Inclusive IT Language Guide [pdf]

https://www.oit.uci.edu/wp-content/uploads/Inclusive-Language-Guide.pdf

by neduma • 5 years ago

15 41 5 years ago

oit.uci.edu

vanusa2• 5 years ago

feed 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• 5 years ago

Tone deaf is such a thoughtless idiom!

nix236• 5 years ago

True! "Listening in a Vacuum" would be more inclusive ;)

robbmorganf• 5 years ago

Does anyone know the etymology of "black box"?

secondaryacct4• 5 years ago

You 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.

riskneutral3• 5 years 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• 5 years ago

A box with holes (with long sleeves attached) to manipulate undeveloped film. No light gets inside to protect the film from accidental exposure.

tasogare• 5 years ago

I 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.

secondaryacct4• 5 years ago

Yeah 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• 5 years ago

I’ve seen a linter complain about "mastercard" in a JSON commit. It’s the payment processing system, we cannot let anyone change that.

snowflake556• 5 years ago

This is just ridiculous I am leaving California I cannot take working for companies here. My workplace is this bad or worse.

WaffleIronMaker• 5 years ago

This 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.

secondaryacct4• 5 years ago

We 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• 5 years ago

An interesting feature of some Asian languages (e.g. Japanese, Thai, Indonesian) is that in general they use 1 word (I'll write it as "s/he") to refer to third persons. I wonder how that's influenced kids growing up with the language.

Meanwhile in German they're trying to define RegExp, which is also pronouncable, for gender-inclusive words[1], since they differentiate between e.g. Pilot (male) and Pilotin (female) as well as Piloten (many pilots, in the old days this used to mean of mixed genders, but some people felt excluded) and Pilotinnen (many female pilots).

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/30/1049603171/germany-gender-neu...

basch2• 5 years ago

chairperson or chair over chairman I understand. engineer hours over man hours, sure, makes sense if everybody is contributing.

sister campus or grandfathered seems different, its not gendering a person, but an inanimate object or an action. in the case of the latter, the gender has nothing to do with the person performing the grandfathering. maybe its because the words have an endearing quality to them that substituting them feels like a loss. not sure how i feel about native meaning innate being stricken from available usage. a bridge too far maybe. does the concept of gender really need to be 100% eliminated from all speech?

maybe this comment will age poorly when someday i realize the error of my thoughtprocess.

Interestingly enough, one I think we should get better about IS present in the guide, albeit as part of their description and NOT something you shouldnt say. "When referencing users with disabilities..." The word users sounds like drug users, addicts etc. When talking about people, I have tried very hard to drop the word user from my vocabulary, purely out of respect and politeness. They/we are people. (In IT circles, user almost always has an additional very very slight to heavy pejorative tone to begin with. It implies lesser in some way, or an us/them tribalism, even if people saying it dont understand they are doing it.) The same should go for drug users. They are people.

unmole• 5 years ago

I don't disagree with the thrust of your argument but the term grandfather clause originates from Jim Crow laws.

xupybd• 5 years ago

Really 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?

nix236• 5 years ago

"Rich" Students at elite university are excluded from cleaning their house....so naturally it makes sense ;)

DarylZero• 5 years ago

Inclusive language for use by exclusive institutions. All talk and no action.

da39a3ee• 5 years ago

Lest 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

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• 5 years ago

This is laughable. I'm not even sure this comes from an honest intention to improve the world.

nix236• 5 years ago

Happy that "Human Resources" is still accepted (the ~only english expression i actually find disgusting) ;)

lazyeye• 5 years ago

Are these kind of language "guides" limited to English or is it happening in other cultures too?

ukoms• 5 years ago

I 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• 5 years ago

I had an amazing time laughing at this document :)

Best morning ever.

nix236• 5 years ago

Has that University still a "Master degree" or is it just not ok with Git and DB's?

riskneutral3• 5 years ago

The 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?

nix236• 5 years ago

Fallen fruit would be better...because it just discriminates people with backpain.

gorgabal• 5 years 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?

* 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.

nix236• 5 years ago

Not 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

bloak• 5 years ago

Compound 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/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".

tablespoon3• 5 years 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).

FooBarBizBazz• 5 years ago

Say 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.

brnttst• 5 years ago

I 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.

Inclusive IT Language Guide [pdf]

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