one list, two list,

There was a letter to the editor in the SU paper this week that I happened to see, despite the fact that I don't pay a whole lot of attention to said periodical. This letter complained about the words whitelist and blacklist, for their reinforcement of particular attitudes towards white and black folk.

I have to admit that my first reaction to complaints like these is to come down on the side of language, which pretty much does what it does without paying particular attention to the complaints or efforts of we individual speakers. But it stuck with me. I make a real effort to avoid gendered terms in my writing, and I've always been a fan of Douglas Hofstadter's Person Paper on Purity in Language. And, as it happens, I'm slowly assembling a list of the email addresses of valid commenters, so that all y'all don't continue to fall afoul of the tighter spam restrictions I've had to adopt lately.

Even though the plugin itself that allows me to do this is called Whitelister, I think I'm going to describe what I'm doing as red- and greenlisting. I don't fool myself into believing that this terminological change is going to sweep the country like wildfire or anything, but making reference to traffic signals actually comes closer to describing what I'm trying to accomplish.

So if your comment doesn't show up for a spell, please be patient. I'll add you to the ol' greenlist...

That's all.