Hacker News Reader

Comment by Knufferlbert | Hacker News Reader

We once had a rather angry Irish customer calling our support complaining that we called him a pikey (slur for gypsy). After some back and forth it turns out we just gave him an apikey.

We never had a similar issue with our random numbers/letters/reset passwords or anything like that which don't have any kind of "dont return profanity" protections. Though I agree, someone getting a randomly generated customer portal url or something containing fuck or similar would look bad. Our cloudfront or something (or was it main public facing s3 bucket? can't remember) starts with "gay" and was never picked up on.

View on HN

Totally off topic, but "gypsy" is itself a slur for Romani people in much of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people

I'd say those articles show Wikipedia's political bias and a tendency to overly politically correct instead of portraying reality.

Many in real life do refer to themselves as gitano or Gypsy and would ask for others to refer to them as such.

Of course it's very easy to find an article saying otherwise and then using that as the end of discussion for Wikipedia editors.

By ‘find an article’ you mean find ~10 real citations including the resolution of an authority a long time ago and to tell the reader it is not clear or definitive?

Better to be careful and let any individuals or communities tell you what they want. I have Roma connections in my family and at one point the word we’d use is ‘gypsy’. But, because I’m not Roma myself, if I came across some other group I wouldn’t assume I’m just allowed to say it to them.

I don't care what they want. A lot of people are tired of playing these language games.

Also, "do what people want" is fine for your interactions with an individual. But it's not a viable general rule for language, where we need one single approach. I think saying gypsy unless someone personally tells you they would rather you don't call them a gypsy is perfectly reasonable.

Everybody, in fact, takes innumerable social parameters into consideration when you say anything, especially with strangers.

For the sake of mass communication where you can’t really know your receiver, you have to do your best to just communicate whatever you need to (i.e. ‘a single approach’). Choosing to use a word that is ambiguous as to whether it is a slur is a bit unwise. I think it is probably unwise to do the same in personal interactions.

Then “a lot of people” (lol) shouldn’t complain when they piss someone off when someone already warned them

What you're saying very well seems like a threat. A threat of violence for speech.

That attitude defaults to better at violence in a particular context gets to impose their will. Or whoever has the security forces to back them out of an inferiority situation.

You miss the part when I can arbitrarily warn you about a lot of things myself and then use any interpretation of rule breaking on your part to attack you.

I know it may sound harsh but this is where many end up going so let's make it explicit.

Your first paragraph missed the point. Your second is how you deal with it. I've just told you I had a different experience. Your experience doesn't supersede mine. Your "be careful" (or else) doesn't sit well with people who don't like to be threatened.

It's in the annoying category where it can be used as a slur but also gets used as not-a-slur, including but not limited to by the people it describes.

Locally (north west england) people generally use "traveller" as a description ... but there are definitely people who use that as a slur.

Language be like that sometimes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com