Repository of Inclusive Terms

Goal: One of the four goals of the Alliance is to encourage the use of more inclusive language across industry. The goal is to create cultures that embrace inclusive language, conveying respect for all, and promoting a true sense of belonging for all employees in partner organizations. The Alliance will achieve this through developing an inclusive language repository that suggests alternative options for industry words that are biased and may discriminate against groups of people based on race, gender, or disability.

To drive awareness, dialogue, and industry-wide change for inclusive language in products and documentation, amplified through partnerships with standards bodies and academic institutions, the workstream aligned on the first set of four terms to be adopted by the Alliance for Global Inclusion.

Current Terms	Alternatives	Definition
Whitelist, blacklist	Allowlist/Denylist AllowedNouns/DeniedNouns	Lists which permit or deny a set of nouns or select enabled features.
Master, Slave	Control plane/Control plane node Controller/Doer Primary/Replica Primary/Secondary Also acceptable: Leader/Follower Parent/Child	The “master/slave” metaphor in computing refers to a system with a single store of record and a set of replicas which maintain copies of the original data. These recommendations are broken into two groups. The preferred group does not use a new metaphor while the also acceptable group does. We recommend choosing an alternative that does not replace one metaphor with another but understand that some projects may feel that Leader/follower or Parent/child communicates best.

Source: Inclusive Naming Initiative