[CamperBob2]

You've chosen a good analogy to back up the point I'm making. Passwords aren't rhetorical devices, they're functional ones. Not only that, but they're imperative. If you present the proper password, the computer has no choice but to accept it and grant access, consequences be damned. Technical writers have appropriated the term 'privilege' in this context -- should that be submitted for revision as well?

Verbal offense, on the other hand, cannot be given, only taken. The choice to be hurt by words like "master" and "slave" is entirely up to the listener. Any other position literally disempowers that listener. There is, or should be, no obligation on a writer's part to avoid such terminology. To borrow from another comment that probably got its poster banned, we are bordering on indulging mental illness here.

Anyway, it's OT for the article at hand. This whole debate just seems like a goofy distraction from real injustice, is all.

[tialaramex]

> Passwords aren't rhetorical devices, they're functional ones.

All symbols are also concrete things. Did you notice that we have words for the letters that we use to spell words ?

Super Mario Maker troll design does a good job of showing this off. Mario Maker doesn't have distinct signifiers, so the way you tell a player, "You will need a POW block to pass this" would be to actually put a real POW block, just like the one they need, inside some solid blocks nearby. Likewise for Mario's powerup mushroom for example. But because the signifier is the signified troll makers will build puzzles where e.g. the correct solution is to use Yoshi's tongue to grab the signifying POW out of the sign and then you can blow that one up. With the powerup mushroom, if we're already Big Mario, a progressive powerup becomes Fire Mario's powerup - when we saw this sign before it told us to be Big Mario, so we got ourselves Big Mario but now since we are Big Mario the same sign says Fire Mario and sure enough, Big Mario doesn't help after all.

[[ Ordinary Mario courses shouldn't do this, because it's annoying, but Troll Mario is supposed to be annoying, it's a delicate art form, like Stand Up comedy ]]

> There is, or should be, no obligation on a writer's part to avoid such terminology.

That is not how language actually works, the clear distinction you're relying on is instead blurred because symbols are not just symbols. Because language is a co-operative activity, choosing to do things you know will offend others is your fault. Now, if you're a comedian, too bad, some of the audience didn't like the joke. But if you write technical documentation this is a failure, your goal was to inform, not to make some people angry as the price to make other people laugh.

[CamperBob2]

Because language is a co-operative activity, choosing to do things you know will offend others is your fault

Sorry, no. It's absurd to expect me to take responsibility for someone else's offense at my use of "master" and "slave" in a technical document. This isn't a question of semiotics. At this point it's more like a Monty Python sketch. I'm not familiar enough with the Mario franchise to grasp your analogy, unfortunately.

The way I think of it is in terms of power: if you demand the right to control and revise the language we share, you're claiming an incredible privilege, and you're doing so without consulting many who have no voice to object. (By 'demanding' I mean claiming an unearned right to the moral high ground, as was done by the people who added that paragraph to the Cisco documentation. That degree of sanctimony normally requires religious backing.)

That doesn't mean you're wrong -- there are hurtful words that have few or no benign uses, after all, and it's easy to make the case that we're better off without them. But the burden of proof is a heavy one in the general case, due to the power required to shame the rest of society into compliance. It isn't met here.

[redeeman]

what ever happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones..." ? perhaps its time to reconsider whether society has lost/is losing a very very important thing here.

If younger generations grow up thinking that a simple word is violence like we see some do, that it is akin to breaking out a knife and stabbing someone, how are they properly clothed to function in a world that isnt absolute perfect?

you know what generally happens to snowflakes? they melt. seriously, sticks and stones.