Hello everyone, I think Richard's proposal to update the documentation is a good idea. Not only because it puts the phrasing into context but also because it makes the documentation clearer.
About the initial mail: I think the awareness for language has increased a lot in the recent years and I think this is overall a good thing. New code should consider this from the beginning on and in old code should be changed where it is possible, particularly the documentation. General terminology like master/slave is hard to replace but there are alternative wordings that are less offensive and as clear if not clearer. A few thoughts on whether this should be discussed, or if this is the right place for this discussion. To get changes in the code or the documentation done, the help mailing list is definitely not the best place. But discussing the topic does have some merit, also if it's only very loosely related to the topic of the mailing- list. Changing the name of one commandline option will not change society but having a discussion about phrasing, naming or jokes in documentation and comments in the code is valuable, even if just to establish a certain awareness. Whether the original poster is a troll or not does not change much about this, there are more participants in this conversation than the op. I think this discussion could be had much less cynical. Assuming without reason that anyone acts in bad faith in starting the discussion or arguing for either side does not help. I also think discussing this separately for each comment and each commandline option is not the best way to do this. But the fact, that discussions like this resurface every few years in many open-source communities shows, that there are concerns here. I think dismissing completely or belittling these concerns unnecessarily alienates a (maybe small, maybe larger than it appears) group in the community. kind regards, Tobias ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
