Talk:Blacklist (computing)

In Minecraft, banning someone = putting them on blacklist.

Add this, please. --2601:E:280:13AF:3DDE:51E8:9D1E:4369 (talk) 01:54, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Who supplies and maintains such blacklists?

Who supplies and maintains such blacklists? -- 113.28.129.54 (talk) 04:06, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Spam tutorial - local blacklisting.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:38, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

BlackList Controversy

Various IT companies are choosing to no longer use BlackList / WhiteList and are switching to DenyList AllowList. Do we need to have a controversy section on this page? https://thepostmillennial.com/twitter-blacklists-the-term-blacklist-and-other-racist-terms. 104.158.189.50 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:36, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't know about "blacklist" in the general English usage, but for computing (which is the subject of this article) it seems pretty clear that the controversy is over and the terminology has changed. For years I've been seeing "blocklist" and "denylist" used more and more often for a list of computers (or computer services) to block. I didn't pay attention to the trend, but now that I look around, it appears major tech companies and organization have made it an official policy. A year ago, there was an article about Linux dropping the term "blacklist" that stated that in doing this Linux was joining “Twitter, GitHub, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Ansible, Red Hat, Splunk, Android, Go, MySQL, PHPUnit, Curl, OpenZFS, Rust, JP Morgan, and others.” Both IBM and Microsoft say they have been quietly replacing words like "blacklist" for years. I don't know when they started, but it certainly is true now. Microsoft's style guide was updated in January of 2021 to state explicitly to never use "blacklist". If you search for any tech doc on Microsoft.com that uses the term "blacklist" (in the computer sense) the first thing you'll see is this text:

Important

Bias-free communication

Microsoft supports a diverse and inclusive environment. This article contains references to terminology that the Microsoft style guide for bias-free communication recognizes as exclusionary. The word or phrase is used in this article for consistency because it currently appears in the software. When the software is updated to remove the language, this article will be updated to be in alignment.

Microsoft's GitHub site even has a built-in Action called Words-Really-Matter to help developers replace exclusionary language (e.g., "blacklist") with other words ("denylist"). That GitHub Action was inspired by IBM's official social justice group, Emb(race), advocating for such change. I don't know if Google has a company wide style-guide, but at least some of their projects have replaced "blacklist" with "blocklist". There are probably many more examples of companies that are making this change. At a minimum, a Controversy section should be added. Eventually, this article should be renamed to reflect modern usage. Ben (talk) 22:06, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

> I don't know about "blacklist" in the general English usage, but for computing (which is the subject of this article) it seems pretty clear that the controversy is over and the terminology has changed.

I don't think that the controversy is over and the terminology has changed: many haven't changed to using the term blocklist in computing, so it's not clear that the terminology has changed (check out some of the results from searching “blacklist blocklist”). The controversy isn't over, either, seeing as many computer-related organizations actively use the term blacklist (try searching “network blacklist” for instance). -- Golemwire (talk) 18:33, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

It should be noted though, that this discussion is much older than the article suggests: this stackexchange thread dates back to 2011 and most of the comments are also around that time (2012) . The argument for its use was basically the same as said above: Many companies use it, so it is not a problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.37.132.39 (talk) 18:40, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

(I didn't say that it's okay to use the word "blacklist" because it's in common use. I said that the controversy wasn't over and the terminology hadn't changed because it's in common use.) -- Golemwire ^(talk) 22:41, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

While the controversy surrounding the term "blacklist" is largely contrived, there is sufficient coverage of the topic in the media that it is relevant to include a controversy section. However, I would disagree with the previous comment that the controversy is "over"; while many large companies/organizations have decided to change their terminology, the term is still used widely. Also, the origin of the term is unrelated to race, as discussed on the Wikipedia article Blacklisting. DirkDouse (talk) 16:18, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Or probably, our this article should consider renaming? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 06:57, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

References

The controversy has been be more visible in tech. Still, doesn't this controversial part belong to the more general Blacklisting article ? Maybe right after "Origin of the term", in a section named "Evolution of usage" ? Thanks. Cgo (talk) 17:18, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: I also think we should consider renaming both this article and the whitelist article, there are many articles in WP using the term and wikilinking to it. [1] Outside of tech I read it in wikipedia on whitelisting/blacklisting academic journals. If we rename it we can create an incentive to others to rely less on this term. (see Beall's List, Jeffrey Beall, Cabell Publishing, Cabells' Predatory Reports, Who's Afraid of Peer Review?) —Arthurfragoso (talk) 06:26, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Maybe alternative terms could also be "inclusion list" and "exclusion list"? —Arthurfragoso (talk) 06:29, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Yep, in any ways, we should fairly start such a renaming proposal at a good time. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:32, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 9 July 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – MaterialWorks 20:25, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

---

Blacklist (computing) → Denylist – There were a previous discussion above in the section "BlackList Controversy". A reason is that Wikipedia also provides influence on the usage of terms. The idea would be to have the article named Denylist or Blocklist, but still have the term Blacklist mentioned in the article. — Arthurfragoso (talk) 19:40, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Blacklist (computing) → Denylist (computing) – Changing the proposal to Denylist (computing) as there are many Blacklist articles that we don't know their fate yet, such as: Blacklisting, Blacklist (employment), Software blacklisting,.. — Arthurfragoso (talk) 20:54, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose move. Blacklist and whitelist are still by far the most commonly used terms, and their etymologies have absolutely nothing to do with race. If you have evidence the common name is something else, feel free to provide it, but your current rationale that "Wikipedia also provides influence on the usage of terms" makes it seem as you're trying to right a nonexistent great wrong. O.N.R. ^(talk) 21:36, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  @Old Naval Rooftops, I think this comment is unnecessarily combative. Even if you disagree with the premise, there is an extant movement to move away from the terms due to racial connotations [2] [3]. That said I still oppose the move for WP:COMMONNAME reasons, but can see revisiting the RM in the future if the movement grows and common usage shifts. WPscatter ^t/_c 22:36, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  My point was that this feels like righting great wrongs, because the request was on the grounds that the terms are controversial but no evidence of a change in common name was provided. O.N.R. ^(talk) 22:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  It has shades of RGW but I think you implied the nominator was inventing the grounds that the terms are controversial. It's a lot easier to assume good faith with the context that there are in fact other people who see them that way, which is why I wanted to add it. WPscatter ^t/_c 22:53, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't provide the evidence because there were a previous discussion above, specially by @Ben, and as I had seen myself a great move towards the new terms over the years, I was thinking it was already accepted, and seeing most in the "BlackList Controversy" section converging to an agreement, I didn't think I had to put much effort explaining the move request, so I was caught off guard here. — Arthurfragoso (talk) 22:59, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

• Opppose per Old Naval Rooftops. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:50, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per MOS:NEO. —  AjaxSmack  22:13, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, still a common name and we're not here to RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Killuminator (talk) 08:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:RGW. 〜 Festucalex • talk 09:58, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per common usage, never heard the term "denylist". Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:21, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose - Per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:RGW. I was going to close this as not moved, but I'm new to closing's so I'll help this way. - FlightTime (open channel) 01:23, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

--

I acknowledge I may be in a bubble, and the consensus here leans against a move. I took the time to read and think about all the arguments and search for more data. Even as the consensus doesn't change, I will provide more data and arguments, as if this is not approved this time, this topic will probably be brought up again in the future.

Searching on google, the number of results it says for each term are:

black list: 15.8B
blacklist: 216M
"black list" - 12.8M

Block list: 8.4B
blocklist: 30M
"Block list": 7M

Deny list: 504M
Denylist: 258K
"Deny list" - 120k

whitelist - 101M
allowlist - 7.5M

And Github results:

blocklist - 9.5M [4]
blacklist - 3M [5]
denylist - 90.4k [6]

whitelist - 3.9M [7]
allowlist - 440k [8]

We see that there are more results for "blacklist" in Google, followed up by blocklist and denylist. Take in consideration that the result for blacklist contains results for books and tv shows. And in Github there are actually more "blocklist" than "blacklist". So, a takeaway is that blocklist is much more common than denylist if we were to rename the article.

Also, let's take in consideration that the major players have adopted the new terms. Aside from Google[9][10][11][12][13] and Microsoft[14], there is also Cisco that plays a major influence on Computer Networking,[15][16] noting that I also found an article that indicate Cisco started adopting those terms long before (2016).[17]

There is also a IETF draft (that doesn't carry much weight while still only a draft, but sharing nonetheless): [18]

- Now addressing the question that original meaning may have not being from a racist origin (although disputed, see the notes from Douglas Harper[19] mentioned in [20] (it also mentions other papers and scholars, we can dive deeper in this question to improve the articles later)), even if those were not the original etymology, those words can still be associated with other events in history and carry negative weight. I personally find those terms quite offensive. I also know we can communicate about offensive words without being offensive, it is described well in Wikipedia:Offensive material, and I think, even if we keep the article title, we would have to rewrite some content of the article so it would be less offensive. Google also mentions this when dealing with code and commands that haven't updated the terms.[21] ("If the command or code that you're documenting uses one of these words, then use the words only in direct reference to the code items (formatted as code), and make it clear what you're referring to.") We can also see this workaround in the FreeBSD documentation about a firewall named "blacklistd". [22][23] (it seems unmaintained [24])

The Wikipedia rule that I find most difficult to argument against is the MOS:NEO mentioned by @AjaxSmack (talk · contribs), as the word "blacklist" is indeed much older. — Arthurfragoso (talk) 03:06, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

While you mention WP:Offensive material, there doesn't seem to be any issue of a WP:GRATUITOUS violation (i.e. gratuitous use of offensive material) here. Granted, avoiding color words that correspond with skin colors seems to be a recent American human resources trend, an area I'm not all that familiar with. However, there is no evidence presented here in the nomination that this squeamishness has spread to the general populace of any English speaking country. An analogy would be where American corporations use the term "holiday party" instead of "Christmas party" to welcome non-Christians. This corporate usage does not mean that typical English users consider "Christmas party" to be an offensive phrase. Furthermore, while "holiday party" can be relative easily (if vaguely) interpreted from its constituent words, "denylist" is not as intuitive.

Certainly "denylist" is a more technical term than "holiday party", but per WP:COMMONNAME policy, it should still accrue much wider usage both in terms of numbers and in geographic scope before a move is made. —  AjaxSmack  14:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose: Per WP:COMMONNAME and MOS:NEO. Blacklist / whitelist are the common names. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:00, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I could say that the entry for the word/expression Blacklist to be in the Blacklisting article, and this to be for the IT blocklists. There is also very little source backing up this article, good luck finding sources for it now that all major tech companies has moved to new terminology. Anyway, I created a draft/exemplification page on how the article could be at User:Arthurfragoso/Drafts/Blocklist, and sources backing those up. I didn't put much effort into it, as it may go in vain. I also pinged WP:WikiProject Discrimination so they could give some feedback. Anyway, I gave my best and I don't think I have anything else I could say. — Arthurfragoso (talk) 21:19, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@Arthurfragoso, if "all major tech companies have moved to new terminology", then cite sources that back up that claim, because that would be a very strong argument in favor of your proposed move. That's really the only thing that matters here. Even if you cite reliable sources that say the name is discriminatory, well, Wikipedia is not censored, and that's not a valid reason to change the title. I don't think that wikiproject is applicable here either as it covers topics directly about discrimination, such as Persecution of Muslims. WPscatter ^t/_c 22:10, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@Wpscatter the ones that were mentioned before by me and the others in the section and the previous was section was not enough? I'm replying from the mobile app now, but I can list them again later. Arthurfragoso (talk) 23:23, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@Wpscatter: I pointed about the big tech before in the thread, but it seems nobody bothered clicking on the links and reading or verifying for themselves. So it started to seem to me that WP:COMMONNAME meant North American common racist biased speech (I asked ChatGPT to rephrase it: I began to perceive that WP:COMMONNAME might be influenced more by colloquial North American language, which could potentially contain biases that are not often reflected in the written content available online. Given my geographical location, I only have access to written material on the internet to cross-check this. It particularly struck me when the term 'blacklist' was used instead of 'blocklist', which made me ponder if spoken language there can sometimes carry a racially charged undertone, differing from the neutral language generally found in written online texts.), because I and @Ben has mentioned about Big Tech. I thought: "oh, I don't need to copy and paste what those URLs and Big Tech say, the other wikipedians here are well capable to fact-check themselves." Anyway, today I used the mobile app for the first time, and I noticed it doesn't show the URLs that I posted. So, just to be clear, I'm posting a big table about the major big tech on this topic, the list can go much longer, and I don't know how much it is enough until the "Burden of Proof" for WP:COMMONNAME changes. — Arthurfragoso (talk) 02:19, 12 July 2023 (UTC) --edited--

@Hackerb9: I was pinging the wrong user. @Ben goes by @Hackerb9. — Arthurfragoso (talk) 05:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Company statements
IBM	August 19, 2020. - Big call for action. Words Matter: Driving Thoughtful Change Toward Inclusive Language in Technology
Microsoft	Nov 2, 2017 - Consider alternatives where possible.[25] January 15, 2021- [26] - Never use blacklist. Use blocklist instead. [27] January 15, 2021 - Never use whitelist. Use allowlist instead. [28]
Google	Don't use blacklist, whitelist, and graylist. Instead, use more precise terms that are appropriate for your domain. [29] - For the noun blacklist, consider using a replacement such as denylist, excludelist, or blocklist. - For the noun whitelist, consider using a replacement such as allowlist, trustlist, or safelist. - For the noun graylist (greylist), consider using a replacement such as provisional list. Terms such as “blacklist” and “whitelist” reinforce the notion that black==bad and white==good. That Word Black, by Langston Hughes illustrates this problem in a lighthearted, if somewhat pointed way. These terms can usually be replaced by “blocklist” and “allowlist” without changing their meanings, but particular instances may need other replacements. [30] Allowlist URLs - [31] Jun 12 2020 - [U: Android too] Google Chrome team moving away from the words ‘blacklist’ and ‘whitelist’ to be more inclusive
Apple	blacklist/whitelist (n., v.) Don’t use. For the noun, use an alternative that’s appropriate to the context, such as deny list/allow list, deny list/permit list, unapproved list/approved list, or reject list/accept list. [32]
Cloudflare	A blocklist is a list of items (usually websites, IP addresses, email addresses, etc.) that are prevented from accessing a system. [33] An allowlist list of items (usually websites, IP addresses, email addresses, etc.) that are permitted to access a system. [34]
Linux	04 Jul 2020 - proposal [35] 10 Jul 2020 - approval [36] [37] +Recommended replacements for 'blacklist/whitelist' are: + 'denylist / allowlist' + 'blocklist / passlist'
Kaspersky	Allowlists and denylists - [38] Denylist (sometimes referred as blocklist, formerly known as blacklist) is a list of sites, programs, or other elements that are not allowed to be started or visited. (...) [39] - Since about Jan 2020 (comparing on web.archive) One method of filtering spam, an allowlist (formerly known as whitelist) provides a list of legitimate e-mail addresses or domain names: all messages from allowlisted addresses or domains are automatically passed on to the intended recipient. - [40]
Cisco Talos	June 23, 2020 - While we acknowledge it is a small change, Cisco Talos is moving to replace our use of the terms "blacklist" and "whitelist" with "block list" and "allow list.” [41]
Cisco	Safelist/Blocklist - [42] IP Allow/Block List - [43]
SAP	Avoid "blacklist", as well as any compound words containing "black" that denote something bad or negative, such as black rating. Possible replacements: blocklist, exclude list, avoid list. Examples of acceptable terms that include "black": blackout period, blackbox testing. Avoid "whitelist", as well as any compound words containing "white" that denote something good or positive, such as white rating. Possible replacements: allow list, include list, prefer list. Examples of acceptable terms that include "white": white paper, whitebox testing, whitespace. [44]
Amazon / AWS ??? (Partially)	Amazon engineers are collaborating on an internal Wiki page that shows how to replace unconsciously racist and gender-biased terms with more inclusive language. Although it's not an official mandate by the leadership team, managers are encouraging employees to review the page, which is available companywide, according to people familiar with the effort. It also says "blacklist" has a racial stigma attached to it and should be replaced by "Blocklist" or "approved." [45] According to this page, their internal wiki is located at Alternative Phrasings to Unconscious Bias in Communication Wiki (Alexa Team). But searching their documentation, there are much mixed content: Blacklist - [46] Blocklist - CDK - Interface IFirewallDomainListProps
Broadcom	Deny List / Allow List [47] Allowed list / Denied list [48]
Twitter	Whitelist -> Allowlist Blacklist -> Denylist [49]
Meta	Block lists / Allow lists [50]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.