test: change blacklist to blocklist #19227

TrentZ commented at 8:10 PM on June 9, 2020: contributor

Let's use a more appropriate and clear word and discard the usage of the blacklist. Blocklist is clear and shall make everyone happy.

change blacklist to blocklist

Let's use a more appropriate and clear word and discard the usage of the blacklist. Blocklist is clear. Happy for everyone.

6fc641644f

MarcoFalke renamed this:
~~change blacklist to blocklist~~
test: change blacklist to blocklist
on Jun 9, 2020

amitiuttarwar commented at 8:40 PM on June 9, 2020: contributor

ACK 6fc641644f7193365cf2b40f5cf20374ec871943

michaelfolkson commented at 8:41 PM on June 9, 2020: contributor

Concept NACK. If there was consensus amongst existing black contributors in the ecosystem that they found this offensive I would reconsider. I think they would say they have better things to do than wasting their time on quibbling about terms that avoid colors (whitelist/blacklist). Perusing other projects there are black devs choosing to use whitelist/blacklist terminology.

jonatack commented at 8:51 PM on June 9, 2020: member

ACK 6fc641644f7193365cf2b40f5cf20374ec871943 git grep shows these two lines to be the only uses of the word in the codebase other than for specifying colors for the GUI.

JeremyRubin commented at 8:57 PM on June 9, 2020: contributor

There are also a few uses of the term whitelist, one of which I'm responsible for (hence chiming in), that exist as external APIs.

I'm indifferent on this particular issue. I'm supportive of the underlying issue of avoiding uninclusive terms -- I just don't think that blacklist/whitelist bear the same connotations as terminology like master/slave. I am in favor of consistency; if we do decide to change this we should update all instances in a backwards-compatible way.

sipsorcery commented at 9:06 PM on June 9, 2020: member

ACK 6fc641644f7193365cf2b40f5cf20374ec871943 due to easy change.

Getting rid of whitelist is a BIG change and a different matter.

MarcoFalke commented at 9:15 PM on June 9, 2020: member

ACK and thanks for the change.

Looking at the 400 open pull requests, we are clearly lacking developers to review the code. Simply the possibility that one developer may directly or indirectly be offended/discriminated by code comments or symbol names is a risk that we can't afford to take. Bitcoin Core is an international project and if there are two similar English words, we should always pick the word that is most likely understood by the majority of international English speakers. Code should be self-documenting and variable names should be self-explanatory.

This is a refactoring change in the tests to change the name of a variable, so it allows for infinite bike-shedding. There is no way this could break any functionality, so with the existing ACKs, this is ready to go in. Leaving this open any longer will in the long term only attract heated off-topic discussions, wasting our reviewers' time.

MarcoFalke merged this on Jun 9, 2020

MarcoFalke closed this on Jun 9, 2020

jnewbery commented at 9:28 PM on June 9, 2020: member

ACK 6fc641644f7193365cf2b40f5cf20374ec871943

in test/functional/feature_notifications.py:22 in 6fc641644f

  18 | @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
  19 |  # Windows disallow control characters (0-31) and /\?%:|"<>
  20 |  FILE_CHAR_START = 32 if os.name == 'nt' else 1
  21 |  FILE_CHAR_END = 128
  22 | -FILE_CHAR_BLACKLIST = '/\\?%*:|"<>' if os.name == 'nt' else '/'
  23 | +FILE_CHAR_BLOCKLIST = '/\\?%*:|"<>' if os.name == 'nt' else '/'

promag commented at 10:35 AM on June 11, 2020:

Suggestion FILE_CHAR_EXCLUDE.

promag commented at 10:41 AM on June 11, 2020: member

And maybe s/whitelist/include.

luke-jr commented at 9:28 PM on June 11, 2020: member

Concept ACK

Blacklist/whitelist have never been race-related, so that's a distraction. But, "blacklist"'s primary definition is "a list of persons who are disapproved of or are to be punished or boycotted", and has caused some confusion previously given the nature of Bitcoin to be opposed to such censorship.

BitcoinErrorLog commented at 1:33 PM on June 23, 2020: none

NACK any concept related to edits for racial/color concerns. "blackness" and "whiteness" are natural concepts and none of us should be wasting our time behaving like racists and attempting to cure it with passive-aggressive naming nonsense. Go do some real help if you're concerned.

michaelfolkson commented at 1:44 PM on June 23, 2020: contributor

If that is the case @luke-jr I would say blocklist is just as confusing. Blocked from what? Using the Bitcoin network? The fact that we have block(chain)s makes blocklist probably more confusing.

This has the potential to waste so much time. I note no one brought up in the Lightning dev mailing list that the use of the term "blackmail" isn't appropriate. We can't control what GitHub or other corporations do but we can control what is considered appropriate on this project and in this community. I really hope we can take a more sane and logical approach based on consensus rather than this jumpy "let's change it in case one person in the entire world finds this offensive."

jnewbery commented at 3:14 PM on June 23, 2020: member

This change has been reviewed and ACKed by multiple regular contributors and was merged two weeks ago.

jnewbery locked this on Jun 23, 2020