A Modest Proposal for Acceptable Terminology with Git
draft-wood-term-modest-proposal-00

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Network Working Group                                            L. Wood
Internet-Draft                                                   Oceania
Intended status: Best Current Practice                     April 1, 2021
Expires: October 3, 2021

         A Modest Proposal for Acceptable Terminology with Git
                   draft-wood-term-modest-proposal-00

Abstract

   Certain established and longstanding terms of art, used as technical
   terminology, are now considered contentious and can be considered
   harmful when used in discussion, in debate, and in reading,
   following, accepting the authority of, and complying with, existing
   technical documentation that unfortunately uses those terms that were
   not considered to be at all contentious, but clear and entirely
   uncontroversial normal use, when that technical documentation was
   originally authored or published.  The use of such now-deplorable
   terms of art should be deprecated, and those terms should ideally be
   replaced with approved, accepted, more effective, inoffensive terms
   of art wherever possible.  Any new use of those original terms must
   be carefully considered and fully justified before that use is agreed
   by consensus and submitted for careful approval in documents.
   Recommended replacement substitute terms should be considered for
   inclusion instead.  A process for identifying and recommending
   replacements to those harmful terms is outlined here.

Status of This Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on October 3, 2021.

Wood                     Expires October 3, 2021                [Page 1]
Internet-Draft              A Modest Proposal                 April 2021

Copyright Notice

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   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction to this Modest Proposal  . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Discouraged Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Constraining Use of Undesirable Terminology . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Replacing Use of Unwanted Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Beyond Legacy Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Supporting the IETF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  A Picture of the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   10. RFC Editor Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   11. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   12. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     12.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     12.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13

1.  Introduction to this Modest Proposal

   There is identified and highlighted terminology, presented here
   unfortunately only in English, that, though widely historically
   utilized in previous legacy technical documents, contains or
   implicitly refers to knowledge of disturbing historical practices or
   precedents.  Those references, when they are either expressly or
   inadvertently implied by use of the terms of art that allude to or
   have been inspired by them, may disadvantage, discourage, exclude,
   alienate, or trigger unprepared readers if used, read, contemplated,
   hinted at, or researched to be understood.  That terminology may
   therefore be considered offensive, or at least as containing the
   potential to offend.  Many already consider such terminology to be
   unusable today, or going forward, in any part of industry technical