An "Academic Survey on Discriminatory Language in Software" from Matthew Norflus, Department of Computer Science, Florida State University invited contributors of psysh, a REPL shell for PHP to answer a survey about potentially discriminatory language terms.
An interesting collection of terms encountered in softwares have been offered in the survey:
- Whitelist/Blacklist alternatives (Allowlist/Blocklist, etc.)
- Master/Slave alternatives (Leader/Follower, etc.)
- Grandfathered alternatives (Legacy status, etc.)
- Gender neutral nouns (folks, etc.)
- Gender neutral pronouns (they, ze, etc.)
- Sanity check alternatives (coherency check, etc.)
- Man hours alternatives (work hours, etc.)
- Dummy value alternatives (placeholder value, etc.)
Could we avoid those terms in our software as a part of our commitment for openness and non discriminatory stance?
In June 2021, INCITS published a standard with a guide of terms to avoid and alternatives: https://standards.incits.org/apps/group_public/download.php/131246/eb-2021-00288-001-INCITS-Inclusive-Terminology-Guidelines.pdf