Inclusivity is central to Fuchsia's culture, and our values include treating each other with dignity. As such, it’s important that everyone can contribute without facing the harmful effects of bias and discrimination. However, terms in the codebase, UIs, and documentation can perpetuate discrimination. This document sets forth guidance that aims to address disrespectful terminology in code and documentation.
Terminology that is derogatory, hurtful, or perpetuates discrimination, either directly or indirectly, should be avoided and will be replaced.
Anything that a contributor would read while working on Fuchsia, including:
- Names of variables, types, functions, files, build rules, binaries, exported variables, ...
- Test data
- System output and displays
- Documentation (both inside and outside of source files)
- Commit messages
- Be respectful: Avoid bias and harm. Derogatory, ableist, or unnecessarily gendered language are not necessary to describe how things work.
- Respect culturally sensitive language: Some words may carry significant historical or political meanings. Be mindful of this and use alternatives.
Apply the principles above. If you have any questions, you can reach out to [email protected].
These lists are NOT meant to be comprehensive. They contain common examples that people have run into. If you see disrespectful language, report it.
Specific terms
| Term | Suggested alternatives |
|---|---|
| master | primary, controller, leader, host |
| slave | replica, subordinate, secondary, follower, device, peripheral |
| whitelist | allowlist, exception list, inclusion list |
| blacklist | denylist, blocklist, exclusion list |
| insane | unexpected, catastrophic, incoherent |
| sane | expected, appropriate, sensible, valid |
| sanity check | check |
| crazy | unexpected, catastrophic, incoherent |
| redline | priority line, limit, soft limit |
| white glove | top tier service; meticulous, thorough support |
| blackout | blocked out |
| build cop | build gardener |
| dummy | placeholder |
Idioms
Use descriptive and factual statements instead of idioms. Idioms can suffer from the same problems described above, and also they can be difficult to understand for people with a different cultural context than you.
- For example, instead of "this is not black or white," use "this is more nuanced."
- Instead of "this is the blind leading the blind," explain what you mean, like "the reference you point to is inaccurate because ..."
This circumstance has come up a few times, particularly for code implementing specifications. In these circumstances, differing from the language in the specification may interfere with the ability to understand the implementation. For these circumstances, we suggest one of the following, in order of decreasing preference:
- If using alternate terminology doesn't interfere with understanding, use alternate terminology.
- Failing that, do not propagate the terminology beyond the layer of code that is performing the interfacing. Where necessary, use alternative terminology at the API boundaries.