Short sentences 
‘allowlist’ and ‘blocklist’ instead of ‘whitelist’ and ‘blacklist. 
Avoid colloquial expressions
For me its just the list changing to allow/block is such a stupid overly-woke change.
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It’s a shame that you apparently can’t empathise with the people who are affected by the use of that sort of terminology and feel the need to dismiss it this as ‘overly-woke’ as a result.
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Are there examples of those who have been affected by the words blacklist and whitelist?
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I use ‘everybody’ instead of ’Ladies and Gents’ because there are more than two genders.
But I draw the line at agreeing with losing such lovely idioms as ‘elephant in the room’. It would be a shame for such a poetic expression to be thought of as wrong on an assumption that it is exclusionary. Every language has wonderfully odd colloquialisms but these should be celebrated, not hidden away.
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I had not thought of it like that. But that said, if English is not your native language, it makes no sense as an expression. If I had enough Spanish to get by, but didn’t understand a weird Spanish phrase (or worse, interpreted It incorrectly), I’m not sure I would want to send a further message to a bank asking what they mean by calling me an elephant.
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Trying to adapt a colour connotations because its simply “black” is ridiculous. If it was a bluelist and blue had negative connotations that everyone understood would they be making the change no. Would be the same if someone said right we aren’t going to use red for love, green for envy.
Nobody is getting these lists mixed up with any connection to race, and its not perpetuating the idea that black is bad, so black people must be bad.
Drawing that conclusion is the reference to the overly-woke comment. Change for change sake and to giving the impression that your being super inclusive whilst doing nowt in reality and more harm than good.
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This is only one example of the steps that Monzo’s taken to make sure that their culture is inclusive.
You’ve made it clear that you don’t understand why they’ve decided to do this so to save yourself admitting that, perhaps it would have been better not to have commented at all!
Never mind though, the good news is it doesn’t affect you so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.
Alexs, I think it is possible you misread something. @phildawson was talking specifically about blacklist/whitelist and you replyed saying that he ‘can’t empathise with the people who are affected by the use of that sort of terminology’.
Everything else I’ve agreed with, all businesses should be striving to achieve Monzos level of inclusivity 
I’m simply commenting specifically on them deciding to go with blocklist/allowlist over blacklist/whitelist.
That’s good to hear.
Yeah im all for inclusiveness in the workplace but does blacklist and whitelist really cause offence? Should we also block people from using the word moist in the workplace because it rubs some people the wrong way? 
What about blackbox and whitebox testing as well?
I think theres a line to all this, fair enough if people genuinely find these words offensive but i think its a case of PC gone to the extremes personally.
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If you read the guidelines, it explains the issues with ‘whitelist’ / ‘blacklist’ and doesn’t say that they’re asking people to avoid it because it causes offence -
We think about all the different meanings or associations words might have when we use them. In our technical work we use ‘allowlist’ and ‘blocklist’ instead of ‘whitelist’ and ‘blacklist.’ That’s because of the origin of these terms, with white being seen as ‘good’ and black being seen as ‘bad.’
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That’s because of the origin of these terms, with white being seen as ‘good’ and black being seen as ‘bad.’
Where does it say it causes offence? Or are you being offended on black peoples behalf?
Nobody is getting offended by the word blacklist, or getting it mixed up its meaning.
Its doing more harm than good attempting to change it in this specific case.
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Please don’t do that. The full sentence is -
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What have I started
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Again, from the guidelines:
LABELS MATTER MORE THAN YOU THINK
It might seem pedantic to care about whether we say ‘guys’ or ‘folks’, but how we label things really matters.
Psychologist Lera Boroditsky ran an experiment in 2009 that makes this point really well.
She told two groups of people that they were in charge of solving the problem of crime in the fictional city of Addison. The scenarios were identical in every way except one: she told one group that crime was ‘preying on the city like a beast’, and the other group that crime was ‘spreading through the city like a virus’.
The group who were given the beast ‘frame’ were much more likely to propose things like more police and tougher sentencing. The group with the virus frame were much more likely to suggest social reform and education.
No matter how she rejigged the experiment, with groups based on people’s gender, background, age or political persuasion, the beast and virus frames were the biggest factor in influencing how they responded.
We’re much more susceptible to this kind of ‘framing’ than we realise. And the labels we choose for things are often signals of biases we might not know we have. So being more thoughtful about the terminology we use is a great way to uncover and overcome them, as well as making sure we don’t accidentally upset or offend anyone.
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I wonder if @shereeatcheson is around to join in the discussion, since I believe she wrote them
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Not trying to continue this but what reference does this have to not using the terms blacklist/whitelist ?
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Blacklist and whitelist are the labels.
Ok I’ll jump out at this point, I’ll just be repeating myself.
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