 Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today to watch the presentation words matter. So we're going to talk about how promoting inclusion documentation and projects can be a better user experience for our community. So my name is Eliane, I'm a technical writer and co-presenting today's. My name is Joseph Villesek. I'm also a technical writer and I've worked with Eliane before. Thank you. So today, we're going to talk about next slide please. Thank you. We're going to talk about inclusion. What's the problematic language? Why you should care about the problematic language? What are the benefits from promoting inclusion in our documentation and projects? Also, what kind of a position we may face when trying to change things? And why you may find it sensitive when trying to make the changes? Then we're going to discuss a possible path for adopting the inclusive language. And what are the next steps we can take? And then we're going to share some resources if you're interested in learning more about inclusion. So we're going to cover a lot, but bear with us. So let's start first talking about inclusion. What does inclusion have to do with this conversation? Why is it important? Next slide please. So inclusion is important because it has to do with being open. And us as part of an open source community are part of this. Our CTO at Red Hat, please write community by a Twitter. We eradicate the harmful language from the open source. And with that, bring more diversity to the community collaboration. Next slide please. Thank you. So inclusion has to do with empathy. Because if someone's too uncomfortable with the language they are seeing or documentation, our websites or code, we need to change this language. So everyone feels welcome and comfortable. This is how we show empathy. Next slide please. And what's empathy? So empathy is the ability to place yourself in others person's position and be able to understand their experience. Empathy is a skill that you can learn actively. And how you can do that? You can do that by listening to your colleagues' experiences and point of view, by trusting their perspectives, by actively listening and trying to take others' perspectives instead of yours. And especially by recognizing what's wrong and making the right choice. And now over to you, Joe. Thank you, Leon. And really quickly, I'm just going to quit that chat program so it doesn't pop up again. Everybody still see my slides? Yes. Excellent. Thank you. So Elian brought up problematic language. What exactly is problematic language? In short, it's words that can push people away. The actual definition is words or phrases that have specific derogative meaning towards a specific marginalized group of people. But that's still abstract. So what are we talking about in our software world? Well, we're talking about going through our code, our documentation and our web properties and replacing this problematic language. This was a statement that Red Hat announced. We're just using Red Hat as a very good example of an organization that is taking a stance against this language. The four words that we're talking about are master, slave, blacklist and whitelist. And the company did also recognize that it's going to be a big effort. It will be something that happens over time. Now, if you've never come across these words, you may be wondering how they're being used. Well, for example, the word master could be used as you can only make changes on the master server. So what is the intention behind that? It's meant to convey some sort of an authority like a controlling process. But the only way that we have that meaning of the word is based on the historical meaning of the word master is a man who has people working for him, especially servants or slaves. The word slave gets used as kind of like a subordinate process, like the slave DNS zone is a read-only copy of a master's own. Again, the only way that we get to communicate that subordinate process is because of the historical meaning of the word slave, someone that's forced to obey and is treated as legal property. The other two words, whitelist and blacklist, are used to convey whether something should be allowed or denied access. For example, add the IP address of your servers to the whitelist. Now, the only way that we have that is because the word whitelist is used to convey things that are considered acceptable or trustworthy. On the opposite hand, devices that are blacklisted will not be used. That means that those things should be denied access. We're saying that those things are unacceptable and not trustworthy and should be excluded directly relating the word black to bad and white to good. So why should we care? Eliane? Thank you. So by now, we may ask why should I care about this? So we may care because this is everyone's problem and because the language we use will impact the way we think. So because words can impact and bring consequence to people and people, whatever makes an organization. And without people's collaboration, there is no organization. And also the use of harmful language can impact our communities and how we may ask. So it can bring barriers for contribution because people with different backgrounds and different needs may not feel willing to contribute to certain projects if they feel unsafe or unwelcome. Or it also can bring barriers to adoption of technology being developed by the community because people may feel excluded and not willing to contribute to such a project. And also it can limit the growth because a few people are contributing and adopting the technology developed by certain projects. Next slide, please. So here is a quote from Caroline Corrangea. She's a self-taught developer and she came across harmful language while committing her code and it made her feel really uncomfortable because she was seen that she was engaging with harmful language against black people and it made her think that this kind of offensive language should not be in code. Next slide, please. Okay, so now we have a little understanding about why we should care about inclusive and harmful language. And let's talk about the benefits of adopting inclusive terms in your documentation or your community or your projects. So you can benefit from the diverse. So it will bring people with different backgrounds, knowledge and experience to your community. You can also benefit from inclusion because we are breaking language barriers, we are breaking technology barriers and it will make people feel welcomed and safe by knowing that they will not face any obstacles when trying to contribute. And you can also benefit from growth and adoption because the technology developed by the companies and open source communities can be developed by heterogeneous groups and they can create better solutions. And now, for example, people such as Caroline that we quoted before would be interested and contribute to your community without feeling that they engage in harmful language. However, be aware that bringing diverse is not enough. If you are not practicing inclusion. And also it's not enough if you are benefiting people from inclusion and you are not bringing equity to them. So this will make people have access to the same opportunities and they will start to contribute and communities can grow. So next slide, please. So let's start excluding the exclusive language. For example, instead of saying that you are making changes into the master serve, why not saying that you are making changes into the management serve? Or instead of saying that the slave DNS zone is read only cop of a master zone, how about saying that the secondary DNS zone is read only cop of a primary zone? And note here that we are using different terms to replace master. This is an example that you can adapt to the replacement in a way that suits your project better. And the same goes with the phrase, device being part of white list or black list. Those could be easily replaced by saying that device is a part of the included list and the block list. And the phrase is understandable and clear. And now over to Joe again. Thank you, Leon. So she just illustrated that it could be pretty easy to make these changes. But we come across some arguments against opposing, sorry, against making changes. And you may also come across dialogue where people are just resistant to take these things into consideration and consider this viewpoint. So they may say, do we really need to change it? And let's talk about that. We'd like to bring up four common arguments against change that you may hear brought to you if you bring this up. And we would also like to bring up, this is a very simplifying metaphor, but we think it might illustrate a little bit of empathy. Imagine somebody steps on your foot and it does hurt. So the first kind of category would be denial. Somebody is saying, you know, I don't think these words are offensive or racist or just some people just get offended too easily. That's comparable to you saying that hurts and the other person just saying, no, it doesn't. The result is that they're denying another person's boundaries. So to that we say that one person's lack of an experience does not invalidate somebody else's experience, somebody else's reality. The second kind of category that we come across is a doubts about scope. Somebody is saying, you know, if we change this one thing, do we have to change the other? Where does it end? Or just thinking that it doesn't apply to them. Like this isn't a problem in my area of the world. It doesn't apply to us. It's somebody else's issue. That's like you saying that hurts and the other person saying, not me. The result is distancing from the issue and it's seeking to dismiss it. So to that we would say this does affect you because it affects your community. The third kind of category that we've heard is people claiming it's difficult or inefficient. Like somebody is saying the old words were okay. Finding different words will be too confusing. Or this could be a waste of time. I have more important things to work on, especially if we're talking about code. Well, that's like you saying that hurts. Then the other person just saying, well, just give up. Why do anything about it? We would say to that is that some of the changes could be simple replacements, but the harder changes, there are a lot of people that are very willing to do the work, especially the harder work. So we do say that listening is worth the effort and we think it's a good idea. The fourth common argument that we hear is about personal freedom. Somebody saying, well, outlawing these words is censorship and that's not something that I stand for. That's comparable to you saying that hurts. Any other person just saying, well, it's my right to do this. The result is that this is confusing the issue. Nobody here, nobody at this whole conference, very few people are supporting political repression of free speech. What we're talking about is voluntary language at work. There are a lot of things you wouldn't say at work. So we're saying that this extends to these four words and that kind of language. You may not be fired for using these words. You may not be arrested for using these words. Nobody's going to take away your keyboard, but people may not choose to collaborate with you. There could be social impacts. So we're starting to see a pattern of insensitivity here where the community brings up concerns, but it's met with a lack of trust that are dismissive, and then it argues for inaction. So why is there that insensitivity? Why not change the status quo the way that things are right now? So before we go any further, we do want to clarify our intent. We're going to discuss racism, which is a very complex and sensitive topic. But as we were working on this talk, we recognized that we couldn't talk about inclusion, the what of this talk, and the process of changing it, of removing that problematic language, the how, without truly addressing the reason that we're in the situation, the why. We should always be talking about the why. So we have researched this topic, but we're by no means experts. There are a lot of people that devote their whole lives to this. So we definitely defer to them, but we're acting in allyship with the black community. We feel this is a very important conversation that we want to help push forward. So we'd like to express our point of view directly in a way that we hope you find clear and constructive. And we'd also like to share our perspectives and biases so we know where we're coming from. So I have a Hispanic background or Latin background. The pronouns are her or she. I'm originally from Brazil and currently living in the Czech Republic. And I'm Joseph Bilsik. I know I'm not pronouncing that in Czech properly, but I'm also Hispanic and I found that I'm pretty much white passing, which means that I'm very light-skinned and so I don't come across the same kind of racism that darker-skinned Hispanic and black people go through. My pronouns are he and him. And I was born in Chile to Chilean and Yugoslavian parents, but then I moved to Miami and now I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. So we would like to talk about that path to insensitivity, which starts on an individual basis. This is usually the common kind of scenario that we hear. Starting from the individual and then going to the group. So individuals, we have biases. Biases in themselves are not a bad thing. It's just a tendency to prefer one thing over another, such as in group bias. If you have to work on a project, you would probably end up choosing people that you've worked with before because they're already in your group. Your group is safer. It definitely has advantages, even as a safety survival thing. Biases become an issue when they become prejudice. When they are irrational biases that inform negative emotions or judgments about people from other social groups. And let's focus on that word irrational. We will be coming back to that and address what is feeding that irrationality. When we take these ideas and collect them into behaviors, then we start acting on that prejudice. That is discrimination. That's when we treat other minority members negatively based on irrational biases, prejudice. And if we start collecting these behaviors and perhaps collecting them with others, that starts turning into a culture of racism, which would be discrimination based on race. Discriminating against others based on beliefs of a racial superiority, usually one's own racial superiority over somebody else's. But also you could be a white supremacist without being white. That's also a very complex subject. So we could be talking about this and you could be saying or you could be thinking, I agree racism is terrible, but I'm not a racist. So it's a good thing I'm not a racist. Only bad, ignorant, hateful other people do these racist things. Well, we'd like to talk about the dangers of also blaming the other. Most people see themselves as good people. I know I do. Elian is amazing. I'm sure she also thinks she's great. But the thing is, if we see, if good people see others as responsible for racism, especially overt racism, just visible hate, we end up thinking that racism is somebody else's problem. And we don't see how we actually participate in racist systems. Perhaps not overt racism, but racist systems. We don't see the connection between systemic racism, racism in a system and individual biases and discrimination. So the ultimate result is that good people like you and I end up not doing anything to change bad policies and systems. So let's look into that word systemic racism. It's something that distorts individual thought. Now the thing is, the foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but it's actually self-interest, usually economic, political or cultural, that people have taken and distorted to set up institutions that carry out systemic racism. Systemic racism is racism that's embedded as a normal practice within a society or an organization. And its true purpose is to acquire and keep power. And the way that it does that is by influencing individuals. It starts informing implicit biases, attitudes or stereotypes that unconsciously affect our understanding, our actions and our decisions. We usually wonder how racist people got that way. It didn't start from the bottom up. It actually started top-down. Racial discrimination has led to racist ideas, which leads to that ignorance and hate. Implicit bias, the fact that it's unconscious, that's what feeds that irrational bias that turns into prejudice. So we would say let's get back to that empathy, which is a learned skill, so it does take practice and effort. But if we trust what people are telling us, if we assume that they have good intent and that they're speaking their truth, if we truly listen to them and censor them, focus them, focus on them and imagine if their experience was ours, we have no choice but to act and do the right thing. The impact of an action is much greater than its intent. And so good, intelligent, loving people, they do have biases, they can act out prejudice, and they could contribute to systemic racism. One thing that might be helpful is that racist is an adjective. It's not a noun. There are very few people that are truly a racist, but they could do racist things, and then you can fix that. You have the power to change. Elion. Thank you, Giorgio. So now that we have a better understanding of why we think that words matter, and now that you are aware that you may face some problems when trying to adopt the conscious language, let's talk about the process to move away from this problematic language. So here I'm proposing a suggestive path and try to change the process, and this will involve some phases. So we have the preparation phase, a planning phase, the assessment phase, performing the changed self and the maintenance phase. So let's start with the preparation phase. And by this time, it will involve company accountability. So remember Chris Wright's two announcements, and also people engagement. So they will look into the code, the documentation, and what the properties to identify harmful language. And from those sources, you will find how much work they have to do. And by this time, we will notice that you may find it difficult to change harmful language on process and tools. These are the most difficult to change, but they are not impossible. So we can go to the next phase. It will be the assessment that will be the first step. So I'll take the work you have to do. Identify the harmful language on the documentation, on the contents, and this includes website, internal procedures, communication, and you can use a simple graph comment so we can identify occurrence of harmful language in your sources. Then you're going to determine what words will replace the harmful language. So make sure you have consistent. Maybe you want to consult with your community and also with developers to understand what's the most appropriate replacement. And once you have agreements documented and make everyone aware of the terms you agreed and you have to replace those on the harmful language. And then you can start by changing what's relatively easy to change, the online content and the documentation. For example, you're going to replace occurrence of white list with include list. And then we have the next step that it's about changing things on code. So you're going to access the fact of changing harmful language there. And as it can affect, for example, API products, configuration, or even the internal development, you want to make sure that you're establishing a roadmap, for example. So we can have a peer deprecation schedule. And with that you have a period of time in which both the new and old terms will work. But using the old term would result in a warning initially. And by the end, you are going to have an alert message while it's not interrupts the functionality. So you can inform about the deprecation and release notes, for example. And for example, let's say you have a function that you use to call an external library and that function contains words that you want to replace. For that you can use, for example, a wrapper function around it. This will allow you to fix the problem in your own code while you are still calling the function with the problematic language in the external code. And also, it will give you a quick path later on to discard the wrapper when the external code also gets fixed. And then we can go to the maintenance phase. And this will consist of test effective ongoing village loss. So make sure that the changes are not breaking anything in production, for example. Also ensure that the harmful language will not return in the project or the documentation because that will require a second before change. Also include the language choice in your code styles. So mention to the new contributors that is what you are expecting and enforce it. Make it part of the review, for example, so it can be caught. And have a documentation that explained why it matters or it pointed to our internal resources on why we're changing. And finally, you want to rerun assessment tools regularly to ensure that the harmful systems are gone and will not return. And with that, I pass to you again, Joe. Thank you, Elian. So let's talk about what's next. Now that we've talked about the harmful language that we've suggested changing and some of the processes, well, we can always do more. And we do want to bring up a content warning. There could be potentially triggering language on the next slide. We have a lot of opportunities for inclusive language, such as gender. A lot of times, a lot of documentation and speech defaults to he as the default gender. We would say, let's just leave that out. Let's talk about the administrator as opposed to he. Or if people try to be inclusive, they take a step further and say he or she. But a lot of people are not he or she. So moving away from just binary genders. And also just using the word guys when they truly mean everybody or everyone. That's essentially the summary of this part. Like when we talk about people using ablest language or language that doesn't respect neurodiversity. If you truly don't mean the word on the left and you mean the word on the right, let's try to use the word on the right that doesn't have the negative connotations that the word on the left does. So drug references, violent or martial language or words that appropriate cultures or religions. Again, if we're truly trying to use the word on the right. Metaphors are great, but let's make sure that we use metaphors that are clarifying metaphors as opposed to metaphors that obscure the true meaning. And then you have to end up clarifying what that metaphor means instead of just using the better word to begin with. Also, there are additional ways besides just the language to be inclusive. We can take steps to try to maximize psychological safety such as creating an environment where people are encouraged to be creative and there's no bullying. We all make mistakes, but if we celebrate mistakes as a chance to learn and grow. We're not saying, you know, if somebody makes a mistake, it's a mistake, but sometimes those are the best lessons that we learn and trying to focus on that make it something constructive instead of a punishment. Also accessibility. A lot of people do use screen readers. And if we put URLs in the middle of a paragraph, screen readers completely destroy that paragraph by reading out the URL. So we would say you could take steps to restructure your content a little bit. Putting URLs at the end. Also, putting image alternate text describing what the image is. So that if you're not able to view the image, you still know what's going on, because you probably included that image to convey something very important. Similarly, also including subtitles and any videos, so that if you're not able to hear the audio, you still get everything that's going on. Also respecting your diversity. Everybody has different abilities and capacities regarding attention or processing written words. So making sure that that you're including people. 100% inclusion may not be possible. But there's really no reason to be okay with being exclusive. Because inclusion is open. Thank you, Joe. So now we would like to share some resource, if you are interested in learning more about the content we're presenting here. So, first, I would like to recommend this video from Dr. Robert, Robert DiAngelo. So she's an anti-racist educator. And the fact that she's a white person and coming first in this list is just because she addresses from the white perspective. And we are aware that she's not an author, because a black person would be. But Dr. Robert DiAngelo helped break some defense barriers for those who are dead in contact with the subject for the first time. Anything would you like to mention, Joe? Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. We listed Robert DiAngelo, her work first in the videos and the books, because we even personally found that it's very constructive to tear down the initial apprehension that white people have to discussing these things. It's very difficult to learn if you still have your defenses up. So it almost feels like doing that work is, it's a good opening to truly be able to listen to the works of our black community. Like Dr. Kendi's work, How to Be Anti-Racist and Stem for the Beginning, are amazing books that How to Be Anti-Racist gives you great tools to be able to use out in the real world. And Stem for the Beginning, it gives a lot of history to how slavery came about. Thank you. So we also have some articles that we'd like to share. And with attention to Dr. Abram Kendi again, it's a great article and also the one we used in this whole presentation. It's great as well. And what else? We can go to the next slide, please. Thank you. So we have some organizations that we'd like to highlight. So we have at Red Hat some great organizations such as the Black United Leadership and Diversity. So it's a community for Red Hat and their allies. We also have the women leadership community that promotes a positive contribution to the next generation of women leaderships and oppressors. We also have the Red Hat Native and Indigenous community to increase the presence in opportunities and technology for Native Americans and Indigenous people. The Asian Network, Community for Red Hat, associates across the world with a heritage or that identify from the countries in Asian Pacific. And also we have UNITUS. It's a cultural awareness around the Latin or Hispanic community at Red Hat. The Pride community to connect, support and empower the LGBT plus and their allies. The Neurodiverse community to celebrate and empower the Red Haters with cognitive difference. And also we have some articles to learn more about inclusiveness on open source. And also we would like to mention some open source resource, for example, the Inclusive Naming Project with recommendations and tools for inclusiveness. The Outreach Project that promotes diversity and inclusion by bringing opportunities to join open source internships. And also this GitHub repository called Awesome Diverse with plenty of open source projects and communities that welcome diverse. And Jo, we'll talk about the next one. Yeah, we'd also like to mention just to jump back up to the Red Hat resources. Rich Bowen came up with a great presentation called Welcoming Nomenclature that definitely informed a good chunk of this presentation. So going to the bottom in the interactive section, the Harvard Implicit Association Test is a really, really amazing thing. If you can go there, you can take an implicit bias test to test race, age or gender of lots of different tests to basically just see and help you recognize some of the implicit biases that you have. It's really, really surprising. We recommend taking any implicit tests. They're very constructive. So we'd like to thank you and see if there's any questions or comments. Or there are questions rather. So let's start from the beginning. Gary asks, if the logic behind determining what's insensitive language is someone take the fence to it, how do we agree on what should we take an action on, even that almost everything can offend someone? To that I would say listening to the community. And so if 10 people tell you that something's an issue and only one person tells you that something else is an issue, perhaps prioritizing what 10 people may be telling you, but also listening to the one person. Again, it's trusting that when people are speaking up that it's coming from a good place. Okay. Antonio asks, is there a service or someone we could reach out to clarify? Sorry, as people are adding new questions, the screen is jumping around. So I'm like, oh, anyway, Antonio asks, is there a service or someone we can reach out to the clarify when we are not sure about a term. Antonio, if you are, I will share with you this link. So it's a guide. So we can have a lot of information there. I will share with you in the link. So it's a good app, and you can see what are the proposed replacements they have. And also you can discuss or bring more if you have any questions. So that's really nice. Thank you. Thank you for your question. I actually also answers the next one, but I'll ask it anyway and see if there's anything else that you could come up with. Is there a global database of terms or practices that projects should avoid or such a thing as an inclusion linter? Yeah, so this is around the community. So it's something that should be bring to the community and should have a discussion around it. So everyone will agree which is the best term. I think that's, that's it. Something else you'd like to add too. Yeah, exactly. It seems like at the moment that GitHub repo is where people are doing some of the collective work. That seems to be the biggest one. I guess people are recognizing that it's important to agree. And then also it's like a bi-directional thing where people inform what sounds like a good decision, commonly speaking, and then people take that and then recognize, got it, but we may use, you do it a little differently in this area. And then checking with the community again. Is that okay? And if people say it's okay in a different way over here, that also seems to work. Fantastic. What's the best way to bring inclusiveness to a community that shields itself with the prejudice being taken as part of our culture? I think that's a difficult one, but I think the only way it's just bringing knowledge about what the kind of language could cause to people that could be one person that may feel harmed by that. And that's, there is, could be someone that are not feeling welcomed by that. So bring the discussion. So people will start to open to that and start to learn something you would like to add, Joe. Yeah, that does sound like a very, very tough question. So I guess I would say that there's probably people that have much better answers than us for that. If we're talking about the interests of two cultures clashing. Yeah, that sounds very complex. And so hopefully there could be a dialogue to get to a point where that could be worked out. I'm not sure if there's an impasse. Thanks. All right. Any tips on finding out what words are problematic, especially for non-U.S. racism? I feel the English-speaking community is default to U.S. I guess having facilitating a way to receive that feedback, because I suppose a lot of people that use harmful language have no idea that it is harmful. And so the important thing is listening when people do let you know. And so if nobody's letting you know that there's problematic language, then I suppose a conscientious thing to do would be to facilitate receiving that feedback in the first place. Okay. Final question is from Martin. Do you see any language guideline conflicts when you encounter people coming from different cultural and language environments? After all, most of the movements focus on English language use. That's true. We see that our difference and what could be harmful to someone would not be to other nationalities, for example. And mostly we try to advise on trying to find what other people are doing, for example. So, for example, for white list and black list, most people are following the same path. So we would say follow the same or you can bring this discussion to your community. Something you would like to add, Joe? No, not really. It really just seems to just go back to listening to your immediate community and then making sure that that is also, that still respects the larger community and then the larger community after that. Yeah, just recognizing boundaries and respecting them. Different people have different boundaries. And so we have to defer to the most vulnerable population or the most vulnerable community and make sure that their boundaries are not being ignored for the sake of somebody else's boundaries. Okay. We have one more question that I'll ask and then we need to wrap up. So the final question is how to deal with embargo. What if someone cannot contribute to a project due to where they live? Is this a thing? Were these things ever included in contributing documentation? I know that there are some kind of embargoes to some countries, but I don't have the answer with me at the moment. I can research the topic and try to bring to you if it's okay or if Joe would like to bring something. No, no, I have nothing. That's great. It seems like definitely we have to follow laws. Yeah, Matthew, maybe we could take it offline just because I'm having trouble truly grasping the scenario. It was submitted by anonymous too, so I'm not even sure we can follow up with that person as we don't know who asked. But perhaps we can continue the conversation on our Discord server and we can chat it out and see if there's some additional information that the questioner can provide. And so I want to thank the both of you for really what was a fantastic presentation, really well researched and very thoughtful. I certainly learned a lot and I know that our attendees did as well. So thank you so much for that effort. I want to invite everybody to head on over to the main stage. I know my cat is being cute. Head over to the main stage as we can all win prizes and you know how we all love closing out conferences with prizes. So please head on over in that direction. And again, thanks, Joseph and Ellie for what was really an amazing, an amazing amount of information. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Bye bye.