Re: Neutral language in W3C specifications

Another term for the list is “Leader”. I’m told that in German this becomes “Fürher”.

In a PCISIG specification, we were considering Loopback.Leader (to replace Loopback.Master) and got called on it.


Steve Glaser
sglaser@nvidia.com<mailto:sglaser@nvidia.com>


From: Gregg Kellogg <gregg@greggkellogg.net>
Date: Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 9:54 AM
To: Denis Ah-Kang <denis@w3.org>
Cc: "lwatson@tetralogical.com" <lwatson@tetralogical.com>, Spec-prod <spec-prod@w3.org>, "chairs@w3.org" <chairs@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Neutral language in W3C specifications
Resent-From: <spec-prod@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 9:53 AM

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On Jul 22, 2020, at 4:03 AM, Denis Ah-Kang <denis@w3.org<mailto:denis@w3.org>> wrote:

Hi Leonie,

Thank you for your feedback. Sure, we can also add these
pronouns to the list of terms to detect.
Do you have a preference or suggestion as to what our guidance
to the editors should be in those cases?

Use case documents are often written with stories that describe specific people (e.g., Sally, John, etc.) (see [1], for example). In generally, I think it’s good that stories can relate to individuals, but in these cases removing personal pronouns, or always using a neutral “they” might interfere with the flow of the narative. Has this been considered as part of the style guide? Is there any specific advice on writing use cases documents in a gender-neutral way?

Gregg

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-use-cases/



Denis


On 7/22/20 1:21 PM, Léonie Watson wrote:

Denis, this is a really positive step, thank you to you and the team.
One suggestion - is it possible for PubRules to check for gender specific pronouns (he/she, him/her etc.) too?
They are rare in specifications, but do sometimes feature as part of use cases or examples.
Léonie.
On 22/07/2020 09:40, Denis Ah-Kang wrote:

Dear editors and chairs,

In order to offer the best environment possible to its
community, W3C is supporting the push for a more inclusive and
neutral language, especially in our specifications.

In the upcoming weeks, pubrules [1] will show a warning if
terms like "master", "slave", "grandfather", "sanity" or
"dummy" are detected in a specification and this will also
be reflected in the Manual of style [2] with a list of
alternatives.
Note, since it may take time for the editors to change the
branch name "master" to something else, we will not flag the
URLs containing that word in the first place.

Going forward, we will audit all the specification repositories
and open issues if they contain problematic terms.

Let me know if you have any comments/suggestions.

Denis
W3C Systems team

[1] https://www.w3.org/pubrules/

[2] https://w3c.github.io/manual-of-style/