
When STONITH falls
Replace all instances of [something] that may offend [somebody]. Let us also do away with humor and sarcasm while we're at it. One reader's merry world is another reader's nightmare. That has always been the case. When will the madness stop? Do we really need to define all possible variations of "unwords" and replace them with new expressions that will be considered "unwords" by another generation? When STONITH falls, which is humorously and actually quite appropriately called STONITH, then nothing is safe. Can you "kill" a computer or are metaphors no longer an acceptable language construct to convey a specific meaning?
Really? Remove "crazy" and "baffling" outliers? But, the checks are there to handle crazy and baffling outliers. Remove "sanity check"? Any programmer knows that the user is not to be trusted to input anything valid. The user is, by definition, not sane, from a programmer's perspective. A user is (probably) human and therefore a non-logical entity. The computer is nothing but logical. The programmer is the intermediate between the logical and the illogical. That perspective is both crazy and baffling.
Fast-forward a few generations... the "blocklist" is not an acceptable term. It is discriminatory and therefore unacceptable. Terminology like "primary" and "secondary" is no longer acceptable because it denotes unacceptable preference and denies the egalitarian view. Any "word" will, at some stage, have multiple meanings in which some may be offended. Maybe we should do an introspective and think about what that says about us?