[bjt2n3904]

> The repo must include project documentation and adhere to Google's inclusive language guidelines. See details here.

"Inclusive". Ah.

When I'm writing technical documentation, it has one goal: to describe the project to anyone who wants to use it. "Inclusivity" is not a part of my goalset.

[lin83]

It's probably a good idea to avoid insulting or alienating your audience. My manager is a woman and I run into code and setup documentation all the time that says things like "he should do X/Y/Z". At least our documentation team fixes that before public release.

Google's guidelines are here: https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation

I have to say though some of their examples are weird. I have never encountered anyone that would object to the phrase "senior citizens" or the word "hang" in documentation. The idea that the latter could cause "unintentional harm that might be caused by the violent interpretations" is frankly absurd.

[userbinator]

I have to say though some of their examples are weird.

You should be scared and deeply angered that Google is attempting to force changes to language which are mainly based on some radical political ideology.

[lin83]

I am absolutely concerned about some of their actions, like their paused "inclusive suggestions" [1]. There's a big difference between providing a guide and highlighting words in an email that are marked as 'wrong' purely for perceived cultural reasons.

Google's suggestion to change "landlord" for example, which has very specific cultural baggage and, more importantly, legal definitions, to something else is definitely wrong and worrying. I think it takes a certain arrogance that maybe only a Silicon Valley tech company can have to try to change how billions of people speak.

I'm not sure how much of an ideology it is though. Like the writers guide above, once the reasonable suggestions have been made, the authors seem to overreach to find more things to "fix". If a persons job depends on finding "problems" they will simply create new ones once the run out of legitimate ones. I think that's true whether it's planning officers for property development or politicians.

[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/25/google-word...

[azinman2]

I guarantee you there’s no job at Google that solely consists of trying to find new language to ban. That’s absurd.

[lin83]

I don't believe I said that is the case. A situation with poor or unintended incentives is not hard to imagine.

1) A team is tasked with providing suggestions to improve emails

2) "Inclusive language" or avoiding potentially insulting language is added as a feature by higher ups

3) The more entries in the "Inclusive language" feature the better the outcome looks to management or it helps meet some arbitrary employee metric (velocity or x issues resolved or similar)

4) More and more entries get added because it is easy to do

[AussieWog93]

Have you never worked in a large company before? These people are everywhere, and breeding like rats!

[bjt2n3904]

> It's probably a good idea to avoid insulting or alienating your audience.

I already avoid insulting or alienating my audience. I don't need to write "inclusively" to do that. Good documentation is already bland and unoffensive.

> I have to say though some of their examples are weird.

And that's exactly what I object to. Something absurd like, "Use the term 'main' instead of 'master' for your repository's primary branch." Why? Because... ...slavery? This is lunacy.

Five months later, this arbitrary standard will change again. Talking about "primary branches" is now offensive, because it implies that one branch is more central than the others, and this is offensive to plural beings who identify as a Crape Myrtle tree. [1]

It's literally a bunch of people imagining ways that things can be misconstrued as offensive, and twisting language to the point of absurdity. I have better things to do with my time than to run on euphemism treadmills.

1 - https://www.pluralpride.com/playbook

[dividedbyzero]

Frequently this has to be mandated to some degree, otherwise you get people who feel using male pronouns and names exclusively is fine even if the target audience is overwhelmingly female or that "shit" is a perfectly fine synonym for "stuff" in official documents or that terms that are considered brutally racist by everyone but the very far right are fine for public release because they are technically correct in an extremely narrow way. It saves everyone a lot of time and breath if there is a mandatory set of guidelines to point to; adhere to them or this will not get released. If those guidelines are done well, it's hardly ever an issue except for those special types that are on some kind of crusade or whatever.

[blep_]

> terms that are considered brutally racist by everyone but the very far right

Are you talking about "master"? There are plenty of people outside the very far right who agree that slavery is bad but think that particular rule desperately needs some context-sensitivity.

[dividedbyzero]

No, not "master", I don't think that would fit the "anyone but the far right" and it's perceived as a mostly US-centric issue here (we have other radioactive terms made so by local history), so mandating that probably wouldn't have helped us with a local audience anyway. The actual term wasn't English and was pejoratively descriptive of a visual characteristic associated with a certain racial background. I can't think of a similar term in English (there must be a bunch, though) but it was an obvious racial slur and really not something you'd expect anyone could seriously want to use unless on the very far right fringe or something like that.

The only people I remember with whom things like that had to be brought up were either apparently trying to use the brand for political leverage (which really isn't an option, can't do that) or had difficulty "getting" subtext and nuances in general paired with strong opinions on how they thought people parse language.

That's what I mean by "done well", only mandate what really would cause damage otherwise and be conservative about that, most people will try to minimize damage anyway and will be fine, but some people won't or can't and having that written down and declared mandatory helps clear up such situations.

[8organicbits]

The Google wordlist has lots of examples that aren't about offense, like use of hyphens and brand names.

My guess is that "senior citizen" is considered American English, so it's a poor choice for global audience. They even write "avoid figures of speech" to clarify that section.

[jpindar]

Let me guess... senior citizens is probably offensive to the, uh, differently documented.

[jeroenhd]

That's a very silly requirement for a tech project IMO. I'm not sure what qualifies as "inclusive language" and the link ("See details here") seems to be missing.

Of course Google is free to put any requirements they want on a project they fund (as long as it's within the bounds of the law) but "inclusive language" is the last thing I'd expect an evil corporation profiteering off everyone's data to put on there so front and center. I don't see anything in there about privacy, safety, or ethics, so you can presumably get free control chips for killer drones as long as you make it open source and use the right pronouns in your documentation?

[8organicbits]

I'll share an example, as I suspect some people haven't felt excluded by language before. It's tough to understand if you haven't.

As a parent my role has shifted to be more involved with my kindergarten aged kid. The parents like to organize events and socialize. However, the language used is often "mom" instead of "parent". My understanding is that they aren't intending to exclude "dad", as they are using "mom" as shorthand for "most active parent". My involvement in the group has been lower as a result, it's tough to feel like you may not be included.

Certain language, to varying degrees, can offend or exclude your reader. You don't need to care, but it does impact the reader and could detract from the effectiveness of your docs.

[bjt2n3904]

I agree. Fathers should be included in language. I think it's extremely important that father's are recognized as critical to a child's upbringing, and truly commend you for being present for your little one!

But here lies the problem with "inclusive language": many schools argue that the terms mother, father, and parent are not inclusive.

Instead, terms like "caregiver" or "responsible adult" should be used, to include children who are raised by grandparents or adoped. The desire was to make sure father's were recognized. In a backwards way, suddenly no one was recognized.

If it's bad for society to not recognize the value of fatherhood, is this not a complete rejection of parenthood, and exclusion of children who have a nuclear family? But when you dig into the inclusivity crowd, you keep finding ridiculous things, like the idea that the nuclear family is white supremacy, and needs to be dismantled by erasing the language that supports systemic racism. Children with two biological parents are privileged, so they can yield their privilege and not have their family acknowledged with the terminology used.

Just keep pulling on the thread, and now we're referring to "birthing people" instead of women.

[8organicbits]

> terms like "caregiver" or "responsible adult" should be used

When I was in school (90s, 00s) it was "parent or guardian", which I think is a reasonable balance. I'm pretty sure that's still the phrasing my kid's school uses.

In any case, I dont think the Google guide goes to the extreme you mention.

[userbinator]

Google is now the Ministry of Truth? I really wonder whether the people who come up with this stuff ever read 1984, or did and thought Newspeak was a good idea.

[_fizz_buzz_]

Google pays for it, so they get to make the rules. If you pay for it yourself you can make your own rules. That's what living in a free society is like. There isn't really more to say about it.

[d_tr]

They get to make the rules and people get to express their opinion on these rules.

[amluto]

Google’s requirement is not inclusive toward anyone trying to follow it. In particular, “See details here” doesn’t appear to be any sort of a link.

That being said, I think I found the relevant document:

https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation

And it seems pretty reasonable to me.

[jeroenhd]

Some parts of it are very reasonable, but others seem insane to me. "Sanity-check" is hardly ableist language in my opinion, and neither is "dummy variable".

I agree with the intentions here, but this goes a bit too far for me.

[UncleEntity]

> Although there might also be nonviolent interpretations for these terms, avoiding their use prevents unintentional harm that might be caused by the violent interpretations.

I can’t even try to imagine what someone would do if you suggested they “bit banged” an interface.

[exmadscientist]

What's interesting to me about all the "bad" examples in that section is that they don't match how people actually use those terms. At all. You don't "sanity check" a polished, should-be-perfect release candidate. You sanity-check a half-baked napkin sketch. And so on.

[CoastalCoder]

A bit tangential, but can anyone recommend a forum for productively debating the logic/ethics underpinning this kind of policy?

I'm deeply skeptical about lots diversity initiatives. But it's hard to find a place where I can subject my views to good scrutiny without also risking unemployment.

[rgoulter]

I've always thought Kialo's structure looked interesting: https://www.kialo.com/is-political-correctness-detrimental-t...

[CamperBob2]

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ (née Slate Star Codex) comes to mind.

[bjt2n3904]

Here's my advice.

The evershifting and arbitrary nature of these standards is a guarantee that you will eventually fall afoul of it, face a kangaroo court trial in the DEI star chamber, and be burnt at the stake for your "crimes".

You can try and avoid it. It will come to you. The best place and time to fight it is right now. But you don't need to oppose it, you just need to not submit to it. [1]

My DMs are open on Twitter if you'd like to talk!

1 - https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies

[sigstoat]

> The evershifting and arbitrary nature of these standards is a guarantee that you will eventually fall afoul of it, face a kangaroo court trial in the DEI star chamber, and be burnt at the stake for your "crimes".

there's a theory (from slate star codex originally, i think), that these things are evershifting on purpose, as they serve as a class/education marker. you've got to be smart enough and sufficiently in-touch with the right kinds of people to figure out how the standards are/will change.

[qgin]

> anyone who wants to use it

That "anyone" isn't a fixed set. The guidelines Google is listing are pretty minor steps someone can take to try to maximize the size of that set.

[lolinder]

There are probably minor steps that can be taken, but Google's guidelines are not that. Following Google's guidelines would involve completely reworking large parts of our vocabulary: more than just "whitelist" and "blacklist", we're now supposed to avoid "hit the API", "the process hangs", "native code", "first-class functions", "sanity check", "dummy variable", "senior citizens", and a bunch of other completely innocent phrases that Google is worried that someone somewhere might be offended by.

Going through my documentation and worrying about the possible misinterpretations of every single word is not a minor step.

[CamperBob2]

Going through my documentation and worrying about the possible misinterpretations of every single word is not a minor step.

That's OK, I'm sure they'll do it for you, when they decide where to rank it in their index of search results.

[baremetal]

you will include non-technical issues in your technical documentation and you will like it?

[bjt2n3904]

Yep. They're attempting to strong arm people into Orwellian newspeak.

And good grief. The potential to spin an open source ASIC for free, simply to get experience is an AMAZING opportunity.

But I'll leave engineering before I submit to the arbitrary and ever changing demands of some potentate of newspeak. Doubleplusungood.

[amluto]

It’s more like “if you want us to pay for your project, kindly refrain from the unnecessary use of wording that is offensive, in non-technically-required ways, in your documentation.”

Is that really so bad?

[lolinder]

Did you look at the guidelines? Their definition of offensive seems to be "someone, somewhere might completely misinterpret what you said in such a way as to take offense." In the real world, no one takes offense at the phrase "first-class functions", but in Google's world someone apparently does.

[amluto]

I couldn’t find a definition of offensive from Google. Many of their specific policies seem quite reasonable to me. Some are in a category that could be quite demeaning to a respectably large group of people and do so for no purpose. (See “turn a blind eye”, for example.). Some have nothing to do with offensiveness but are about clarity (e.g. “holidays” — for a lot of the world, the big long holiday season simply isn’t what Americans think of it as, and, as a programmer writing in the most widely-understood language in the world, one should realize that many of one’s readers aren’t American). Some are bizarre (e.g. Google’s alternative suggestion for “hamburger menu” literally cannot be written in an HN comment and is about as easy to read out loud as the artist formerly known as Prince’s unpronounceable name; I think Google is trying to make technical writing accessible to users of assistive technologies here, but I don’t think the resulting guideline is actually practical to follow in many contexts or achieves its goal. I don’t use assistive technologies, but, if I were unable to perceive the “hamburger” icon, I have trouble imagining that a screen reader or similar system would interpret Google’s icon-based name for it in a way that made any sense at all.

And yes, some can be baffling. I’m having trouble figuring out what first-class citizen is a reference to, if anything. Wikipedia’s article on first class citizens attributes the name to a paper by Christopher Strachey, which contains a single instance of the word “citizen” or a variant thereof:

> Thus in a sense procedures in ALGOL are second class citizens

Which is clear in context and vague out of context. I assume, with no real evidence, that this is a mildly confused reference to Ancient Greece, but I could be entirely off base. In any event, the term “first class”, to me, evokes “first class mail”, which is fascinating given the complete lack of, say, second-class mail. In the UK, “first-class” has additional meanings. I’m not sure why Google thinks that “first-class” is “socially charged”. Maybe someone from Google knows?

(I understand why “blacklist” would be seen as “socially charged”, although I wouldn’t use that term. I don’t think it was originally intended as a racist term, but there was a great essay, I think by Langston Hughes, on how this type of use of “black” can be problematic. Sadly, I can’t find that essay. I could be mis-remembering who wrote it.)

[userbinator]

The main problem is that it's explicitly pushing a certain political agenda.

[jagger27]

Where is it explicitly pushing a "certain political agenda"? Is there a footnote somewhere that says "these documentation requirements were sponsored by <x> for congress"? You surely mean implicit. What obligation does Google have to be apolitical anyway? To make you feel more comfortable?

[userbinator]

It's definitely more explicit than NOT having such requirements, which would be the expected norm for technical things.

Google has a HUGE amount of power over people's lives now, arguably more than the government. It has effectively become a form of government itself, but one we didn't vote for. Do you not see a problem with that?

[jagger27]

Google a ton of dangerous unchecked power, absolutely. But it's a documentation style guide that sets off your alarms? Get over yourself.

[klyrs]

Free speech absolutism is also a certain political agenda. At some point, everything is political and if you don't like it, you'll need to go off grid and definitely stay offline.

[bjt2n3904]

> At some point, everything is political

No. Football is a-political. Thanksgiving dinner is a-political. My javascript library is a-political. My silicon design is a-political.

What's happened is an extremely small subset of people have decided to push politics where it doesn't belong. Everything must become a political weapon, because everything must serve the goal of some arbitrary progress. Merely existing without putting on badges in support of The Latest Thing(TM) is offensive -- because you have implicitly not taken a side, which explicitly means you are supporting the enemy. And if that goal requires sacrifice of thanksgiving dinner and family, than so be it.

It's done wonders to improve society's polarization problem, I tell you.

[klyrs]

Football is apolitical? Not even close. My school had a rival school, and yelling "go [rival team]!" or even wearing the wrong color during playoffs would invite physical violence, especially after folks had a few beers. The "do we build/upgrade a stadium" question is hotly contested in every city I've lived in during such a referendum. Some people, it turns out, hate football and don't want it to be in their city. That's politics. Hell, when I grew up, even mentioning football would get you booed out of any respectable nerdspace. Thanksgiving is, depending who you ask, a celebration of genocide, try again. Are you still using JavaScript? Typescript, my friend, is the way. Does your silicon design use variable names? Politics entered the chat!

No, everything is political. If you're offended, you're welcome to not participate. Polarization sucks, yes, but pretending it doesn't exist typically means you see one side as right and the other as wrong. Not helpful.

[ravenstine]

No one said a word about free speech "absolutism."

[klyrs]

That doesn't refute my point, does it? One can ride a bike without saying a word about riding bikes, after all.