1643142 - (derogatory-language) [meta] No derogatory language

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, task)

Description

[Jon Bauman [:jbauman:]]

In accordance with the "Derogatory Language" section of the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines, instances of terminology which is identified as derogatory or exclusionary should be identified, removed, and automation maintained to prevent future introduction.

This issue exists to collect the various specific issues related to derogatory language and well as help determine additional terms which may be derogatory.

Comment 1

[Jon Bauman [:jbauman:]]

We already have bug 1642790 for blacklist/whitelist. How do we feel about removing "grandfather" used in the sense of grandfather clause? See these resources about it's racist origins:

1. The Racial History Of The 'Grandfather Clause'
2. Words Matter: Why We Should Put an End to “Grandfathering”

If there's support for this, I can file a meta bug for the various instances of the term in our code.

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Jon Bauman [:jbauman:] from comment #1)

How do we feel about removing "grandfather" used in the sense of grandfather clause?

Makes sense to me. It would appear we might need a sub-meta, and then (at least) one bug for our own code and another for imported ICU code, where we'd have to see if they would consider changing it...

Comment 3

[Jon Bauman [:jbauman:]]

Thanks Gijs! We now have bug 1643799 as a sub-meta and I'll add blocking issues to that as useful divisions of the work present themselves through investigation.

Comment 4

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

Hello community:

As bugs like this sometimes attract comments such as "but why are you doing this instead of this other thing," and "this is a political stunt," I want to call out two things:

1. All technical decisions are political
2. The language we are removing is harmful

We have decided to do this because it's aligned with our Community Participation Guidelines.

As such, comments on the bug outside of those which advance completing the task at hand will be removed.

As you find other cases of terms used in-tree which are derogatory or otherwise harmful, please file bugs which block this.

Bugs related to this work which are filed in bad faith will be closed, and reviewed as potential violations of our Community Participation Guidelines.

Thank you in advance.

Comment 5

[Rosanne Scholl]

I requested that the terms "dark/light funnel" be replaced with "unattributed/attributed installs" on the GUD dashboard, in this bug: https://jira.allizom.org/browse/GUD-6

Comment 6

[Sarah Bird]

Another derogatory term I am glad to see distributed computing world moving away from is "master/slave". An alternative is "scheduler/worker" but there are others.

When I did a dxr search for "slave", there's a lot of hits https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=slave&redirect=false. Should I open an issue? Or should individual module owners open specific issues?

As a follow-on there's also "master" https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=master&redirect=false. I'm not sure how we would rank that as a problem. "master" is used outside of the "master/slave" context, but it's not gender neutral, so it has its own separate issues. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1644807 covers the public facing content.

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Sarah Bird from comment #6)

Another derogatory term I am glad to see distributed computing world moving away from is "master/slave". An alternative is "scheduler/worker" but there are others.

When I did a dxr search for "slave", there's a lot of hits https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=slave&redirect=false. Should I open an issue? Or should individual module owners open specific issues?

I think there's probably enough work to warrant another sub-metabug, like the ones we have for "grandfather" and for "whitelist"/"blacklist".

Comment 8

[Jon Bauman [:jbauman:]]

Any objections to a new meta bug blocking this one for removing pejorative terminology related to mental illness? For instance, even ignoring third party sources we have over 350 instances of just "crazy". I think nearly all of these could be replaced by more descriptive terms like "complicated", "unclear" or "absurd" which don't stigmatize mental illness.

Comment 9

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

👍 from me for replacing "crazy".

Comment 10

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Jon Bauman [:jbauman:] from comment #8)

Any objections to a new meta bug blocking this one for removing pejorative terminology related to mental illness? For instance, even ignoring third party sources we have over 350 instances of just "crazy". I think nearly all of these could be replaced by more descriptive terms like "complicated", "unclear" or "absurd" which don't stigmatize mental illness.

Please go ahead. The existing lint jobs are extensible so it should be straightforward to add more.