Motherboard isn't offensive. It shouldn't be offensive. If someone is offended by it, that is a problem of theirs.
The idea that a large, influential organization plays along with the idea that "motherboard" should in any way be filtered is as absurd as filtering the words "table" or "stereo".
Sorry, but i'm going to trust the folks who think hard about what should and should not be in documentation that ends up in literally hundreds of different countries more than an an absoluteist HN statement that "it's not offensive" from a random person.
But in typical HN fashion, i'm sure you know better. Just like the people who say that X or Y should take 2 people over a weekend.
Remind me again what your experience is here to say they are wrong? Are you a culture expert of some sort? It's really not obvious from your HN profile or comment exactly why you think your expertise should overrule theirs.
Otherwise, i'd say it sure is fun to get upset and pretend it's the reactionary woke police, rather than a group of people carefully thinking something through.
I "trust the experts" on a number of things, but the spectrum shifts a little with cultural discussions, and it's precisely because Google is so incredibly influential that I am suspicious of actions taken that seem to be the modus operandi of a portion of so-called socially-progressive people who try to "nudge" society through the intentional shifting of language.
I would be interested to see the rationale for the change, if it is so clearly benign and not part of any secret-sauce or competitive advantage - similar to the AP Stylebook.
This isn't a debate about cloud security, or strongly-typed languages, or the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and its impact on the Earth. It's a cultural discussion, and I believe citizens should be encouraged to form an opinion, rather than insulted and berated for having one.
You actually didn't defend your position in any way on the topic, you only berated me for not having faith in closed-door internal Google processes to alter the use of the English language.
From another comment:
>you have precisely zero knowledge of either the decision making process, or how it is used, etc.
Isn't that the issue being brought up? Let's be charitable: Could it be that "mainboard" is the English term used by ESL speakers across the world, and "motherboard" is only used in the US/UK? Perhaps. I know you work at Google, but I am surprised at your surprise that people would be skeptical of that company's motivation.
I'd be interested in your opinion on the first-order topic, and also why you're so angry in the second place.
As an ESL speaker I can confidently tell you that in French the correct term, approved by the "Office québécois de la langue française" (Québec's office of the French language), for mainboard and motherboard is "carte mère" (carte<->board and mère<->mother).
Even google translate mainboard to "carte mère" !!!
I’m a “go along to get along” Asian but even I think this level of obsequiousness remarkable.
These departments have an expertise, sure. But part of being an intelligent, critically thinking person is knowing when people are speaking within the scope of their expertise and when they aren’t. You and I both know that this wouldn’t hold up under Daubert. This isn’t like telling you not to name your car the “Nova” in Spanish-speaking countries. It’s like trying to make “LatinX” happen.
Saying that something is or isn't offensive doesn't require being and expert in cultural studies. You just know it by the virtue of being part of the culture and observing what the trends of the majority are.
I think your militant stance on the subject is more problematic than someone else's view that the word motherboard is not offensive.
Also, advocating for some narrow unknown group of people to have exclusive right to define language gives off a little cultish vibes.
See, this is the whole issue right here.
It's not about a single culture. It's hundreds.
This wordlist is for global products with literally billions of users in literally hundreds of countries.
Yes, it requires experts to know what will be inoffensive to all of them at once (or at least, the vast majority).
Your "narrow unknown group of people" is really "people who are experts at language and culture and understand this".
Paying and asking them to help figure out how to create common standards that will cover the majority of the hundreds of cultures at once does not seem cultish or militant at all to me?
It is something literally every single company with literally billions of global users in hundreds of cultures does.
Otherwise they end up naming their product something offensive to a culture, etc.
News stories about those gaffes occur literally all the time, so i'm sort of shocked you are really trying to argue that trying to avoid them is somehow cultish.
I am probably one of the least "politically correct" people you will find, and i'm not even all that progressive in the scheme of things, yet this clearly makes sense to me.
So I look at this, and see HN having a huge overreaction because they are upset the world is becoming a lot more politically correct for no obvious benefit.
That bothers me too - a lot in fact. I just don't see the particular thing complained about in this part of the thread (a wordlist used to ensure google doesn't say offensive things in product documentation) all that objectionable.
The original article, about offensive/inclusive/etc AI writing nudges, bothers me about 1000x more than the wordlist.
Again, you literally know nothing about how or why the decision is made, but are 100% sure about what happened and why. Yet they are the problem and not you?
I would urge you to actually seek facts first, rather than make them up yourself just because you are sure you are right.
It's not a particularly helpful approach.
I represent a culture of 100+ million people in my country, 300+ million in total speaking my (non-English) language natively. Motherboard is the word every single hardware repair shop or seller is going to use when talking about motherboards. It might be hard to imagine from a certain perspective, but the vast crushing majority of humans worldwide is entirely unbothered that some words are feminized.
Trust the experts? Really? To people on HN, most of whom have been using the term motherboard their whole lives without incident and who are, in fact, computer experts?
It's quite obviously not a carefully thought through decision, it's more or less random machine-gunning of random words that happen to have the word mother in them because ... well ... because they think motherhood is offensive? Presumably? It's impossible to discern any logic here. This supposedly expert decision is already leading to near universal derision towards Google, a once universally respected name. That derision is now also coming from left-wing media outlets that you'd expect to be fully supportive, like VICE. That's because it's quite obviously insane. Nobody is looking at this and thinking "about time", they're thinking "wtf is that?!".
I'm talking solely about the internal wordlist the grandparent is whining about, not the AI writing thingy.
I don't have a real formed opinion yet on the latter.
For the former, it's none of the things you say, and AFAICT, you have precisely zero knowledge of either the decision making process, or how it is used, etc.
So saying "it's quite obviously x" seems trivially wrong.
No one in this chain said that, however. Some person gave an opinion and you then replied with "you don't have any knowledge on this". Even though in this case, it is indeed a cultural question which everyone has some knowledge and likely opinion on.
If you want to encourage others to seek more information out (if it's out there), then sure. But at some point it just sounds like you're appealing to an authority that doesn't exist here. And honestly, who IS the authority of a thing like language and its usage is a conversation in and of itself.
The idea that a large, influential organization plays along with the idea that "motherboard" should in any way be filtered is as absurd as filtering the words "table" or "stereo".