Sensitive Words policy

Question

Recently in the Suggested Edits Review Queue, there was a spate of edits changing only master/slave verbiage to primary/secondary.

In the absence of other improvements to a post, should we accept or reject these (and similar) edits?

Related post on meta.se

Extended discussion in chat

Answer 1

Match Official Documentation

As stated by SE staff, the answer should use terminology consistent with the respective product documentation, otherwise it will be confusing and therefore not useful. Subsequently, edits that deviate from the product documentation terms should be rejected, at least until that documentation itself changes.

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By way of reference, the following substitutions are documented:

master/slave

• SQL Server - primary/replica OR primary/secondary reference
• MySQL - source/replica reference
• PostgreSQL - master/standby reference

whitelist/blacklist

• SQL Server - safe/blocked reference (whitelist) reference (blacklist)
• MySQL - allowlist/denylist reference

Answer 2

Reject

• Edits of this type are an "attempt to respond".
• Users shouldn't "rep-farm" by seeking out these posts and spamming the active feed while making no other improvement to the post
• If we want a blanket policy to change verbiage, we can define the policy more explicitly AND apply the policy more uniformly than capricious spurts in the Review Queues

Answer 3

Accept

• These edits represent a good-faith effort to adhere to a policy implied by the parent and affiliate networks
• They harm no one and save antagonisation for many
• Engaging low-rep users by adhering to stated community standards is nothing to discourage