with those usage, and you're asking them to bend over. >If you were trying to learn the English language, I'd imagine a self describing term is much easier to understand. The controversies of blacklist/whitelist are very America-centric and your argument is exemplary of that. Terms like blacklist/white list have already permeated many languages by this time. People who have seen blacklist/whitelist in their own language would have no problem adapting to the English version of it.
- carbadtraingood 4y ago
  Can you help me understand the costs? Because as far as I can tell it is: 1) "We should consider using Allowlist" "ok, but let's be careful with externally facing APIs, in exactly the same way we change all our externally facing APIs?" "Sure!" 2) "I was editing this file, find/replaced a couple cases of whitelist while I was in there" "LGTM" 3) "Oh, hey, noticed we had nearly finished opportunistically replacing whitelist. Does anyone mind if I just finish up?" "Sure, timebox it?" Like, it's extremely low cost? What costs are you imagining?
  - mariusor 4y ago
    I'd like to add a point that I haven't seen discussed regarding the cost of change. In many languages a lot of computer related terms have no native correspondent, therefore they use the ones borrowed from English. If the English IT community decides en-masse to change those terms, the best result is that these people will have to catch up - with some unknown delay - or that they'll not bother, and there will be a disconnect in the terms. Which one is more likely and what the overall effects will be, I have no idea. But it will be a point of friction.
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robonerd 4y ago
> "Allow list" is frankly a much more descriptive and easy to understand term than "white list". Only if you're pretending we were all learned English yesterday. "White list" is an older more established term, and that familiarity makes it easier to understand. Self-describing terms don't aid communication if they're replacing old terms that everybody already understood anyway. An example, "submarine" and "undersea boat". The latter is self-describing, while the former is vague. A submarine.. what? 'Submarine' alone seems to be an adjective that means 'under the ocean'. But what is under the ocean? A submarine cable? A submarine crab? "Undersea boat" is self-describing; what is underwater? A boat. So is "undersea boat" a better term? It self-describes well enough that English speakers with no knowledge of German should be able to figure out what it means easily. But does that mean it's actually a better term? No, in the context of English it isn't a better term, because everybody already knows what a 'submarine' is so this term's failure to self-describe is irrelevant. Already knowing what a word means is always easier than being able to puzzle out what a word means by seeing that it describes itself. Most words don't self-describe anyway, and even when they do, the words they self-describe with aren't self-describing themselves. What is a 'list' anyway? That doesn't self-describe. Should we replace it with "ordered-collection-of-things"? None of those words self-describe either! The adoption of this word isn't really about self-description, self-describing words just isn't something we [english speakers] prioritize. It's political activism based on the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
- regularfry 4y ago
  > Only if you're pretending we were all learned English yesterday. "White" here is metaphorical. "Allow" is literal. That makes "allow" the easier-to-understand term for those who are learning. Because, yes, English is something that needs to be learned. Not "everybody" already understands everything, unless your definition of "everybody" discounts a whole lot of humans for some reason. > "White list" is an older more established term, and that familiarity makes it easier to understand. Only if you already understand it, which is entirely self-referential. > self-describing words just isn't something we [english speakers] prioritize I'm going to assume here you mean the difference between metaphors and literals, because otherwise nothing makes sense. And it depends on the audience. If it's technical docs, I sure hope whoever's writing them takes a suitably informed view as to the comprehension level of their readers, because that's the damn job. > political activism "We should not make things easier for non-native speakers who don't already have all the implied context of the English language down pat" sounds a lot like a political position to me.

dchftcs 4y ago

>These changes make sense even outside of any sort of political charge. They only make sense if you disregard any costs associated with the change. In addition to logistical costs, it's culturally costly to make many people change, and even more costly that people who fail to adapt are demonized. Generations of text was written to use blacklist/whitelist, and people who read them would naturally be more comfortable with those usage, and you're asking them to bend over. >If you were trying to learn the English language, I'd imagine a self describing term is much easier to understand. The controversies of blacklist/whitelist are very America-centric and your argument is exemplary of that. Terms like blacklist/white list have already permeated many languages by this time. People who have seen blacklist/whitelist in their own language would have no problem adapting to the English version of it.

carbadtraingood 4y ago
Can you help me understand the costs? Because as far as I can tell it is: 1) "We should consider using Allowlist" "ok, but let's be careful with externally facing APIs, in exactly the same way we change all our externally facing APIs?" "Sure!" 2) "I was editing this file, find/replaced a couple cases of whitelist while I was in there" "LGTM" 3) "Oh, hey, noticed we had nearly finished opportunistically replacing whitelist. Does anyone mind if I just finish up?" "Sure, timebox it?" Like, it's extremely low cost? What costs are you imagining?
- mariusor 4y ago
  I'd like to add a point that I haven't seen discussed regarding the cost of change. In many languages a lot of computer related terms have no native correspondent, therefore they use the ones borrowed from English. If the English IT community decides en-masse to change those terms, the best result is that these people will have to catch up - with some unknown delay - or that they'll not bother, and there will be a disconnect in the terms. Which one is more likely and what the overall effects will be, I have no idea. But it will be a point of friction.

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robonerd 4y ago

> "Allow list" is frankly a much more descriptive and easy to understand term than "white list". Only if you're pretending we were all learned English yesterday. "White list" is an older more established term, and that familiarity makes it easier to understand. Self-describing terms don't aid communication if they're replacing old terms that everybody already understood anyway. An example, "submarine" and "undersea boat". The latter is self-describing, while the former is vague. A submarine.. what? 'Submarine' alone seems to be an adjective that means 'under the ocean'. But what is under the ocean? A submarine cable? A submarine crab? "Undersea boat" is self-describing; what is underwater? A boat. So is "undersea boat" a better term? It self-describes well enough that English speakers with no knowledge of German should be able to figure out what it means easily. But does that mean it's actually a better term? No, in the context of English it isn't a better term, because everybody already knows what a 'submarine' is so this term's failure to self-describe is irrelevant. Already knowing what a word means is always easier than being able to puzzle out what a word means by seeing that it describes itself. Most words don't self-describe anyway, and even when they do, the words they self-describe with aren't self-describing themselves. What is a 'list' anyway? That doesn't self-describe. Should we replace it with "ordered-collection-of-things"? None of those words self-describe either! The adoption of this word isn't really about self-description, self-describing words just isn't something we [english speakers] prioritize. It's political activism based on the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

regularfry 4y ago
> Only if you're pretending we were all learned English yesterday. "White" here is metaphorical. "Allow" is literal. That makes "allow" the easier-to-understand term for those who are learning. Because, yes, English is something that needs to be learned. Not "everybody" already understands everything, unless your definition of "everybody" discounts a whole lot of humans for some reason. > "White list" is an older more established term, and that familiarity makes it easier to understand. Only if you already understand it, which is entirely self-referential. > self-describing words just isn't something we [english speakers] prioritize I'm going to assume here you mean the difference between metaphors and literals, because otherwise nothing makes sense. And it depends on the audience. If it's technical docs, I sure hope whoever's writing them takes a suitably informed view as to the comprehension level of their readers, because that's the damn job. > political activism "We should not make things easier for non-native speakers who don't already have all the implied context of the English language down pat" sounds a lot like a political position to me.