Code humor and inclusiveness

Posted Jun 15, 2021 18:28 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: Code humor and inclusiveness by nilsmeyer
Parent article: Code humor and inclusiveness

Yeah, there's no hard and fast rule but the more offensive the slang and the deeper the wound, the more culture-specific they tend to be. So while paved with all the best intentions, some "universal" inclusiveness efforts can be actually naive and narrow minded.

In fact culture and language differences can be felt even inside the US. Social media: people separated by a common language and talking across each other.

To be fairer with this document the "avoid being too culturally specific to the US" does not seem to be about language. The examples given are holidays, sports and figures of speech. They should add boustrophedon dates, calendars with split "week-ends" and of course non-decimal units :-)

Code humor and inclusiveness

Posted Jun 24, 2021 8:51 UTC (Thu) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link] (5 responses)

The problem I have is that I as a non-native speaker have is to keep up on the ever-changing landscape of words that are replaced in the name of inclusiveness, while also having to maintain a dictionary in my head for when I encounter those terms that are now deemed non-inclusive. It's like having to learn a new language all over. That is what I meant by jargon. And it also leaves me feeling bad because if someone took the time to record what might offend people, have I been hurting people all the time without intent?

To me it seems a bit silly and paternalistic, I was orphaned at a young age as the result of murder but that doesn't mean I'm traumatized anytime anyone uses the word "orphan" or "kill" or "shoot the other node in the head" - and even if I was, as long as it wasn't the intent of the other party, it is on me to deal with those issues.

> To be fairer with this document the "avoid being too culturally specific to the US" does not seem to be about language. The examples given are holidays, sports and figures of speech. They should add boustrophedon dates, calendars with split "week-ends" and of course non-decimal units :-)

Most of that is benign, and I think the reader should be given some credit. If I don't understand a metaphor I can look it up. It does not offend me if someone doesn't use the metric system, on the other side it would be a pain for me to have to convert all the units I use to some other system - we have computers for that.

Code humor and inclusiveness

Posted Jun 24, 2021 20:36 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (4 responses)

> The problem I have is that I as a non-native speaker have is to keep up on the ever-changing landscape of words that are replaced in the name of inclusiveness, while also having to maintain a dictionary in my head for when I encounter those terms that are now deemed non-inclusive.

While politics are complicated and messy, the technical solution to this problem is dead-simple:

./scripts/checkpatch.pl --codespell --dictionary inclusive_US_english

Problem solved, back to work.

I've been asking a couple inclusion "authorities" for such a machine-usable dictionary. I haven't even asked any of them to agree with each other and produce a single one, after all it would be trivial to just:

./scripts/checkpatch.pl --codespell --dictionary inclusive_US_english1
./scripts/checkpatch.pl --codespell --dictionary inclusive_US_english2
...

Problem solved, back to work.

However I only got silence so far.

> It does not offend me if someone doesn't use the metric system, on the other side it would be a pain for me to have to convert all the units I use to some other system - we have computers for that.

You mean like NASA computers for instance? https://www.wired.com/2010/11/1110mars-climate-observer-r... :-)

The units problem is not about inclusion, sorry I gave that impression.

Code humor and inclusiveness

Posted Jun 25, 2021 8:56 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

The problem with that is --dictionary inclusive_GB_English

There's more than a few words that have VERY different meanings depending on which version of English you are using. And what happens when a word is in inclusive_GB but exclusive_US, or vice-versa?

The only solution that works is "try not to give offense, be slow to take offense". The first is not always possible! and the second is needed to defuse failures. (And the reason the first is not always possible, is there are FAR too many people for whom the second does not apply. One only has to look at the discussion about fags to see why.)

Cheers,
Wol

Code humor and inclusiveness

Posted Jun 25, 2021 9:23 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

I think you missed my first sentence:

> While politics are complicated and messy, the TECHNICAL solution to this problem is dead-simple.

Once the technical problem is solved, any project can decide to use any dictionaries they want.

> And what happens when a word is in inclusive_GB but exclusive_US, or vice-versa?

Spellchecker and inclusive checkers always exclude terms, they never force you to use certain words. How would they!?

Code humor and inclusiveness

Posted Jun 25, 2021 20:49 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

I had great problems discussing race issues on Groklaw because "black" is in Inclusive_GB, but the translation "African American" is both wrong and, imho, belongs in Exclusive_GB.

Spell checkers etc don't force you to use certain words, true, but if your words are in someone else's exclusive dictionary then it makes it impossible to communicate ...

Cheers,
Wol

Code humor and inclusiveness

Posted Jun 26, 2021 2:54 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Understood: finding common language can be difficult when discussing sensitive topics. On the other hand, I don't expect to ever have to use "African American" in source code and no one has requested to rename red-black trees yet. Worst case we'll just do as the Americans do and get back to work, what's new? After all what countries are the GAFAM, FAANG and many others based from?