Fobidden & Suggested words / language in tech for UX Designers

	A	B	C	D
1	Old term	Suggested replacement(s)	Broad tech definition	Discussion: Why is this problematic? How could the suggested replacement be more useful?
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3	Abort	Cancel, Stop	Terminating processes
4	Black Box	Closed System	Opaque systems
5	Black Box Testing	Opaque Testing	Software testing
6	Black Hat/White Hat	Ethical Hacker/Unethical Hacker	Cybersecurity roles
7	Black Market	Unauthorized Market	Unauthorized markets
8	Black Sheep	Outlier, Nonconformist	Outlier in a group
9	Blackbox testing			Refers to testing in unknown or mystery environment; should not reference as black to indicate confusion and negativity
10	Blackhat hackers	criminal or malicious hackers		Refers to a hacker with criminal or malicious intent; should not be referenced as black to indicate evil and criminal
11	Blacklist	Block list, block Blocked (noun) (Blocked accounts, blocked domains, etc.) Not allowed, disallowed Untrusted, Not safe, Unsafe, Unaccepted, Not accepted
12	Blind Spot	Unseen Area, Knowledge Gap	Unseen issues
13	Brain Dump	Knowledge Transfer	Knowledge sharing
14	Brainstorm	Ideation, Idea Generation	Idea generation sessions
15	Chinese wall			Refers to a makeshift crudely created barrier to prevent exchanges between opposing projects within the same entity/company; often interpreted as a fake effort or attempt
16	Chinese whispers	Telephone		A children's game. Used to refer to an instance where a message is passed between multiple people, with each retelling getting further removed from the original message. Game can also be called Russian scandal (similarly bad).
17	Circle the wagon	Align, unite	Business jargon	It' being the topic discussed Suggested replacement matches "circle back," not "circle the wagons" (definition: unite in defense of a common interest). Recommend alternative replacement.
18	Crash	Failure, Halt	Software or system errors
19	Crazy/Insane	Unpredictable, Erratic	Erratic behavior
20	Cripple	Disabled, Restricted	Describing reduced functionality
21	Crippling	Disabling, Restricting	Reduced functionality
22	Disabled person	person with a disability		The person has a condition which should not be interpreted as the person being defective (see "people-first language").
23	Dummy Data	Placeholder Data, Mock Data	Mock or test data
24	Eskimo	Indigenous People of the Arctic	Indigenous terminology
25	fieldworker	Frontline worker, customer-facing agent, customer representatives, liasons	a type of user, usually inside big corporations, who interfaces with customers directly	"fieldworker" has a negative connotation among some people descended from people who were enslaved, and people aware of prison-labor programs. Fieldwork is used as an unpaid (or barely-paid) job and as punishment. How broad or specific is the problematic nature? For example, does it also apply to the distinction between those in the office and those who work "in the field"? (For example, sales staff or, in the case of my company, a Field Operations group of technicicans who go to people's homes) "Frontline worker" compares the employee to a soldier - not racist, but has had huge implications amidst the pandemic. They've been deemed "heroes" when really they've been hostages, forced to work in hazardous conditions in order to pay rent.
26	Gender-Specific Job Titles	Chairperson	Job descriptions
27	Gentlemen’s Agreement	Informal Agreement	Informal agreements
28	Going native	Be a team player	Business jargon??
29	Grandfather Clause	Legacy Clause, Pre-existing Exception	Legacy rules
30	Grandfather policy/clause	Legacy	a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases	A discriminatory voter law allowing illiterate white men to vote, but keeping illiterate Black men from voting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause Other possible replacement could be some form of "exempt" (e.g., "you'll be grandfathered in" becomes "you'll be exempt to the new rule").
31	Grandfathered	Legacy Status, Pre-existing Condition	Legacy exceptions
32	Hang/Hanging	Frozen, Non-Responsive, Stalled	System or thread freezing / Stalled processes
33	Hold Down the Fort	Manage in My Absence	Temporary management
34	Hysterical	Erratic, Excessive, Uncontrolled	Erratic system behavior
35	Illegal			Often used to refer to undocumented immigrants in a dehumanizing way.
36	Invalid			Often used as a derogatory term for people living with disabilities.
37	Kill	Terminate, Stop	Stopping processes
38	Killswitch	Emergency Stop, Safety Switch	Emergency system stop
39	Lame	Suboptimal, Ineffective	Describing suboptimal situations
40	Man-in-the-Middle	On-Path Attack	Cybersecurity attacks
41	Manhours	Person-hours, Work-hours	Work estimation
42	Manpower	Workforce, Personnel	Human resources
43	Master (noun)	Main, Primary, Expert
44	Master Key	Root Key, Primary Key	Access control systems
45	Master Record	Source Record	Primary data source
46	Master/Slave	Primary/Replica, Leader/Follower	Database configurations, hardware systems
47	Master/slave pairs	Primary/secondary Parent/child Primary/Replica Leader/Follower Source/Tributary		Strong opinion, loosely held: We should avoid all metaphors involving humans. There's always going to be a risk of exclusion—in this case, I'm thinking of people who want children and can't have them along with people who have lost children. I added river terms (source/tributary Also: one of the principal engineers at my company adds: "I don't think we should use parent/child in place of master/slave, for engineering clarity. Parent/child relationships have a very different engineering meaning (e.g., the hierarchical relationships of an object tree) which we should avoid confusing with primary/secondary replication, or leader election, which are the contexts where 'master/slave' has historically been used."
48	Minority	Underrepresented Group	Underrepresented groups
49	Native	Built-in, Default	Platform-specific software
50	Non-white	Diverse Populations	Describing diverse groups
51	Off the reservation	Work outside of the rules off book off-piste	Business jargon
52	Off the Reservation	Out of Scope, Off Track	Going beyond assigned tasks
53	Peanut Gallery	Audience, Critics	Audience comments
54	Powwow / pow-wow	meeting, sync-up, idea exchange, conversation, link-up, Meeting, Discussion	Informal discussions
55	Race Condition	Timing Issue	Concurrency issues
56	Redline, Redlining	Edit, Highlight	Document markup or edits	"In the United States, redlining is the systematic denial of various services by federal government agencies, local governments as well as the private either directly or through the selective raising of prices. Neighborhoods with high proportion of minority residents are more likely to be redlined than other neighborhoods with similar household incomes, housing age and type, and other determinants of risk, but different racial composition." In the 1960s, sociologist John McKnight coined the term "redlining" to describe the discriminatory practice of fencing off areas where banks would avoid investments based on community demographics. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
57	Sanity Check	Validity Check, Logic Check	Validation checks
58	Scrub	Sanitize, Clean	Data cleaning
59	Sherpa	Partitioning, Isolation	Data separation
60				Refers to an ethnic group with a rich cultural heritage and history, but are more commonly thought of only as servants/guides to rich white people who climb up mountains.
61	Sherpa	Guide, Mentor, Leader	Guidance or mentoring / roles
62	Slave Drive	Secondary Drive	Hardware setups
63	Slave Process	Worker Process	Distributed systems
64	Sold Down the River	Betrayed, Misled	Being misled or betrayed
65	Spaz	Unpredictable, Chaotic	Unpredictable behavior
66	Third World	Developing Countries	Developing countries
67	Tone Deaf	Insensitive, Unaware	Insensitivity to feedback
68	Tribal Knowledge	Informal Knowledge	Informal expertise
69	Tribe	Team, Group	Informal team names
70	War Room	Command Center	Operations planning
71	White Hat/Black Hat	Ethical Hacker/Unethical Hacker	Cybersecurity roles
72	White Space	Blank Space, Empty Space	Document formatting
73	Whitebox testing			Refers to testing in a known or clearly mapped environment; should not reference white to indicate clarity and openness
74	Whitehat hackers	ethical hackers		Refers to a hacker with a legitimate purpose; but should not be referenced as white to indicate pure and good
75	whitelist	Allow list, Allowed, Word List, Trusted, Permitted, Safe, Include, Cleared, Unblocked, Accepted, Approved		- Any thoughts on "allow list" over "allowlist", etc?
76	Whitelist/Blacklist	Allowlist/Denylist	Access control lists
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