From: B Kelly Date: 2011-11-15T22:00:20+09:00 Subject: [ruby-core:41061] [ruby-trunk - Bug #5625] Remove profanity and pejoratives Issue #5625 has been updated by B Kelly. Andrew Grimm wrote: > > Did you choose "retarded" deliberately in response to a complaint > about denigrating a group of people? Nice. A lame jest on my part, I'll concede. For what it's worth, when evaluating the words others choose, what's more important to me is the intent I perceive, rather than the literal word itself. Although I was (gleefully) being an ass, my use of the term 'retarded' in my prior post was in the service of criticizing an *idea*, not a person -- let alone a category of people. To me that's an important distinction. I could imagine saying, about an idea, "that's dumb." But I can almost not conceive of saying *to* someone, about their idea: "you're dumb." And if in response to my characterization of an idea as 'dumb', someone were to intimate that I've thereby disparaged the set of all people who lack the ability to speak......? I would regard such an assertion as freakishly bizarre, to say the least. (N.B. The ruby sources also contain varying instances of 'dumb' and 'idiot' and 'freakish'; although no conjugations of 'imbecile' or 'moron' seem to be present.) Regards, Bill ---------------------------------------- Bug #5625: Remove profanity and pejoratives http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/5625 Author: Andrew Grimm Status: Third Party's Issue Priority: Normal Assignee: Eric Hodel Category: Target version: ruby -v: ruby 1.8.8dev (2011-05-25) [i386-darwin10.7.0] There are currently 6 lines with the f-word, 4 lines with "wtf" that weren't just random combinations of letters, and one line with "bullshit". While I personally dislike such profanity, the main benefit from getting rid of it is that it'd mean people of all ages could read Ruby's source code. There's also three lines where "lame" is used as a pejorative. Using a group of people as a pejorative should be avoided. -- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org