Re: blacklist -> blocklist in current

[gary%duzan.org@localhost]

> At Mon, 15 Jun 2020 20:35:46 +0200, Kamil Rytarowski <kamil%netbsd.org@localhost>
> wrote:
> Subject: Re: blacklist -> blocklist in current
>>
>> Whitelist/blacklist is a regular term in computing. I have never seen
>> 'blocklisting' before.
>
> Popularity != fairness; and so on....
>
> This article from 2018 might help point out the inherent issues with the
> choice of certain terms:
>
> 	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/
>
> On the other hand there are deliberate biases in choice of certain terms
> since they are indeed intended to indicate positive and negative
> opposites, however the more "neutral" one can be in choosing such terms,
> then the longer those terms might hope to hold out as inoffensive to as
> many people as possible.

   Black is bad because the dark is black, we don't see well in the dark,
and things used to come out in the dark to try to eat us. White is good
because light is white, we can see when there is light, and we get to
go hunt things we can see to eat them. None of this has anything to do
with skin color or race. It is way deeper than race. Trying to make it
about race is just pandering to those espousing a particular ideology,
as exemplified by the linked article.

   To take the matter from a different angle, there has been a rather
popular TV show in the US called "The Blacklist" since 2013, and it was
just renewed in February. If there has been any significant controversy
about the name of this show then it has not been significant enough to
warrant a mention on the show's Wikipedia page. If there is no real
offense to be taken from that, then surely the likelihood of an obscure
operating creating significant offense is proportionally small, and a
change to prevent such hypothetical offense could reasonably be
considered gratuitous.

                                  Gary Duzan