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Comment by ramblerman | Hacker News Reader

I see the benefit of standardizing some language across documentation, but I feel a lot of politically charged items were also taken out which ironically make some things harder to understand, as they are just so commonplace.

> fat client : don't use fat

> the process is hanging : don't use hang/hung

> dummy variable : don't use dumb

> we treat this client as a first-class citizen : don't use first-class citizen

> DMZ : use a more precise term like perimeter network.

> DLQ : use unprocessed messages queue

> whitelist/blacklist : use deny list or allow list

> blackbox : use opaque-box

> sanity check : use coherence check

> kebab case : use dash case

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So I once had an overweight, non-secondary client with a stuck process within the perimeter network. Initial coherence checks quickly foreshadowed that this would turn out to be quite an opaque-box thing to debug. Unfortunately, they had removed kill and killall for some reason.

actually "kill" is also impermissible

It's a reference to the kill and killall commands from *NIX, so it would be allowed if formatted as code.

Yes, similarly to their recommended example for allowlist: 'Add a user to the allowlist (whitelist) by entering the following: whitelist adduser EMAIL_ADDRESS.'

I feel enlightened.

A hung jury, or a deadlocked jury, is that not proper to say according to Google?

Blackbox is just insane — sorry I mean incoherent. Sanity check? Dummy variable? Writing documentation without these words would make it hard to read.

Yes, I hung a picture on the wall once. A violent act indeed!

I hope you didn't use a nail because

1) some religious groups may be sensitive to this word since Jesus was nailed to the cross

2) some might interpret it as a sexual innuendo

Also I certainly hope there was no frame, because some ethnic groups have been framed for crimes in the past.

In fact, if your painting builds on the heritage of colonial culture, it is inherently racist and problematic.

The only progressive option, really, is to tear down the wall.

Some of those really scream "double standards" to me.

> the process is hanging

So are my clothes and the bells in the tower, but I haven't heard a complaint about those.

> whitelist/blacklist

Interestingly nobody seems to bat an eye when yet another video or article talks about vantablack("the blackest black"), white noise or a whitepaper.

It's so hard for me to support such attempts to choose better words when it always comes with other additions that simply do not make any sense.

White/black refers to allow/deny in this case, so your white paper and vantablack examples wouldn't work here as they have no good or bad connotation. Better examples maybe would be "black ice" or "white dress = purity for weddings", but those aren't related to computing.

> your white paper and vantablack examples wouldn't work here

Note my example was not about bleached paper but the actual term white paper used in business and other contexts.

> but those aren't related to computing.

Skin color isn't related to computing either, but here we are.

The 'white' part of 'white paper' does not refer to positive or negative, hence why it is not a good example.

Blackbox testing doesn't have a positive or negative connotation either but activists still want it to be changed.

Also e.g. "white" isn't seen as positive because of skin color, it's more a cleanliness/innocence thing. In my native language we have a phrase roughly meaning "wearing a white shirt" which indicates someone doesn't figuratively have blood on their hands/clothes. You could associate this word with white teeth or clouds just as much as with skin color.

That's the problem with this whole debate: people pushing for changes with the same precision as word filters failing at "Scunthorpe", without care for context or details. Sure, it's easier that way. But also harder to justify.

In the black or in the red for financials

This reminds me of an apocryphal story from development economics. Someone's working paper gets read by an academic from a more qualitative discipline, and they get a furious email: "how dare you say Africans are dummies, and live in log houses?"

Kebab case is controversial?

Yeah I feel like this document forbids a lot of fun language for no good reason. Kebab case and hamburger menu for example.

To those who don't touch pork/ham, touching a hamburger menu isn't great...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger#Etymology_and_termin...

    > The term hamburger originally derives from Hamburg,
    > Germany's second-largest city. Hamburger in German is
    > the demonym of Hamburg, similar to frankfurter and wiener,
    > names for other meat-based foods and demonyms of the cities 
    > of Frankfurt and Vienna (in German Wien) respectively.

A Google search for Wiener suggests it isn't something one really wants to touch either!

I don't eat pork, and the work hamburger is not offensive to me. Plus, it comes from Hamburg.

I'm tired of virtue signallers telling others what to be offended about and what not to be offended about.

Just because it has the prefix “ham”? Can muslims use ham radio or hamming codes or hammers or hammocks or visit Hamburg?

Today's "fun" is tomorrow's microaggression. In the dynamic modern society, the only way to be respectful of future marginalised societies is to prohibit "fun". In case of doubt, if any word you used felt like something that could be construed as playful, please sign up for diversity and inclusion office hours and seek legal approval.

Edit: my joke is not not endorsed as an official mandatory non-negotiable community code of conduct by my employer (who happens to be pictured in TFA), pinky swear!

Problematic. Missing the mark. lrem "has some growing to do". lrem "identified ways they can do better".

I have your canned criticism and responses ready for you if you need them.

Yes, to vegans and vegetarians.

I'm vegetarian and this is ridiculous. Naming food with meat in it isn't a microaggression.

I’m sorry, but you can’t speak for all vegetarians in the world. Some may find it offensive so we must err on the side of caution.

After all, it’s just one word. /s

I'm vegan and I think it's important to avoid using oppressive language.

Like “kebab”? Are words like “steak” oppressive? “Egg”?

Can you explain your perspective here? I’m genuinely confused and curious about your point of view.

Yea, sure.

Say we're talking about someone's leg. If we use words like "muscles" and "flesh" to refer to their leg, then that's different than using the words "steak" or "meat", because those last two words are used to legitimize eating the leg in question.

If a friend of yours referred to your skin as "bacon", perhaps you'd laugh because it's an absurd idea that your friend would want to fry and eat your skin for breakfast. But sometimes we use the word "bacon" for real about eating someone's skin, mostly if they're a pig. Those, who don't view it as ethical to commit violence towards others and then eat their bodies, would therefore avoid talking about the skin of others as "bacon" and their muscles as "meat" (unless they were joking, perhaps).

I wouldn't consider "egg" is an oppressive word as such, because it doesn't imply eating per-se. Vegans would still say that a chicken is laying eggs. But "fishing", even though it's just the noun "fish" turned into a verb, is violent because it means "to hunt fish, often for eating". Imagine if the verb "dogging" was used for hunting and killing dogs? "Childing"? "Womaning"?

Sometimes this carnistic language bias is hidden for us. If you're more curious, please check out Melanie Joy's video, The Secret Reason We Eat Meat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao2GL3NAWQU

You can make veggie kebabs.

I guess you can use "sashlic case" then...

Some people use "kebab" as a pejorative term for Muslims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remove_Kebab

I see nothing in the document that suggests that "kebab case" is on there for being controversial. Most of the items on the list are perfectly uncontroversial, and are there because there are clearer alternatives or because they want to standardize on one among equally good alternatives.

It is probably on there because "dash case" will be more easily understood by more people.

I think the kebab case rename has some merit beyond political

what kebab case is:

this-is-a-test

what kebab case should actually have been:

-this-is-a-test-

What's the problem with using a word like fat in a way that has no negative connotation (as in fat client)?

Same as "sanity check". It seems people with severe anxiety or similar issues prefer to change their surrounding environment to not be reminded of their possible perceived shortcomings instead of getting professional help.

It's sad that this happens in the first place, but also in the same breath as change proposals in the name of fighting racism and other discrimination.

I don't want to sound insensitive, but people who struggle with encountering terms like "fat" or "sanity" in their everyday life could achieve a significantly better quality of life by improving themselves. I know that from first-hand experience and from professionals who actually have patients with fear of flying and all kinds of other ailments, and I think being so accomodating actually hurts the affected people more in the long term than it helps.

I think those people just want to impose their will on others and engage in attention seeking by constantly being offended about anything and everything. People with anxiety usually want to do the opposite: Stay in the background and not attract any attention to themselves.

True, that's definitely a big reason. There are enough public examples where people were outraged in the name of other groups that they didn't even ask or talk with about the issue beforehand.

A deadletter queue contains messages that couldn’t be dispatched. It’s my preferred term, but if I had to censor it at gunpoint and pick a euphemism, it’d probably be “exception file” because that’s where batch processes traditionally copy input records that failed.

Personally, I think the alternatives for whitelist/blacklist and blackbox are just better in actually transporting more of the intended meaning.

They also don't roll off the tongue as well, which is, whether we like it or not, one of the main deciding factors for how language evolves. Imho attempts to replace established terms could be much more successful in wider adoption if they took this into account.

For example I don't know why most try to push "denylist" instead of the more obvious "blocklist".

Slang exists for a reason, and going the opposite way just makes everything harder.

I work a bit on translation of terminology w.r.t new terms, and my pet theory is that the key factor for predicting whether a proposed translation will catch on and get used is the syllable count; proposed terms that are short to use get used, but proposed longish terms get abandoned whenever there is a shorter alternative - perhaps they get used in official documentation, but in practice everyone tends to use the shorter alternative even if it's worse in all other aspects.

From that perspective; allowlist and denylist are three syllables each; blacklist, blocklist and whitelist are two - so my experience suggests that in the end the latter will be used instead of the former whenever possible.

What does "political" mean in this context?

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