I am not stating any opinion for or against any words or terms in this context.
I remember much debate about this, and not once was an actual affected person mentioned who took offence.
2. I make absolutely no claim about the effectiveness of using or avoiding certain terms even in the relevant context. I'm only saying that people misunderstand what "offensive" means in this context. It means things that may make some people think less of others, whether or not those others know about it or are offended by it.
Think bad PR, not actual people complaining due to being offended. Like if I named my code library dead babies, it's possible nobody whose delt with a dead baby finds offense to it, but many people might find it off putting that I've chosen to call it that. So if I was a high value corporate entity who doesn't want bad PR, I might want to rename it.
I think in the end it's more of a, oh damn, did I just make a master/slave analogy for my database design? Maybe someone will find that offensive, and I don't want that, so I'll rename it as a precaution, even if no one has yet to let me know it's offending them.
Instead I will do my best to balance my language between brevity and specificity while hoping my instructions are clear, direct, and honest for the audience. Everything else is left to chance.
I have found over the years, the degree of my communication's success is left more to the particularities and desires of group thought from a given audience than from the words themselves. I come to this conclusion through numerous times of providing the same communication, verbatim, to difference audiences and watching the wildly differing results.
If I lived by commission I suspect I would alter my behavior. Instead, I manage a software team for a living.
Potato, potahto.
