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Comment by austin-cheney | Hacker News Reader

I am not aware of actual code removal but skirting in that direction there was a movement, just a couple years back, to replace words that had become more offensive than they were in the recent past. One example is renaming master to main.

I am not stating any opinion for or against any words or terms in this context.

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Somewhat on a tangent, but when people talk about offensive language in the context of cultural criticism they don't mean terms that cause the people who hear them to be offended but things that may diminish the value of some people in the eyes of the people who hear them. I.e. something is offensive, in this sense, to some group X not if people in group X are offended when they themselves are exposed to it but if people who hear it may come to devalue people in group X. Whether it actually does or does not is another matter. In that sense, the discussion of the clitoris in an anatomy book is not offensive in the same way as the term master, but its absence is. Its inclusion could be offensive in the sense of scandalising some people who see it, but it's not the same sense.

I cannot own the perspectives and unspoken histories of other people, nor will I try. Trying to do so ultimately only results in shades of self-censorship or poor imitation.

Instead I will do my best to balance my language between brevity and specificity while hoping my instructions are clear, direct, and honest for the audience. Everything else is left to chance.

I have found over the years, the degree of my communication's success is left more to the particularities and desires of group thought from a given audience than from the words themselves. I come to this conclusion through numerous times of providing the same communication, verbatim, to difference audiences and watching the wildly differing results.

If I lived by commission I suspect I would alter my behavior. Instead, I manage a software team for a living.

I wasn't trying to suggest how individuals should behave nor claim that language has a large impact on social dynamics in general. I'm merely saying that in the context of cultural criticism the thing that is sometimes referred to as "offensive language" doesn't mean language that may insult or offend the sensiblities of those who hear it but language that may seem to make those who hear it think less of others. I don't know if this is useful or silly, but that is what it means.

My grandfather was a slave - he passed in 2007. I have no objection to the term master, nor have I heard anybody ever who was affected by actual slavery to take offence to the term.

I remember much debate about this, and not once was an actual affected person mentioned who took offence.

1. My whole point was that it is not about anyone in the affected group taking offence. The question is whether other people can come to devalue people in the affected group. In this context "offensive" doesn't mean taking offence, but devaluing. To take and extreme and controved example, if I tell a subordinate that the women on our team were "diversity hires" who did not deserve to be hired, the harm is not in a woman hearing I said that. It is done even if none of the women on the team ever know I said that. Similarly, it doesn't matter if the women on our team all agreed with that statement and weren't offended by it.

2. I make absolutely no claim about the effectiveness of using or avoiding certain terms even in the relevant context. I'm only saying that people misunderstand what "offensive" means in this context. It means things that may make some people think less of others, whether or not those others know about it or are offended by it.

The anti-master position also willfully disregards synonymy. Just because I have mastered the English language does not mean it belongs to me. Master Splinter does not own the Ninja Turtles.

I think OP explicitly said that it's not about the affected party feeling offended, but about how it makes you look to choose such words.

Think bad PR, not actual people complaining due to being offended. Like if I named my code library dead babies, it's possible nobody whose delt with a dead baby finds offense to it, but many people might find it off putting that I've chosen to call it that. So if I was a high value corporate entity who doesn't want bad PR, I might want to rename it.

I think in the end it's more of a, oh damn, did I just make a master/slave analogy for my database design? Maybe someone will find that offensive, and I don't want that, so I'll rename it as a precaution, even if no one has yet to let me know it's offending them.

This is insightful. Thank you.

Renaming things to better names happens all the time, selectively removing something is much worse. Especially for a reference book like Gray's Anatomy

The severity of harm is highly subjective, though I do agree with you about the harm. The more important thing is the intent, which completely underscores that severity.

Main is also an easier name for beginners. I’m old school and always got the comparison of master branch to master tapes and such things, but people new to this stuff wouldn’t necessarily have the same intuition about the name. Main is just clearer (for now). Similar to blacklist/whitelist. I had no context for either of those and it took me soooooo long to remember what they meant. Allowlist/denylist is just so much clearer. Any reduction in harm, however tiny, is a nice bonus to just making things clearer for more people

No, blacklist and whitelist are far superior because blacklist is a normal English word. It isn't even a term of art, programmers just adopted a word that already existed in the English language (and used whitelist by way of analogy). The argument that the new terms are better holds no water whatsoever. The old terms were superior.

How is "allowlist" or "denylist" not more clear to, say, someone for whom English is a second language?

Sure blacklist was already an English word, but it's not necessarily _common_, and the distinction between blacklist and whitelist is kinda arbitrary. If you'd like to explain Why the word means what it does I'd love to hear it

Allowlist and denylist are clearer, in that the meaning is in more clear alignment with the words it's made up of.

The old terms just make more sense to those who are old enough to be used to it.

Allowlist/Denylist are clear and perhaps more specific, but blacklist/whitelist are not arbitrary, they're just using black in valid ways according to common English dictionaries, which is similar to how other languages use the word black, but it is less specific.

> If you'd like to explain Why the word means what it does I'd love to hear it

Simply because black means different things depending on the context. Evil, invisible, mysterious, absence of light, sinister. It's not arbitrary because that's how the word black is commonly used.

I'm not trying to argue about validity here, but rather that these definitions/meanings of the word black are not "primary" definitions but secondary meanings based on that contextual/cultural/colloquial use. Arbitrary in the sense that that "commonality" is arbitrary and cultural, and language could just have easily developed to flip the colloquial definition.

Contrasted against using words where the Primary definition is the one that matters.

Imagine an alien culture encountering the word. Blacklist versus Denylist. The latter requires a lot less context to understand the meaning, because "Deny" has a single pretty consistent definition.

> Imagine an alien culture encountering the word. Blacklist versus Denylist.

Seems like it's just another step in developing one's language skills, no more or less ambiguous than "deny" for someone who doesn't know either word, but I'd wager than "black" would probably be encountered earlier in the vocab training list. It's a bit of a stretch, imo. "Reject" or "Turn-away" or "Block" works too, as well as many others, language is flexible, it doesn't seem names for lists are worth so much energy.

The etymology is interesting - Pebble Voting was used in the early democracies in Greece from 500 BC. Black pebbles meant 'no' and white meant 'yes'. The tradition evolved to the black and white marbles used in the Roman senate centuries later, i.e. two millennia ago. The practice has since continued – it was used in the early American republic in the 18th century, and the word 'ballot' used today for voting means just that - a 'little ball'.

The word 'blacklist' probably originated from this meaning. It was in use in England since before, but it was probably the "Black List of Regicides” that popularised the term. It was a list compiled by the administration of King Charles II England of those to be punished for the beheading of his father King Charles I in 1649, following the restoration of the monarchy of England in 1660. As this list was rather long, it was a probably a bit of a traumatic event for the gentry in London and it’s not hard to imagine that the memory of the dreaded "blacklist" stuck. A century later the word was in general use for a list of enemies, detractors, and unwanted people.

Conversely, "in the black" is the notion of having no debts or a positive cash flow. This obviously comes from the centuries old principle of using black for credit, and red ink for debit and negative balances in the double-entry accounting system codified in the 15th century.

A tangential but equally fascinating concept is the practice of forbidding - or blacklisting - words in totalitarian regimes like Maoist China. Controlling language was a key strategy to influence thought, define in-groups, and ostracize out-groups. It's a hallmark of a totalitarian systems aiming to shape thought through language. Very much not at all in line with the principles of ballot voting in a democratic system one should think.

(The last argument can be used with any word. I could find your Gallicism offensive and demand that all words with a French etymology should be removed from English to restore it to it's Old-English form before the oppressive Normand rule, since after all, the old words would just make more sense to those who are old enough to be used to it, and my feelings are important.)

Thank you for sharing the etymology! It's quite interesting, I agree!

I may have been a bit too pithy/I sufficiently clear with that last statement I made.

I meant it in the sense that understanding the word relies on a lot of contextual/colloquial/cultural understanding that's typically gained via time and exposure. At least, more of it than allow/deny requires.

Imagine an alien culture encountering blacklist vs Denylist. The latter requires a lot less context to translate, because Deny is used a lot more consistently.

My argument is mainly one about _clarity_, not hurt feelings.

To me (where English is a second language), Allowlist and denylist seem unclearer. Is it a block list, a exclude list, or a permission list? Allow/deny would lead me to the last one, as in authenticate users who has some permissions but not others.

Blacklist and whitelist would be closer to include/exclude, so the replacement would be a includelist and excludelist, or include/exclude as shorthand.

That's fair!

I feel like a permission list is kind of a superset of a block list and an exclude list. Or they're all different perspectives/solutions to the same kind of problem, that a permission list is the more generalizable solution for.

Or it's a way of framing the problem that doesn't embed the "exclusion" idea in the naming.

And it kinda bridges over to the idea of Access Control Lists a bit better?

> How is "allowlist" or "denylist" not more clear to, say, someone for whom English is a second language?

Because neither of those are actual words in English. They make sense to someone whose first language is English.

This master tape thing didn't even cross my mind. subversion used trunk. git used master which sounded way better for me. End of story. They're just words, non-native words for me.

As for whitelist and blacklist, I don't remember having any difficulties with them. Maybe on the first encounter, but that's it.

Dunno about whitelist, but blacklist had the same meaning for hundreds of years.

It's not even "was", that movement still exists. People are still out there trying to remove terms of art on the basis of the theoretical offense felt by an extreme minority of people. It's ridiculous.

Or, it's thoughtful and considerate.

Potato, potahto.

That's not even remotely similar.

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