If you think changing "white/blacklist" to "allow/denylist" will help inclusivity you're a fucking racist moron who is actively hurting public perception of POCs and minorities.

You are the direct reason people scoff at the idea of modern feminism and racial equality. You've made the entire topic a fucking joke and reduced it to bite-sized, pseudo-progressive drivel that no sane person ever wants to support.

i think allow/deny describes it better than white/black

Ooh, downvoted. Too spicy even for devRant?

Please explain to me how this helps POC in any capacity.

It costs almost nothing and makes more sense to people who learned English as a second language.

@stop Nevermind the fact that "whitelist" and "blacklist" are the definitive terms for those nouns.

"Toothbrush" makes more sense as "Teethbrush" since you use it for more than one tooth, but we don't change the name for it do we?

No, we don't, because the change doesn't many anyone feel better about themselves.

Further, the change doesn't actually help you clean your teeth either. Just like it doesn't help oppressed or underprivileged individuals.

I don't disagree with the some ideas here.

I do think that 'rants' about such topics are just as counterproductive in their own way ;)

@junon changing toothbrush to teeth brush doesn’t help me onboard a non-native English speaking developer.

@valkn0t [citation needed]

Also it does have a huge effect. Changes like master -> main break other software. It costs manhours to update documentation, guides, tutorials, scripts, etc.

It also does absolutely nothing to help racism. It does nothing to educate about historical slavery.

It also invites others to make subjective changes under the guise of "inclusivity".

It also reduces the issue down to "your problem is as important as this line of code", which is simply not true.

I simply do not buy that argument.

@valkn0t I live in a non-English speaking country as a native English speaker. I've never had an issue onboarding anyone regardless of language barrier.

Again, I do not buy your argument.

@N00bPancakes This entire site falls into the "unproductive" category. Why is this rant any different?

I do not think it helps inclusivity.

But you cannot convince people anymore with logic.

They need to fail. Fail hard.

So let them fail.

Every broken app, every regression, merge conflict, incompatibility and so...

Same for rewriting old children stories / poetry and so on.

It's useless. Let them realize it on their own.

@IntrusionCM I would normally be 100% with you, but the problem I see now is that it's been roughly 6 years since Gamergate happened and the beginnings of the current PC culture and it only seems to be getting worse.

@junon I mean if your complaint is that some actions are counterproductive... then yeah I think we can note when that rant is too.

@junon I’ve had to devote man hours (really just minutes) to using main over master. It’s not that big a deal. You update a few bash/psh scripts. Update a few deployment pipelines. Big deal.

You see, this is really just an annoyance, and if it makes people feel better, I’m cool with it.

@N00bPancakes So you're invalidating my argument because both things achieve nothing? That's almost a strawman.

Why do you use devRant, then? Certainly devRant does not generally improve your productivity, does it?

@junon

Did I invalidate something?

Is this some sort of those psudo-progressive thing where any observation you don't like is "omg you're invalidating my argument"?

@valkn0t That's the point. It doesn't make anyone but the white knights feel better. It does nothing to help inclusivity.

It also gives others permission to deem arbitrary things as "offensive" and form a basis for which to claim malice or demand subjective changes.

That is the problem. It sets the precedent that these changes 1) help people and 2) are applicable and necessary in any case where someone is offended.

Per this logic, FAT should be renamed because it's offensive to overweight people. Git should be renamed because it's a slur in some country. Hard disk sounds like "hard dick" and therefore can trigger victims of sexual assault.

This sort of thing has been weaponized in the political world and is beginning to seep into the open source world and before long it's going to be a problem because these changes are virtue signaling "progressivism" and ignoring the real problems.

@junon I don't give a fuck honestly.

I don't have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or stuff like that. Most of the stuff I read here or watched on local news.

As long as noone tries to shove that shit up my arse, I don't care.

I had my discussion times with higher ups regarding corporate identity and "behaviourism". And I'll always say the same: Don't expect me to cuddle someone who behaves unprofessional - if I scold someone, I do it by arguments. If someone feels offended, they can discuss it. If this is not acceptable, I'll leave.

@N00bPancakes Why make the observation when the same can be said about 100% of the content on this site? No previously missing information was added therefore I must assume you simply do not like what I had to say.

Further, it's the same tactic used by the far-left on Twitter et al, so unless I missed some key point you're trying to make I have no choice but to assume that's what you're intending.

@IntrusionCM Again, normally I agree. The problem I have with it stems from it being weaponized - either you agree with it or you are the opposite (a racist, bigot, whatever). They've created a false dichotomy.

If someone were to propose such a change to one of my repositories, I have two options: I close it as unproductive and be labelled a racist, or accept the change and deal with the maintenance annoyances and open the doors for others to demand similarly unproductive changes.

That's how the entire PC culture has evolved - either you're with us or you're against us. They hold real solutions hostage behind veils of progressivism and "cancel" you if you don't concede.

It has the grave potential to ruin careers and reputations.

It would be okay if it was isolated to Twitter and the like but I'm seeing it more and more in OSS.

@junon "Why make the observation"

Because it has something to do with the same observation you made...

You're just fencing your away around behaving the same way as the folk's your complaining about :P

@junon I don’t have any attachment to those words. They don’t have any impact on my ability to design/build software systems. We could rename Git to Foo and Hard disk to Bar for all I care.

However, if it’s brought to light that it makes other people uncomfortable, and it costs almost nothing to NOT be a dick, then I’m going to choose the vernacular that doesn’t make me out to be a raging asshole.

TL;DR: it’s a few words. It’s not that deep.

@valkn0t You're missing my point then - who is saying "whitelist" or "blacklist" are offensive? They should read up on the etymology, because there is no reason they should find it offensive.

They're creating their own problem, arbitrarily deeming something as "offensive" and then demanding changes because of it.

It is a slippery slope toward cancel culture forming within open source. It will affect devRant, too.

@N00bPancakes I'm not asking for any changes to be made. I'm pointing out hypocracy and a dangerous precedent.

I don't see how they're alike.

Is what it is, we've talked this shit to death in several other threads.

@junon

Same ....

@SortOfTested Know any links/tags I could search? I'd like to read.

@N00bPancakes What is the hypocracy or dangerous precedent I've introduced in my post? Please stop being vague and explain.

@junon it doesn’t matter whether the etymology (in your estimation) makes it offensive or not.

It makes some people feel more included. It costs very little (compared to things that are ACTUALLY annoying, like people who host meetings with no agenda, or code bases with little tests/documentation).

And resistance to doing the absolute bare minimum just makes you look like a raging dick.

@valkn0t I can't argue with that logic.

THEM: "Hey this makes people feel excluded."
ME: "Who? And why?"
THEM: "Come on, it's just a small change."
ME: "The change has absolutely no reason to make anyone feel included or excluded - it's not an emotional or morality-based word."
THEM: "You're a raging dick for not changing this."

You're proving my point pretty much entirely - "make the nonsense change or you're a dick".

The 'amorphous excluded person' still has not been addressed - who, specifically, is being excluded by the use of these terms? Moreover, why?

@junon Lol.

THEM: “Hey man, move your backpack, it’s in the way”
YOU: “In the way of who exactly? Who are these mysterious people that might trip over my backpack?? Science shows statistically, almost everyone can step over this backpack. Besides, everyone is seated! This is oppression. You can’t call me a raging asshole for refusing a simple request that might make other people’s lives better/easier.”
EVERYONE ELSE ON THE BUS: “......”

This is how you sound.

@junon ESR wrote that already five years ago in his piece "Why Hackers Must Eject the SJWs": http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918

It does impact OSS quality because good devs are being driven out over things unrelated to the project, but the SJWs can't create anything because they're too stupid, and also purely destructive.

@valkn0t That's called a strawman.

@Fast-Nop Thanks, great read. I hadn't seen that one before. I thought the same thing around the same time when all of the CoC's popped up (first one I saw was npm's, which was of no surprise).

In our latest episode of SJW's gone wild... 🤦nope, I got nothing on this anymore.

We have circle jerked this to death already, and what have we learned?

That SJW's are nothing but cultural trolls!

how can one be bothered by this? it's a name change. if it makes some people happy, so be it. the words blacklist and whitelist did come from racist origins anyways.

@calmyourtities No, they didn't.

I do agree. English is also not my first language but I never had any issues comprehending white/black listing... it's so commonly used that everyone understands it pretty much instinctively...

Changing it and pretending like we're "saving the world" by doing it is just pretentious tokenization and I see right through it...

I don't think it will cause huge issues here, the git branch naming is a worse sin, but I don't like doing pointless stuff for no good reason, it's impractical and changes absolutely nothing... no innovation was brought, no one is actually feeling better except for the people that forced these opinions onto us, I guess they feel very good about themselves at least, but I don't give a fuck about them...

The change is completely uncalled for. It's as if someone just came into your house and forced you to call your cupboard a "morethanjustcupsboard" because they thought the furniture is misrepresented as only being able to hold cups...

@Hazarth no one is building enterprise software around your cupboards. I think you’re safe. Thanks for your pointless anecdotal evidence.

I love this new "if it makes a few people feel better, so be it" argument.
Like what's the percentage of which people we need so we can introduce changes based on random feelings?

Because I think you'd find more people "feeling bad" about useless changes.

I feel bad writing allowlist/denylist. These words don't flow and they sound incredible unprofessional. Because they aren't called that. Whitelist also can be applied to a broader field than Allowlist, which implicates "allowing something", while Whitelist just says "list of positive things". Heck - greenlist/redlist would've been better, if we really need to change it.

It's all meta bullshit. Without any base. It's the classical newschool: Yeah let's do it, most people don't do it.

@valkn0t exactly, no enterprise software cares if the file is called a blacklist or a denylist either.

But one was already there... so the push to change it is *additional* work with 0 results.

@nitwhiz Agreed completely. Dunno how those never came up - greenlist/redlist are indeed MUCH better.

Problem is, "redlist" would be offensive to native americans.

Dude, let's just not go over this.

After contemplating my anger towards this kind of "inclusive" movement, I've realized you cannot make these people understand how it is demeaning to the communities they're trying to help.

Opposing their movement paints you in this picture of a grumpy old conservative. With the best argument being "At least they're trying to do something" and "All they're asking for is a cosmetic change".

I've personally decided to let go advocating against these movements unless I'm part of the community that they're fighting for. At which point I have the grounds to confront them.

@IntrusionCM kinda vibin with you here.

With a lack of purely black/white (no pun intended) motives and the lack of immediate repurcussions it's hard to actually prove any point right or wrong.

In the long run when situation actually improves, the people who took charge in menial changes like @junon says will be frontline in claiming the rewards for their fight and I'm concerned about that.

What if these surface level improvements are all the public sees and people fail to mention the actual needful changes that were implemented.

Token case of attention whoring and good boy points farming on the cost of halting development of perception of the masses. I still have strong opposition's but I don't voice them because it's generally not my community they're empowering and there might be negetive repurcussions for me as an individual.

@valkn0t @junon Non-native English speaker here. I speak Hindi as my mother tongue.

A lot of stuff in English is weirdly put together in comparison. There are direct vocab connections which might have different connotations.

While onboarding an SF based startup, I came to learn about a lot of local terminologies (technical and otherwise).

Did it require a bit if work from both parties?

Yes.

Would I like the whole system changed just so I could feel more comfortable?

Not really.

There's an amount of wonder to be had, revelling in the local culture of a place (even SF) and that includes language. Maybe it's a bit too much to ask in turn of productivity but to be honest, a bit of technical homework like blacklist/whitelist doesn't put a dent it.

Eh, I think it's less about actually trying to make things more inclusive and more about someone being able to say they've played their part in ending racism without actually doing anything useful

Words are just tools used to communicate ideas, but recently people are focusing very much on the words themselves rather than the actual meaning behind them...