Why is the asterisk (*) symbol often used in the middle of words these days? I didn't get the memo when this trend started.

Whitelist. You can spell it out here.

I think allowlist and denylist are better alternatives to whitelist and blacklist. Allow and Deny are more literally what this is about. White and Black are just old metaphors that aren’t clear they are just familiar.

Whitelist and Blacklist don’t really have racists backgrounds but it they are part of a longstanding cultural bias that equates white=good and black=bad. Subverting those biases seems like a good idea.

There are numerous "industry standard" terms including hot/cold, black/white, allow/deny, positive/negative etc.

The generalized concept that white=good,black=bad is something that can easily disappear from all "industry" with more precise terms.

In the case of this topic, allow/deny is a much better set of names.