
Twiter phasing out traditional words for “more inclusive ones” - geewee
https://mobile.twitter.com/TwitterEng/status/1278733305190342656
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red_admiral
Looking at the examples here, with one small exception I don't see any
problems. Using primary/replica instead of master/slave for databases is
overdue anyway - not just because of inclusive language but because "replica"
is actually a more accurate description of, well, a replica.

The small exception is I'd like to know the context for the "avoid gendered
pronouns" one. I'm absolutely fine with using they for a generic unnamed
person (e.g. "the user") but when referring to a named individual, if their
preferred pronoun is he or she, I hope Twitter will continue to use that.

I'm sure someone could reply with a list of over-the-top examples of trying-
to-be-inclusive language, or controversial ones (e.g. the kind JK Rowling
complained about) but the ones in this list all look like boring,
uncontroversial, won't-hurt-anyone examples.

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chrismorgan
I find fault with “dummy value”: “placeholder” and “sample” each _can_ overlap
in meaning with “dummy”, but broadly mean two fairly different things. And
that’s a common thing in these discussions—they routinely replace words with
other words that lose either substantial meaning or nuance.

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emptyparadise
Releasing salary statistics to get rid of pay gaps, adding a concrete avenue
for handling any discrimination incidents, quitting contracts from oppressive
governments and agencies, committing to privacy and data policies that can
protect vulnerable groups...

I really do wish we got anything at all than this token gesture. These changes
are good, but what good does not calling the main branch "master" do for a
programmer still getting paid way less than her colleagues?

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Udik
> a programmer still getting paid way less than her colleagues?

Could you point me to a source for this?

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haunter
Wonder what will be the new colors of chess. Cyan and magenta would look cool.

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darawk
Some of these seem reasonable, or at least unobjectionable. But 'dummy value'
and 'sanity check'? Really?

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m12k
I get why an engineering department might want to do something, anything to
help combat injustice, and apparently this was the best they could come up
with. But there's an almost comedic disproportionality between the scale of
the problems, and these kinds of 'solutions', like rearranging deck chairs on
the Titanic. In the US, black people are massively incarcerated, get shot for
going jogging, get killed in police custody at 4-5 times the rate of white
people, die due to lack of healthcare, and make up mostly the bottom of the
wealth pyramid in a society where redistribution is a dirty word, real median
purchasing power has been declining for decades, televised propaganda is
selling white people their own fear and bigotry back at them so they'll vote
for politicians who will pass massive tax cuts, and dismantle any social
safety nets that might have given the lower class a fighting chance at social
mobility, oh and to top it off the White House is occupied by an incompetent,
narcissist bigot who was helped to get there by a foreign adversary in order
to sow chaos and discord in their biggest geopolitcal rival. But you know, at
least nobody needs to be offended by reading the word 'grandfathered' in
source code... It would be funny if it weren't so tragic. I say this with
love, as a dirty pinko European lefty, but it really feels like a large part
of the Left in the US is so daunted by the enormity of achieving social
justice in a society that is growing ever more injust (and is almost
religiously opposed to attempts to improve it) that they have just resigned
themselves to thought policing their own ranks for wokeness, because actually
turning the ship around seems damn near impossible at this point.

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Yoric
Ah, well, I was a big fan of "grandfathered in". I wonder if I can introduce
the term "code nepotism" instead :)

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stunt
Language does influence cultural norms.

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fortytwo79
Who is to say what the appropriate "normal" is? It seems to me that
influencing a cultural norm is doing away with what the culture desires. You
want to change the culture, not the norms. That's my big problem with all this
PC wrongspeak policing. MY normal was a world where we can use terms like
"blacklisted" and it not carry a racist connotation, because we were treated
as intelligent enough to understand that it wasn't intended to be a racial
superlative. This sort of action is driven by people's desire to NOT be
labeled a racist. To signal that they agree with the ideal of racial equality.
But it just further draws a boundary around segments of our population, and
says you're either with US or with THEM. If you don't outwardly signal that
you too aren't a racist, then you are THEM - a racist.

I for one will not change my language. My words mean what they are intended to
mean. I may be black-balled for doing so, but at least I'm not actually a
racist.

